What ought to preoccupy Tinubu now!
…….Israel, Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
By Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie
Government is a very vast business and each day, each department or Ministry in any government aims to sustain and carry out the responsibilities allotted it by the personage who set up the government. There is so much work, left for every department to undertake, that most times the vastness of responsibilities and duties are taken for granted. But it is the person who set up the government, that has the major task of creating the priorities of the government.
Depending on what those priorities are, that will determine public acceptability and legitimacy that the governed and others, will grant that government. Be it a central or localised government! It appears that is the actual position and juncture of Nigeria now, the primary preoccupation of the Government must be that acceptability and legitimacy itself, not the creation of priorities.
Sure creation of priorities is the responsibility of government, but the current UNCERTAINTY in the Nigerian polity, is the actual dictator of the priority, not that of the person who set up the government. This puerile situation is for the following reasons:
1. In the history of the country, no Presidential election victory has been as Disputed as the 2023 Presidential race
2. In spite of the confusion and uncertainty of the election itself, INEC very quickly declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu winner, dividing the country massively, rendering his legitimacy and acceptability corrosively low and elusive
3. Tinubu out of pressure to claim political courage and sagacity, began with a reckless policy, removing petrol subsidy which hiked up the cost of living and general inflation
4. Revelations of corruption in the last APC government and renewed inclination of ethnic favoritism in Tinubu’s appointments, renders the position of the Tinubu government even weaker
5. Revelations of Election Day irregularities, INEC failures and use of money to buy final victory, or gain votes, further reduced the acceptability and legitimacy of the Tinubu Government.
6. Judgement of the Presidential Election Tribunal on September 6, 2023, in favor of Tinubu, despite gross misrepresentation of facts and the election law by the Presidential Tribunal, further reduced the legitimacy and acceptability of Tinubu, thus creating a Constitutional crisis
7. Litigation over Tinubu’s education credentials from CSU Chicago, USA, where Tinubu is accused of forgery of entry and graduation certificates and fraudulent use of stolen diplomas and identity theft, distracts the government, rendering acceptability and legitimacy of the government even more worse than at the incipience of the government
8. Proof of forgery and falsification of admission requirement into CSU, and Tinubu’s non presentation of any Secondary school certificate to INEC, a critically required condition for joining the Presidential race of 2023, increased the chance of the annulment and quashing of Tinubu’s victory by INEC, and has increased the calls for his RESIGNATION, which reduces the chances of the rendering of the Judgment of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, on the appeals of the ruling of the 2023 Presidential Election Tribunal; there is a high possibility that Tinubu may be forced to RESIGN.
TINUBU MAKING MORE POLITICAL BLUNDERS THROUGH APPOINTMENTS
Amid the current calls for Tinubu to resign, the government is feverishly making more political appointments into federal offices. It smacks again of the early reckless defensive policies of the government, on petrol subsidy removal, and Tinubu’s spear-heading of the ECOWAS opposition to the military coup d’etat in neighboring Niger Republic on July 23, 2023. The irony and repeated tragedy of the appointments Tinubu has been making is the weakness and vulnerability it exposes the government and the new appointees to: what will happen if the government collapses?
All these issues further heightens and increases the constitutional crises of the country, and the abject vulnerability of the system: about 80% of those Tinubu has appointed to new critical federal offices are Yoruba, and others tainted with bribery and corruption. Arguable that “anything can happen”, because it is politics, and it may in the final analysis be, the “end” of the gambits will reward and justify the means applied to achieve them. But these stretch of policy risks have so exposed the fabric of the Nigerian political system, that there are calls now to Constitutionally Dissolve Nigeria. It does appear that, should the current uncertain trajectory persist, Tinubu may be the last President of the country, as it is known now.
HGHER PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER RISKS, RECKLESS CONDUCT FROM TINUBU ……CONCEPT OF THE LAST MAN STANDING AND THE LAST PRESIDENT OF MODERN NIGERIA
It is not and will not be out of place for Tinubu to react to the current rejection of his position as illegitimate by deciding to be “the last man standing…….. and the last President of modern Nigeria”. The political concept of the last man standing was devised by Tinubu, in the years 2000-2001, to fight off Olusegun Obasanjo, who aimed at politically removing Tinubu, as Governor of Lagos State. It was a do or die affair, which stopped short of precipitating a major political war in the South West: strapped of monthly federal money, the opportunity opened a hornets nest of bullion vans of Lagos State money, statutorily for the Lagos State government and privately for Tinubu. But for the support from his current nemesis, Atiku Abubakar, and other State Governors who opposed Obasanjo, and later paid very dearly for it, Tinubu was prepared to do anything to survive.
