OPINION: 100 days of Rehoboam

Tomorrow, or so, will be 100 days since the installation of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President of Nigeria. He has been like that proverbial bird that perched on a tree branch-the tree branch has remained unsettled and the bird can’t stop dancing tounheard sounds. Since his inauguration on May 29, exacerbated hopelessness has been the lot of Nigerians and Tinubu himself can only pretend to have had peace of mind. If he has had the presence and prescience of mind,he would not have been enmeshed in serial fumblingfrom one policy summersault to anotherfrom the removal of the so-called petrol subsidy, foreign exchange unification, student loan andproposed payment of N8,000 per month for six months to a specified number of poor Nigerian families, andplanning to lead the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] to war on Niger Republic. The presidential guard had on July 26 removed and detained President Mohamed Bazoum whose declaration as the winner of an election two years earlier had beendodgy. Similar or even worse questions are currently been asked of the declaration of Tinubu as President of Nigeria and even his qualification for the office.

In Igbo Tinubu is a classical case of akwu rere ere n’ikwopuru epu which transliteration in English language will roughly read:rotten palm fruits being pounded inside a decayed mortar. The finished product is better left to the imagination. Let us briefly return to the comparison of 100 days of Tinubu’s reign in Nigeria to the accession to power of King Rehoboam in the Holy Bible. Rehoboam was the son of King Solomon and the grand son of King David. He ruled one part [Judah] for seventeen years [931-913 BC]. The account was that Solomon, Rehoboam’s father had turned away from God, and God told Solomon that He would tear the kingdom from him yet leave him one tribe. God also promised, for the sake of David, not to tear the kingdom away during Solomon’s lifetime but during that of his son. So shortly after Rehoboam became king, a rebellion placed the ten northern tribes under the rule Jeroboam [a servant of Solomon who was in charge of forced labour] and left Rehoboam with his own tribe [Judah] and the tribe of Benjamin. Jeroboam was in exile in Egypt when Rehoboam was to be installed as king. But the people sent for him and then dispatchedhimas an emissary to the new king toplead with him to lighten the work burden imposed on them by his father.

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The older advisers pleaded with Rehoboam to heed the cryof the people and lighten the heavy load of labour and taxes that Solomon had laid on them but the younger elements who had grown up with the new king counselled otherwise. He took the counsel of his mates.The consequences of the actions of the new and rash King Rehoboam are well documented in the chronicles of the kings of Israel as recorded in the Holy Bible’s book of 1 Kings.

In Tinubu’s rash and irrational decisions in the first daysand weeks of his reign, he appears to have borrowed a leaf from from the wicked and unthinking King Rehoboam. But Tinubu stands out in two distinct areas from Rehoboam-he is neither young nor inexperienced haven been the governor of one of Nigeria’s complex states, Lagos [1999-2007], and he took counsel from nobody. Not from old advisers nor from his mates-neither primary nor secondary school mates. In the removal of the so-called petrol subsidy, he casually claimed that he was ‘possessed of courage’ during his inauguration speech to proclaim that ‘petrol subsidy is gone’.

The same ‘courage’ may have ‘possessed’ him in his obviously now miserably failed policy of currency rates unification. If we accept the prescriptions of the ‘infallible’ Bretton Woods institutions-the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the policies may not be said to be inherently bad, but their proclamations and implementations have not been attended with fore-thought and rigour. But a country in Asia,Malaysia,had once proven that the prescriptions of the IMF were not sacred.

It chose its own part to economic recovery in the wake of the 1997 Asian crisis and made a huge success of it. In 2004 Ross P. Buckly and Sarala M. Fitzgerald in “An Assessment of Malaysia’s Response To The IMF During The Asian Economic Crisis” wrote that Malaysiawas the only country severely affected by the 1997 Asian economic crisis that declined to adopt an IMF programme. The authors assessed the country’s decision in terms of principle, and of the outcomes of the unorthodox policies Malaysia implemented and concluded that Malaysia recovered ‘at least as quickly as any country that implemented [the] IMF policies and gained a number of significant advantages by charting its own course out of the crisis. [So] saying no to the IMF was right for Malaysia’. The authors concluded that ‘with the benefit of hindsight’, their findings suggested that Malaysia’s choice was demonstrably right for it in terms of principle and of pragmatism.

Malaysia’s policies saw it recover from the crisis at least as fast as countries that implemented IMF policies. The poor in Malaysia are significantly better off today than they would have been under IMF policies and Malaysia has benefited, in a number of other ways, from having charted its own course through the crisis’. The lessonsto learn from what transpired included whether the IMF’s one size fits all is workable in all situations: the appropriateness of IMF policies for recipientcountry, how does the acceptance of IMF prescriptions enhance any country’s sovereignty and democracy, do they promote self determination, and help to avoid moral hazard. On the other hand, Nigeria in the 1980s adopted the IMF prescriptions and introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme [SAP], doubled down on the removal of so-called subsidies from petroleum products and embarked on a massive and rapid Naira devaluation under Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and here we are with no end in sight to the woes of Nigeria and the misery of Nigerians. We havesince compromised our sovereignty, lost the will for self determination and self worth. Nigeria’s situation has been worsened by the proclivity of the extant regime to bend over backwards to please foreign governments and their financial institutions. President Tinubu who parades a suspect mandate grovels and seeks validation from everywhere. He feels accepted when the IMF, the World Bank, Western Europe, Bloomberg wire serviceand the United States praise his economic policies that have inflicted enormous pains on Nigerians and have almost brought the country to itsknees. The man who was sold to Nigerians as the most prepared for the presidency has turned out to lack creativity, originality and empathy.

In addition to his unthinking removal of the so-called petrol subsidy and the unification of the exchange rates, Tinubu hurriedly drew a red line when Niger’s military ousted their president. Now he is scrambling to save face while climbing downfrom his high horse. The sabré rattling about invading the Republic of Niger to return President Bazoum to power has fizzledout. His collaborators in Senegal,Ivory Coastand elsewhere in the sub region have gone mute. These are presidents who are well known to have overthrown their countries’ constitutions in other to cling onto power for limitless terms. Presidents for life dot the African political space from Cameroon’s Paul Biya [40 years] to Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo [43 years], Republic of Congo’s Denis Sassou Ngueso [38 years], Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni [36 years], Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki [29years], among other ancestors.Like Tinubu, they are all in their 70s.

Neighbouring Togo is a ‘democratic’ dynasty of the Eyadema family just like Gabon’s Bongosuntil last week. These are the presidents that Tinubu associates within ECOWAS and the African Union [AU] in determining which country is a democracy on the continent. SHAME. The Holy Bible forbids affliction arising a second time. Can Nigeria afford another affliction soon after Buhari?

AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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