President Bola Tinubu reminds me of Clint Eastwood’s role in the Italian 1966 epic spaghetti “The “good, the bad and the ugly”.
The hunting expedition that brings two men together in an uncomfortable alliance while looking for a buried treasure. In their moves they have to contend with an outlaw, a wanted man.
Tinubu, Nasir El-Rufai, Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, the public fund looters, the bandits, the politicians of different ideologies, the dollar speculators, the Obidients , the Atikulooters, the Batists, the Civil Society Organisations and the Human Rights Activists. These are the casts before and during this movie.
The toughest of them all is Tinubu, the, the loudest is Obi and the angriest is Atiku.
The smartest of them all is El-Rufai who opted out shortly after the election. The drama he faced at the National Assembly was a gameplan so as not to participate in this government, having seen the handwriting on the wall that it would not be easy if Tinubu would go ahead to make these strong policies.
El-Rufai is a close ally of former Emir of Kano, Sanusi whom economic template is being used to run this present government.
The statement by the present Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero that the first lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, should tell her husband that Nigerians are suffering is more political than advocacy.
In this Tinubu’s political expedition, Mr. President has mingled with those that never shared his ideology but who are only playing along in the search for the looted, stolen and buried fortune of this country.
Those I will call the outlaws, whose ideas of governance is to feed their stomachs and expand their empires in the guise of solving the problems at hand.
I have likened Nigeria’s situation to the good, the bad and the ugly and Tinubu as the main character. Will he eventually emerge as the hero of this movie? Time will tell.
Watching movie and listening to music can help our worldview more than reading letters. Movie summaries a whole book and takes away all the sensationalism and embellishments we read today on the pages of newspapers.
It queries our thoughts instantly and makes mess of some so called Civil Society Organisations and Human Rights Activists who only memorise datas to sensationalise their audiences.
I watch intently how Tinubu will survive many of the arrows being shot at him now, having witnessed how he rose above his many haters and frenemies to become the president and hero of the last general elections.
I’m sitting down to see the new movie that is playing out now. Tinubu as the main character, Obidients as the badmen, Atikulates as the gangsters and the masses as the wailers. In facts, new traitors are coming on board.
I and many others have a role too, to be an advocate of good governance by postulating little ideas and agendas on how we can go about these problems without being the mouthpiece of the government.
I watched how the movie started and how Tinubu began the process of reformation with the removal of oil subsidy and how he floated the Naira and refused to subsidise the dollars anymore. To him, the performance of Naira and dollars should be determined by the market forces.
I also watched how he came up with the idea of palliative, how corruption had crept in and the implementation had failed woefully and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Beta Edu was sacked.
I’m watching now, how the subsidy removal is raising the fuel pump price almost every week from over N200 to about N630 per litre and how floating of Naira is sinking our FOREX economy with a dollar now selling between N1300 and N1500.
I’m watching how the prices of foods and cements are rising everyday.
In this movie are pessimists who will never recommend new approach to solve any economic problem but will always echo the rising dollar and cost of fuel.
They echo the rising prices of foods in the market. They have their own role. They are the wailers.
Unlike many of them, I watch the movie with optimism that the hero won’t die. If he does, it brings an end to the movie.
Nigeria will not go down if this government can re-strategise. It is not a crime to make a mistake. Subsidy removal is good but the implementation of the palliative to cushion the effect on the masses is uncivilised.
In a chat with a friend who stays abroad, he said that the developed economies do give palliative just as Nigeria is trying to do but this government has failed to create an automation that will make it work perfectly without corruption.
According to him, there are foods and other stuff that the government of Canada has subsidised but the government doesn’t force a price on the sellers.
There is a control on how you buy and sell and for every buyer that purchases a subsidised item, he or she gets the subsidised amount in a week or two weeks via a bank alert from the government.
I could remember that the last transportation palliative by the Federal Government during the Yuletide was done haphazardly. It was done manually and it allowed corruption.
This government must create a system, automated procedure, using the citizens database to process subsidy alongside the food we buy, the transport we take, the bill we incurred without using a human intermediary but machine.
For Tinubu to survive among the bad, the good and the ugly, he must be ready to fight dirty just as Eastwood did in the epic movie.
To reform this economy and breathe relief to the suffering masses; to find the stolen treasure of this country and recover it from dollar speculators, food hoarders and economic saboteurs, Tinubu’s shots must always hit the target like that of Eastwood.
By Kunle Awosiyan