The streak of aggressive “defensiveness” seen in Tinubu’s early policies from May 29, 2023, evince the same character. Earlier, to become APC Presidential Candidate, Tinubu exhibited the same trait, of “me, me, me, me……”, which culminated in “emi lo kan”. In the end, Tinubu outspent all the other Presidential Aspirants combined, including the sponsored, anointed and federally funded Presidential Aspirant of the APC, and Buhari, Ahmed Lawan. It went down to the wire of, “if I don’t win, nobody else will”. That psychological model is not far or different from, “it shall be me as President or it will be nobody else…… so I will DISSOLVE NIGERIA CONSTITUTIONALLY if not me ”, that way each ethnic nationality will find fitting political entity, whose new Constitution will meet the future aspirations of its peoples, including their DESTINY as a People.
Constitutional DISSOLUTION will remove these ethnic nationalities from ascertained external ethnic DOMINATION and the imposition of a strange, foreign unacceptable RELIGION, including the excesses of ethnic competition that compels undue favoritisms, bribery and corruption, that has consumed Nigeria for more than 70-years, with no end in sight. How will this imminent political dialectic end? The next 7-weeks is pregnant, but the result and birth must take place and it is inevitable.
THE ECONOMY HAS GONE SOUTH…… NEITHER TINUBU NOR ANY ELSE CAN PULL IT BACK
From 2021, when I began the race under the PDP, to become President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023, I advocated that the price of petrol should be reduced to N75.00 Naira per liter, and the policy to do so must be defended by Government. I took the postulation to the NLC, and they barely received me. This policy at the time included pegging the exchange rate of the Naira to the US Dollar at N92.00 Naira to $1.00 US Dollar, and rehabilitating the Mallams who deal daily on forex all over Nigeria (did Government not rehabilitate Niger Delta militants, through Amnesty, and Boko Haram terrorists?).
Tinubu drove Nigeria recklessly south by removing petrol subsidy and then winged off the forex rate by a policy of seeking to streamline the official forex rate with the parallel market rates of the Naira. Yet permitting and allowing the Mallams to continue to trade daily in the streets on forex. How or where did Tinubu expect the Mallam’s profits to come from? Being street-smart in Lagos is not exactly equivalent to being street-smart on macroeconomic policies in Nigeria……what works for LASTMA in Lagos, has been shown by Tinubu not to work for the rest of Nigeria, since May 29, 2023. Nothing seems to be working in Nigeria……the more Tinubu tries or does, the less he seems to succeed.
Even calling in Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala brought no respite; the Naira-US Dollar rate has skipped to N1,070.00, and in the past 6-days, petrol has been selling in Abuja for N1,000.00 per liter, and this distorted petrol price will continue, if the queues at fuel stations continue: you can bet it will, if not in Abuja it will be somewhere else, because there is a cabal somewhere manipulating it. But have I not been proven right, and has petrol subsidy not been hideously re-introduced by Tinubu? Can he reduce the risen price of petrol? What about the forex value of the Naira and US Dollar, has Zimbabwe not become better than Nigeria?
With the increase in the price of fueling generators, Igbo technicians quickly converted petrol generators to gas usage: in less than 90-days, the price of cooking gas has risen by 52%. The NLC through Peter Ajaero, the current President, has been insisting that the National Assembly will ratify monthly minimum wage at N100,000.00-N200,000.00, (225% increase), not Tinubu’s 125% increase of N75,000.00 per month, and unlike Tinubu’s lowest paid employees only increase for 6-months, but across the board and until reviewed again by Government: and the traders and market-women are waiting at the market corners to extract two teeth from every Nigerian; and this new hyperinflation falls into the customary Xmas period when prices skyrocket. Could there have been a better period to negotiate minimum wage increase than now? Sure, if Tinubu had thought through every of the policies he has enunciated so far, beginning with removal of petrol subsidy. Is there an explanation for this level of ineptitude, and can the Tinubu team remedy it? How can the economy of Nigeria survive all this? Does Tinubu truly understand the economic and market history of Nigeria, that once prices go up, they have never come down?
