INTERVIEW: Economic hardship shows Tinubu wasn’t prepared for governance, says Osuntokun

Akin Osuntokun, a former presidential aide, served as the director-general of the Labour Party (LP) presidential campaign council in the 2023 elections. In this interview with TheCable’s TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI, he shared his thoughts on Nigeria’s economic challenges and other issues of national importance. 

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TheCable: Do you think the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government is steering the Nigerian ship in the right direction, given the prevailing socio-economic challenges?

Osuntokun: Political crisis can be managed but when it is rooted in economy, that is the most dangerous crisis that we are going to have. That is what we are confronted with now. The current situation is the manifestation of the dysfunction of Nigeria all along. The constitution of the country has been bastardised and has become dysfunctional. In other words, even with the best of efforts, we are not likely to get far with whatever we want to do. That is why the only option we have now is what is called restructuring or restoration of federalism.

The problem that I see is that unfortunately, the government of President Tinubu seem not to have anticipated or prepared for the kinds of challenges or crisis that we are experiencing. That to me, is a sad commentary because if you are going to run for the office of president of Nigeria and you have this period, between when you are declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the day you are sworn in, that is about three months. What did President Tinubu do with those three months? That was enough time to simulate all the crises we are having now and how best to respond to them.

What is happening now is inevitable. There is no way you are going to remove oil subsidy and floatation of the naira that you won’t have the crisis that we have now. The kind of policies that we have in place now can only work in the long run, not in the short term. They ought to have anticipated all these challenges but they did not. Now, we are seeing all manners of fire brigade approaches which doesn’t work.

TheCable: The presidency has claimed that the problem is inherited and we have seen ministers and officials even blaming the immediate past administration led by Muhammadu Buhari. Do you agree with this?

Osuntokun: There are two major explanations for what is happening now. First is that the president and his government are not well prepared for the crisis we are confronting today. All these palliatives and monies they are just throwing around, that should have happened from the very beginning.

The second has to do with the insecurity crisis in the country. Almost everybody now is being converted to the idea of state police. However, state police is just an item in the constitution. There are a lot of factors in it. In fact, the constitution itself, if we don’t overhaul it, we are not going to go far as a nation. They can’t just be picking bits and pieces and say we are amending the constitution.

TheCable: In view of the economic challenges, do you think the presidency is leading by example by cutting down on the cost of governance, especially with the implementation of the Oronsaye report?

Osuntokun: People will claim that he was elected by a minority of Nigerians based on the result from INEC. What that is telling you is that about 70 percent of the Nigerians didn’t want him from the beginning. What any president that finds himself in that kind of situation does is to do things that will grant him legitimacy which will now make up for the legitimacy gap that dogged his candidature and emergence as president.

They are saying they want to implement Oronsaye report. I remembered somebody asked me when he (Tinubu) was picking his ministers if I had any suggestion and I made it clear that according to the constitution of Nigeria, the irreducible minimum of ministers is 36. The constitution says the president must pick one minister per state. I said in view of the economic mess that we are in; the president should restrict himself to that 36. But what did he do? He did the exact opposite. We have 48 ministers in Nigeria today.

It would have been obvious to anybody that you don’t appoint more aides at a time the country is battling serious economic challenges. If he had adopted that habit of appointing fewer aides earlier on in the presidency, he would have been in a comfortable position when the situation is tough now. But he did the opposite by appointing more aides and ministers.

The almost criminal ostentatious lifestyle is also another factor. You can imagine 462 national legislators buying Landcruiser jeep for themselves in Nigeria of today where people cannot eat. They also budgeted N15 billion to build a mansion for the vice-president. Where was the vice-president staying before? Was he staying in a kitchen? These people just take everything for granted. There is nothing wrong in building a house for the vice-president but we have to prioritise. The building shouldn’t come now when the people are struggling to feed themselves.

We have a situation now where members of APC, PDP, LP who have not eaten for three days, have a common purpose in attacking you. That adversity will unite everybody against you. This is the problem we are talking about. People see you indulging in all sorts of frivolous spendings. That is the danger in our economic crisis which we are confronting right now. If you want to ask people to make sacrifice, you yourself must lead by example. You must do the same. There is no way you can justify buying expensive things and building mansions, then you expect the people to tighten their belts and make sacrifices. Not at all.

TheCable: There are already talks of a possible merger among opposition political parties ahead of 2027 elections. What is the position of the Labour Party on this?

Osuntokun: We are in a state of anomie. When I was first told that he (Abure) had been taken away by policemen, my initial thought was that maybe he was abducted by people pretending to be policemen, because Nigeria has gotten to that stage right now. Those who arrested him didn’t even have a warrant of arrest or court order, so they were doing it illegally.

On the issue of merger, I don’t think anybody is thinking seriously about that now. Our own opinion on this is that the constitution itself should make room for independent candidacy. If we have that clause in the constitution, I’m sure Peter Obi would not have felt compelled to go and join a party before contesting for the presidency. Once you join a party, you are already automatically carrying the baggage of that party.

If you come out on your own as independent candidate and you don’t have baggage, good for you. In any case, the majority of people who voted for Obi, the members of the Obidient movement, they don’t belong to any party. That is an example of what an independent candidature can achieve.

However, the challenge is that it is quite expensive. If you don’t have the money to do it, it will be difficult. I believe what will solve part of the problems that we are having now is to have an independent candidate. Whoever does it first will likely get the support of the people of Nigeria. This is because Nigerians will tell you that they are fed up with all these political parties. If you talk of merger, every party has its objectives. When you go into the merger, then you start talking of who will become the candidate and so on.