Forget politics, face reality

BY ZOGBOBIA SELOMO

Politics is dancing towards a climax. Even with all the auguries, our prayer is: May the season go well and come with peace for the whole nation. In the next few days, February 25, 2023, the nation will have another opportunity to make a choice of leadership that should lead its people out of the painful quagmire the present administration has plunged them into.

In a frantic scramble for votes, politicians are crisscrossing the nation as they saloon their ideas to a people facing trauma in all ramifications. Promises come very cheap at this time but the people are listening in order not to go into the errors of the past, to make choices that have nearly ruined their lives and even the nation.

The crowd is all about politics but my appeal here is for people to remove their eyes from politics and face reality squarely. The reality tells the perfect story, the reality captures the rot, the wrath and the pain in the land.

Reality is Naira redesign and Naira swap. The central bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, with the wisdom of Biblical Solomon, has considered it worthy to squeeze out of circulation dirty Naira notes worth over N3 trillion and replace them with brand new ones which mistreatment could attract sanctions. He has the backing of President Muhammadu Buhari because this a cardinal policy of this administration.

The only painful thing is that so much old money have gone into the vaults of the banks but there is very little ones coming out. With about N2 trillion taken out, the central bank has printed just only N500 billion, according to the CBN presentation at the national assembly. The deficit is the chaos on the street and the overarching despondency across the country. There is anger in the land. People can’t access their funds. Married women are stripping naked in the banking halls, men are taking desperate measures, somebody has died after a long wait for cash or card. There is anger in the land. In fact, there is public outrage. While those who still have energy are demonstrating across the country in protest of a policy that has brought untold sorrow and hardship, some three states of the federation, who belong to the ruling party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), have gone to the supreme court, the highest court in the land, to seek relief for their people.

Apart from giving Nigerians the opportunity to spend brand new notes and feel a little bit of elation, the seamy side of the story which has been reinforced by the CBN governor, is that monies are being mopped out of circulation in order to deny the politicians the opportunity to buy votes with ill-acquired wealth. What goes round hardly comes round, dear friends. After stealing from the people, after a season of total fiasco and satanic misrule, the politicians will return to seduce the people with the same money they have stolen from them.

Whatever the plan is, the reality is that there are queues in the banks. And some of them are closing shops and their workers bolting to safety. The sight of women climbing over the fence to achieve safety is not the most pleasant one. People are feeling very much on edge, and politics cannot help them.

The more exasperation is that the Naira squeeze has only come to worsen the pain of people staying on fuel queues and some even sleeping at the filling stations overnight. For months on end, the nation cannot resolve the shameful nightmare of fuel scarcity until the president, who is also the minister of petroleum, set up an ad hoc committee to tackle the problem. What a nation!

As I write, politics has nearly ambushed reality! A member of the ruling party, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who has enjoyed the moniker of the party leader but is now also the presidential candidate of his party, has appropriated the financial fiasco and, in fact, the party misrule as a calculated attempt to hurt his chances of winning the presidential election.

“We will use our PVCs to take over government from them. If they like let them create fuel crisis, even if they say there is no fuel, we will trek to vote. They are full of mischief; they could say there is no fuel. They have been scheming to create fuel crisis, but forget about it. Relax, I Asiwaju, have told you that the issue of fuel supply will be permanently addressed.

“Let them increase the price of fuel, let them continue to hoard fuel, only them know where they have hoarded fuel, they hoarded money, they hoarded naira; we will go and vote and we will win. Even if they changed the ink on naira notes. Whatever their plans, it will come to naught. We are going to win. Those in the PDP will lose,” Tinubu said in Abeokuta.

The other day, he said at a campaign in Calabar: “Today, they moved the exchange rate from N200 to N800. If they had repaired it, if they had arrested this, we won’t be where we are today, we will be greater. They don’t know the way, they don’t know how to think, they don’t know how to do.”

How one man is able to appropriate the happenings in a country to massage his hubris and ambition beats the imagination of this writer. Everything is about Senator Tinubu, about his turn to rule as if the leadership is a favour that the country owes him. A party he has nurtured and curated, he is now speaking from outside, as a third party, unsuccessfully distancing himself from the fiasco he has imposed on the nation.

This would have qualified as drama of the absurd if the results were not too catastrophic. The tragedy that is unfolding is that the exploding crisis within the ruling party seems to be emblematic of the confusion with which his party has ruled the nation. Confusion, suspicion and incompetence. The Naira Redesign is the policy of this administration. The cost of the Naira to Dollar is also the monetary policy of the government, opening up multiple exchange rates for the dollar. The fuel queues come directly from the failure of this government of which Tinubu is a lead player.

Is it smart of Tinubu to campaign with the failure of this government he has nurtured over the years? No. I submit it is fraudulent, cheap, desperate and very opportunistic.

In addition, I believe that his momentary populist stance is just a facade to mask his intemperate and noticeable deficiencies which, more often, just pop up during campaigns. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the letter of sanction sent to TV Continental by the National Broadcasting Commission. From that document, the reality is that Tinubu has not just been campaigning with ideas and reason but just pouring out scurrilous effluvia to attract spontaneous sentiments.

This is breach two in the letter to TVC. On January 24, 2023, at 03.39pm, during the APC Presidential Rally in Abia state. The APC presidential candidate, after telling the public to vote APC under the symbol of broom, went on to make the following comment: “You know what you do with the rest of them? They are like lizards, cockroaches and mosquitoes. Just take the broom, wipe them off”.

This was nothing but pure hate speech and incitement to violence. The NBC took a decision without looking at faces.

This kind of behaviour from the politicians has managed to blanket the other reality which is very bizarre. While there is confusion in the political space, more killings are going on around the country, and the deaths don’t seem to matter anymore. A local government chairman had his head removed in Imo state. Also in the same state, a judge was brought out of his court and shot on the streets. Plus other killings in other parts of the country, in one weekend in Katsina, the locals buried 71 people in different communities. But there is so much political drama across the land that gruesome deaths count less. How very unfortunate!

Nigeria is in a desperate state and needs tested hands to marshal the affairs of this nation. This is where Alhaji Abubakar Atiku stands shoulders high above other contestants in the ring. Moreover, he has focused on issues and not used to frivolities. No matter the barbs thrown at him, including the ones from Governor Nyesom Wike and his band of governors, he has demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities.

Although the failure of the head of this administration has denuded the stock of people from his part of the country, Atiku remains a light bearer and continues to demonstrate the coolness of leadership which is needed in very desperate times.

His line of submission is simple but desperately needed at this time. He will provide the leadership that will unite the country, tackle security taking tough decisions, restructure the nation and bring hope to the teeming youth who remain the engine room of growth, by refitting the economy to earn investors’ confidence.

Apart from shrapnels from his media aides, Atiku has largely remained on issues, with a maturity, readiness and coolness that the nation calls for at this time. The days ahead will demonstrate whether these observations are right and whether Nigerians are ready to bring him on board.