WHERE WE STAND:
When the Soviet Union devoted more resources to the arms race against the West, with the US leading the charge, Moscow built satellites that hurriedly went to space, increased the range of ballistic missiles intercontinentally, without recognizing that increasing cost of living, and shortages on families’ shelves were alienating the population of its citizens, and including it’s Allies.
Sooner than expected, the Soviet Union was DISSOLVED constitutionally by Mikial Gorbachev himself, the President of the Soviet Union, because acceptability and legitimacy of the political system was no longer tenable or sustainable. When the Soviet Union was constitutionally dissolved in December 1989 – July 1991, with more than 15-new smaller republics being created, its population was double the current population of Nigeria, and its land size five times the size of Nigeria. But the military might of the country, only equaled that of the US, yet both were the only Super Powers at the time. But the Soviet Union still went down! Why will anyone think or believe that Nigeria cannot or will not go the same route?
Compared to the Soviet Union, the political standing of Nigeria today, is worse than where the Soviet Union was when it was politically and CONSTITUTIONALLY DISSOLVED, from December 1989 till July 1991, when the last of the new 15-republics raised its flag.
Compared to China, in the same period, which continued to peg the exchange rate of the RMB, rejecting market forces concepts, floating the exchange rate, but insisting on the use of locally made goods and products, taking no foreign loans, saving up on hard earned foreign currencies, and exporting locally made goods and products cheaply to “capture” others’ foreign markets.
In 1989 China began to turn to capitalism to augment socialism, but still closed its economy to invasion and excessive dependence on imported goods and products. India did the same, and China has superseded both India and Russia, and now the only military and economic Super Power competing with the US, yet still rejecting market force determined forex exchange rate or the forex float rate system, or the import of competitive goods manufactured externally, against goods made by its local industries.
Tinubu’s new CBN, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Dr. Oluyemi Micheal Cardoso and the CBN Governing Board, after ten days of being named, has lifted restrictions on 43-items to be imported now into Nigeria, lavishly as wished, including rice, toothpick, plywood, steel plates and cement. With the promise by Cardoso of new liquidity, meaning extra US Dollars. Where will the new US Dollars come from? Borrowed, newly sought World Bank loan of $1.56 Billion US Dollars, meanwhile interest currently paid on Nigeria’s outstanding loans is 75% of the annual 2023 budget, so why borrow more? Will the importers and traders buy the US Dollars at N1,070.00 Naira per $1.00 US Dollar and sell a bag of imported 50-kg rice at N100,000.00? This government is naive and will push the economy into deeper worse zones.
Did Buhari in 2021 not inform Nigerians that locally produced rice would sustain the population, and then banned the importation of rice? Did the Naira-US Dollar situation improve? Why liberate forex supply again, and the importation of rice, and toothpick, plywood etc with all the wood and timber being cut in the huge forests of Nigeria’s south? Same with cement……did Dangote and BUA not commit only 2-weeks ago, to ensuring export of Nigerian made cement, and reduction of cement bags prices to N2,500.00-N3,500.00? Did Tinubu not welcome Aliko Dangote and Abdul Samar Rabui, GMD of Dangote Group, and BUA respectively, with superfluous news of reduction of the prices of cement?
Where is this new woeful economic information leading Nigeria to? Is it not clear that Tinubu’s government is inept, dishonest and does not mean well for the economy, and the population? It is the economy that is confronting Tinubu so harshly, and he appears to be unmindful of it.
OTHER ISSUES:
Constitutional politics and the legalism of legitimacy of Tinubu’s government has been a high distraction for the team, APC and Tinubu himself. Uncertainty and distractions never go hand in hand, they go parallel and the one defeats the other. Tinubu has to be serious at this time, because Nigeria is still on Constitutional free-fall, and even favorable judicial or Supreme Court rulings do not confer legitimacy or guarantee acceptability of a government, by the population. He needs to dedicate himself to the right avenue for the country.
