LAST week’s call by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on President Muhammadu Buhari to summon a conference of eggheads to help him chart ways out of our current economic woes was more loaded than met the ordinary eyes. It was a message garbed with uncaccustomed subtlety from Soyinka, who is usually finger-in-your-eye with words when addressing what he perceives as lapses in a regime he does not fancy.
Buhari and Soyinka Yes, indeed, the President Muhammadu Buhari All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government is full of Soyinka’s friends, including a former governor of an oil-rich state whose traducer successor alleged he spent N80 million on the respected professor’s 80th birthday bash (which the former governor pooh-poohed). We all vividly still remember that Prof Soyinka cheered the then opposition APC federal lawmakers on in 2014 when they climbed the gates of the National Assembly in Abuja to nip the possible impeachment of Speaker Waziri Tambuwal after being locked out by the security agencies.
He often engaged former President Goodluck Jonathan, his wife, Dame Patience, and spokesmen of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Federal Government in open, “kill-and-bury” verbal exchanges. This, indeed, is the very first time in the history of this country that Prof. Soyinka is portraying the sheerest of bonhomie towards a sitting Federal Government. He went to prison for upbraiding the General Yakubu Gowon regime for the atrocities against the ordinary people in the breakaway Republic of Biafra during the civil war.
He went on exile as part of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO’s) struggle against the regime of General Sani Abacha, and for the revalidation of the annulled June 12 presidential election of 1993 won by Chief Moshood Abiola. He publicly sparred with General Olusegun Obasanjo in the two periods that Obasanjo, his kinsman from the same Abeokuta, occupied the presidential office. Therefore, this new and strange bedfellowship between Soyinka and a government in power is totally out of kilter with his tradition. Obviously, the Buhari presidential dispensation is Soyinka’s dream government. Surely, if the situation were different, rather than this unnerving diplomatese, Soyinka would have poured vitriol. The way I see it, this call for a conference to help Buhari find the antidote for the economic situation after nine months in power simply means he thinks the President has no answers of his own. In fact, people have gone so far as to use the word: “clueless” to describe Buhari’s lack of economic direction.
The Economist of London had termed former President Jonathan an “ineffectual buffoon”. The Nigerian writer widely accused of being the brain behind that barefaced insult has just been appointed as Buhari’s fourth media aide. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. Nine months of rudderless economic floating, the Financial Times of the same London summarised “Buharinomics” as “the height of foolishness” arguing that its plan to raise $25 billion dollars from private and public sources to avoid the looming recession might actually plunge Nigeria into a Venezuela-like economic crisis.
Now, what would the paper say about the oddities in Buhari’s first budget to the National Assembly, which contains so many hilarious items, the most prepostrous of which was the over N22 million set aside for “rent for Aso Villa”! Former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida built Aso Villa. Is he the “landlord” collecting the “rent” for Aso Villa, our own White House? I am waiting to hear what The Economist of London, which had openly endorsed the Buhari candidacy, will say after Professor Soyinka’s subtle friendly fire. Even Professor Pat Utomi, who had been an ardent admirer of the President when he assumed power, has now gone red in the face at the total lack of space for economists in the Buhari presidency. It is now a trite observation to say that Buhari and his party were not ready for governance. They still are not, even now. While the President is slurping the splendours of the Presidency junketing from coast to coast, pole to pole, his party men and women are scrambling for posts being vacated by Jonathan’s employees. Buhari’s idea of running the country has obviously not changed from the template of 32 years ago when he first came: fight corruption and send looters to jail.
Unfortunately, he no longer has the benefit of a Deputy he trusts enough to effectively govern while he flies around. In 1984, he had Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon, whom he allowed to run the successful War Against Indiscipline (WAI). That appeared to be the only real achievement of that regime in its 20 months lifespan. For some reasons known to Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has not been made the Tunde Idiagbon of our time. We sometimes don’t even remember he is there. Unfortunately, the man who might have anchored the Buhari Presidency for him (Mallam Nasir El Rufai) is the Governor of Kaduna State, with his hands full after being threatened with witchcraft by beggars he intended to remove from the streets.
Instead, the President has created some super-ministers and given them huge sums of money to go and do their own magic. Mallam Adamu Adamu, who is running the Education Ministry with the N370 billion allocation in the controversial budget, is using APC’s broom to sweep away Vice-chancellors of universities built by Jonathan and loading them with (mainly) people from his section of the country. Babatunde Fashola, the blue-eyed Lagos wonderboy is given N433.4 billion to work miracles in the Power, Works and Hosuing sectors, while Rotimi Amaechi, the President’s Port Harcourt discovery, is given N216 billion to turnaround the Transportation sector. When will the budget be ready for the spending spree to start? I don’t agree with Prof. Soyinka that we need an emergency conference. There is nothing about the economic challenge we are facing which a visionary regime cannot tackle if they want to. Buhari should stop chasing shadows abroad and sit down to fix the economy as he promised at the campaigns. We are watching.
VANGUARD
END
Be the first to comment