*”Fish out those behind the leakage of your aborted Qatar business trip now or have your government brought down. They are the enemies within…”
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President Tinubu is too nice, and niceness is a weakness in Nigeria’s politics. Nigeria is a fairly brutal country, and on the scale with niceness on the left end and brutality on the right end, you may not want to move all the way to the right, like Abacha, but you also do not want to be too close to the left. You want to be somewhere in the middle, but tilting to the right, like Obasanjo.
Whoever leaked that Qatar note verbale should be fished out, sacked, and prosecuted for violating the Official Secrets Act, as well as for economic and political sabotage. However, if you cannot fish out the specific individual or individuals, then you make a scapegoat of those in charge of the foreign affairs ministry.
Sack the minister in charge of that ministry. Then, remove the civil servant who is the Permanent Secretary and reassign him to a less desirable ministry. Then, demote the Director in charge of the department from where the leak occurred.
That will send a powerful signal to other ministers and permanent secretaries, who will sit up. Tinubu needs to run a short shrift. An aje butter cannot last as Nigeria’s President. We are not that type of country.
If the President does not ensure that heads roll over this embarrassment to his administration, he will project weakness, and his own head may roll. This is Nigeria. There are too many people in the system whose loyalty is to opposing political parties and actors. Some want Nigeria to secede and cannot say it publicly, but will take action against the government to see their pipe desire come true. These are men skilled in brinkmanship. To them, politics is a zero-sum game, and they are determined to undermine Nigeria to get at the President.
Tinubu must understand that, as Reagan said, he will only achieve peace between now and 2027 through projecting strength. Too much warmth, and he will not be respected. Too much strength, and he will be feared too much. He must project 35% warmth and 65% strength. Those in his government must have a healthy fear of him. Anything short of that is unhealthy for him.
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