Since 2001, (22-years ago), the pleas to RESTRUCTURE NIGERIA, by Chief Anthony Enahoro and others, fell on the deaf ears of the political, business and traditional elite of the North, and Obasanjo; then by 2014, Goodluck Jonathan wasted the recommended articles and talents of the Constitutional Conference he set up, and postponed to implement the recommendations to RESTRUCTURE NIGERIA until after or if he won the election of 2015.
Tragically and ironically, Tinubu ensured that opportunity was transferred to Buhari for whom Nigeria needs to be preserved for future ethnic Fulani-Islamic DOMINATION. See where Nigeria is today, ruined economically and totally castrated security-wise, and Constitutionally doomed. Though still less than 150-days of being sworn-in, Tinubu must dedicate his remaining energy and time to how history and posterity will levy his time over the governance of this entity. All the ethnic nationalities that were amalgamated 108-years ago to form the country, are yearning to be liberated from the suffocation: ethnic and religious competition breed favoritism, bribery and corruption in Nigeria. It will get worse, and indeed it is impossible to name who can solve Nigeria’s myriad constitutional, social, economic and security problems, or what can eclipse favoritism, bribery and corruption in the country. What about kparakpo-ism (parapo-ism in Yoruba)?
The imbalance that has plagued the Nigerian Constitutions of 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1979, and 1999 arise from ethnic and religious attributes of the multi ethnic features of the country: if these obtuse provisos causing imbalances in Nigeria, are factored in and rewritten by smaller republics as part of their new Constitutions, the chances of constitutional success will increase, but in this big current country and milieu, it has capped to zero. Indeed, it is getting worse and worse.
It has not worked and things are not working in Nigeria! Tinubu is not aware, being locked out in Aso Rock, on the comments of the official appointments he has been making. The appointments are already being called Tinubu’s Oduduwa Aso Rock Republic, because 75% of the staffing are Yorubas, of the Southwest and North Central. The North is ready, should Tinubu depart prematurely, because of rejection, illegitimacy and non acceptability, another Northerner is already in the wings, and will replace him and create another Northern based government, surely worse than his or his predecessor’s. History will write you better, if you, Tinubu, constitutionally DISSOLVE NIGERIA!
GOODLUCK JONATHAN’S 2015
To harbor the type and level of regret of Goodluck Jonathan, in the number of people kidnapped, murdered, ransomed and killed extra-judicially in Nigeria, due to the struggle against constitutional imbalances in Nigeria, you should be trajected to a clear more direction, summary Constitutional Dissolution. ECOWAS Treaty of 1973, and it’s Protocols will preserve free movement of people, amity, cultural affinity, inter-marriages, fraternity and civility currently in Nigeria and the West Africa region: 50-years of ECOWAS has and will continue to ensure that Igbos who live and work in Lagos, will not be harassed and their properties threatened at the elections because they will no longer vote.
Igbos in Mali, Togo, Ghana,Cote D’Voire, Senegal, BeninR etc do they vote? No, yet they contribute immensely to the growth and development of these brotherly countries. After March 25, 2023, will Igbos ever vote again in Lagos, and who will permit that? Posterity is a date, dedicated to each individual! We must prepare for it and interpret it, each according to their understanding! Tinubu, elevate yours now!
ISREAL, HAMAS AND THE PALESTINIANS: OCTOBER 6, 2023
The repetition of tragedy is ever present in war, not minding who is propagating it or prosecuting it. Unless there is astute effort, war is always and ever will be a cyclical phenomenon. But if there is relentless work, studiously hard, the tragic ugly circle of war can be broken. That is what confronts Isreal, Hamas and the ordinary Palestinians who live now in Gaza. To make this peace, is vital and it also must be speedy.
I recall very vividly, living in Los Angeles, on the morning of September 11, 2001, seeing the huge passenger aero planes plunging into two skyscrapers in Manhattan, New York, and suites of the Pentagon, further towards Washington DC: my mind raced and sank, and I muttered, “America is at war”. It was the same feeling I had on the evening of Saturday October 6, 2023, and seeing images of Israeli citizens running from gun-wielding Hamas soldiers, and being shot and killed at very close range. It was genocidal and utterly reprehensible, unarmed women, children and the elderly. As it was shocking, so was the perplexity and complications. It was truly tragic to see the innocent Israeli party goers who were early victims, who were pursued and gunned down; Israeli children, women and the elderly, shot, killed, kidnapped and taken as hostages and prisoners for ransom. The shock and confusion on the level of violence was historic, Isreal had never suffered this much civilian deaths and casualties. What are the consequences, and what will be the end-game? Every true militarist plans for the execution of a war, convinced of victory, then begins to plan how to win the peace. Post Israel’s rubbling aerial strifes, and massive ground and just naval attacks, what’s next? How will the PEACE be won? How will this circle of repetitive violence and genocide be stopped?
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, TERROR VIOLENCE OF HAMAS, AND PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS
Without doubt, there are three components in the current Gaza quagmire, and not fully factoring in any of the three, means even greater tragedy in the future. The primary root of the Palestinian Problem is the issue of a negotiated settlement that will resolve the impasse on the Occupied territories. Are the Israelis prepared to negotiate to resolve this problem? In pushing to punish, exterminate and eliminate Hamas for the atrocities of October 6, 2023, are there any guarantees that it will not lead to seizure of Gaza, and other Palestinian territories by Israel? The experience of the UN dealing with the Israeli government over new Jewish settlements, and the current continuation of the occupation of Gaza, further complicates the entire situation. It will exacerbate the terrorism and insecurity of entire region. While the Abraham Agreement has benefited the Israeli State, by expanding diplomatic relations with peripheral Arab governments, the Palestinian authorities and peoples see it as further oppression and denigration of their Cause as the Palestinian peoples. Eliminating Hamas will only give rise to a new terror platform, and if the current elimination is more invidious, the rise of a new terror group will be a full repetition of the circle of violence. After 2014, and the depth of war with Hamas then, see how worse it has gotten dealing with the battles and horrors of the same Hamas, on October 6, 2023, including the aftermath of that day. Indeed the terrorism against Israel, can we wish away the horrors of Palestinians who are not Hamas members, the children, women, aged and other disadvantaged persons?
THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE WEST, INVIDIOUSNESS OF IRAN AND HEZBOLLAH
It has been easy for Israel to get the empathy of the US, UK and EU, including ready massive military and diplomatic assistance ( 2-US aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea close to current zones of conflict). Same obligations are owed the Palestinian peoples, otherwise it would be meaningless in resolving the entire problems of the Arab – Israeli conundrum. Not to see how all these play into the hands of Iran, and Hezbollah is to blindfold and pretend that the horrors will not be expanded or exported. Even when the Nazis over a long period of time exterminated Jews, at the end of the World War II, the West worked to prevent further injustices that gave rise to Nazism, through constitutional, structural and economic aid, the Marshall Plan.
Support for Israel now must ensure that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah will no longer be able to exploit the weaknesses of the oppression that the Palestinians allude to in any justifications of the existence or necessity for groups such as Hamas. This must be the actual gains of the sacrifices of both the Israelis slain in this episode, and those of innocent Palestinians caught in the middle of the war. The West must insist now and ensure the achievement of this goal as they agree to expand the goal of the pursuit and destruction of Hamas. Washington DC in shuttling to the capitals of the region will be the increasingly confronted with this, and so Arab acceptance and support of the goals of the West must extricate the prolongation of the start of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, and the scaling down of the scope of the offensive.
A clear time table for beginning a new wider diplomatic effort to solve these long intractable problems of Palestine, must be the goal of the EU and UK, especially the US, in order that the peace will be won. The war in Ukraine has been eclipsed by the resurgence of atrocities in Gaza and the Middle East, the immediate status of both wars should not overshadow either. To use this tragic period to dispossess Palestinians of more land in Gaza, or the West Bank will not be a solution even in the medium term: more than 50% of this displaced population will use the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Europe, and even through Mexico to the USA.
The Israeli Government must recognize the dangers involved in the belief that only the insurance of its security will take care of the problem. It will definitely not. The West, especially the US must redirect and redefine the goals that Israel must pursue in the short term, as a plus for all humanity.
Signed:
Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie
Chairman-Convener
NACOPPIN NIGERIA 2023
