Amidst the numerous security and economic challenges facing Nigeria, including terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and most recently, a shortage of foreign currency, it is imperative that the Tinubu administration takes immediate action to counter these trends. In a previous article, on security, I proposed the use of CCTV cameras, artificial intelligence, a proactive Police Force and drones to monitor areas with high criminal activities, a suggestion that I will not delve into further here. Instead, I believe it is also crucial at this point to address the front-burner economic situation that our nation is currently grappling with.

This task of proffering solutions to the myriad of economic challenges of Nigeria, especially the unprecedented devaluation of the Naira cannot be shouldered solely by government officials; it requires the expertise and knowledge of experienced technocrats and economic experts, working in consonance with government. Therefore, I propose the establishment of a Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC), Co-Chaired by the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (who will still maintain his autonomy), that will analyze and align the government's Fiscal and Monetary Policies, similar to the Assets and Liabilities Committee (ALCO) of a well-managed bank. The PEAC should comprise members from both the government and private sector, including the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Minister of Finance & the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Minister of Budget and Planning, Minister of Industry, Trade & Investment, Minister of Interior, CEOs of about three of the Tier 1 banks in the country, the Director General of the Manufacturers Association, reputable economists, and a few respected ex-bankers.

Furthermore, it is important to diversify the country’s sources of national revenue beyond crude oil. While we work towards this long-term goal, we must also prioritize immediate structural reforms to our economy. It is evident that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has consistently fallen short of its OPEC quota, severely impacting the amount of dollars accruing to the Federation Account and causing the Naira's unprecedented decline. The now privatized NNPCL, must now wean itself and shake off its old ways of running what ought to be a profitable going concern business.

Consequently, I recommend the formation of a Presidential Advisory Council on Energy (PACE), chaired by the Minister of Petroleum Resources and comprising the Special Adviser of the president on Energy, Group Managing Director of the NNPCL, the CEOs of the top three indigenous energy companies, three former reputable top executives of the NNPC and top Nigerian executives of the International Oil Companies (IOC).

In order to address the seeming free fall of the Naira against all foreign currencies, it is essential for Nigeria to increase its crude oil production, while also conducting a thorough analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of our continued membership in OPEC. We must explore alternative options, such as bilateral cooperation and agreements, to determine if they offer greater advantages, than continued membership of OPEC.

To reverse the worsening economic situation, we must think creatively and step outside the confines of conventional approaches. Additionally, the government must seriously consider reducing the size of the bureaucracy and combat the widespread corruption that plagues our country. Existing stringent punishments for corruption must be enforced, and the government must lead by example in implementing a belt-tightening strategy for the nation's economic recovery.

We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand like ostriches, ignoring the suffering of the Nigerian people. The time to act is now, before the dire consequences of an increasingly disgruntled citizenry become a reality. While we acknowledge that the current government inherited a financially depleted nation, the grace period will soon come to an end. As human memory is short, many Nigerians seem to have forgotten the origins of their hardships; all they desire now, is economic restoration. Even the wealthy are now feeling the pain.

The   United States presidential election in November is looking more like a referendum. Though intended as a democratic ritual, it could end up as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. That at least is what the rhetoric and track record of the two most likely  contenders now suggests. With his resounding victory in both the Iowa and New Hampshire caucus primaries, Mr. Donald Trump is galloping towards clinching the Republican nomination. Both Wall Street and Main Street America have in recent times been gripped by the trepidation that a return to the Trump nightmare is well within the realm of possibility come November.

On the other hand, an unchallenged Mr. Joe Biden is the undisputed choice of the Democrats. It is not just a disparity in partisan alignments that is tilting the election towards a referendum. It is the untidy manners and track record of Mr. Trump that is upsetting democracy’s apple cart in the place where it matters most. In the process, democracy in America seems to be on trial with the menacing silhouette of a home grown autocrat in the morror.

Mr. Biden has consistently presented as the candidate out to defend and protect classical American democracy. Somehow, the aggressive comeback campaign of Donald Trump has projected democracy and its very survival as the central issue of this campaign season. Ordinarily, Biden and Trump should have been dueling over abortion, the crisis at the border, unemployment figures, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the like. Biden should have been busy defending his policies and programmes in the last three years. But the re-emergence of a bullish Donald Trump has more or less made Mr. Biden the candidate of Democracy and no more. In the last campaign season, Trump gave Mr. Biden Covid-19 as a campaign gift and invariably lost the election to mostly on that account. Against a rampaging bull of a belligerent and autocratic Trump, Biden has no choice than to dig into the trenches as the mortal defender of democracy and the liberal heritage.

As things look now, Biden  wants to protect and preserve American democracy as we have come to know it. The rule of law, respect for individual rights, diversity driven by the understanding of America as a nation of immigrants, belief in the sanctity of the ballot as the determinant of who rules America, the requirement for decency as the unwritten code of conduct of those who must rule the free world and, above all, the projection of American democracy as a beacon to the rest of the democratic world. Implicit in the ritual of America’s democratic election every four years is the understanding that each election renews hope in democracy and strengthens democracy as a universal aspiration that holds out a promise for the free world. Somehow, Joe Biden has come to be the personification of these values and aspirations as well as an inspiration to all those who hold America tacitly responsible for the survival of global democracy and the enlargement of the coast of freedom all over the world.

Mr. Biden’s strengths as a symbol of democracy are ironically embedded in his perceived weaknesses as a person. He is not a demagogue. He is not necessarily a charismatic orator nor an electrifying presence. But he is a reassuring grandpa figure, the adult in the room as he was indeed in the Obama White House. His calming composure and attention to details is compounded by his long familiarity and multiple roles in the history of American democracy and the highpoints of America’s exploits on behalf of democracy around the world. If indeed America needed am embodiment of information and experience on the challenges and triumphs of democracy around the world, Mr. Joe Biden provides a ready historical centerpiece. 

However, many fear that Mr. Biden has not been sufficiently reassuring as a defender of democracy in terms of his performance on the job. The essence of democracy is ultimately in the ability of an elected sovereign to deliver on the expectations of a specific electorate. Mr. Biden is sometimes accused of the weakness that Mr. Trump frequently accuses him of. This can only be in the sense that his confrontation of autocrats has not been quite surefooted. He has largely ignored the baby tyrant in North Korea, been less than bullish in his psychological duels with Mr. Putin and has not quite campaigned openly against Mr. Trump’s anti democratic trail in America itself. He has allowed Mr. Trump to monopolize the use of fear rhetoric frighten ordinary Americans. In addition,  a good deal of the economic recovery under Mr. Biden in the last three years has been rather tepid and reversible.

On the contrary, Mr. Donald Trump has become etched in the imagination of Americans and the democratic world as something of an enfant terrible of deviant democracy. Mr. Trump’s initial emergence was greeted with some excitement as a refreshing departure. A Manhattan business man was heading for Washington to infuse the can do ethos of American capitalism into the boring rigidity of Washington’s politics of  same old correctness. At that point, Trump was an embodiment of the American dream and dictum of “In Gold We Trust” was emerging as president. The assumption was that the pursuit of happiness through hard work and the building of wealth would lead to the spread of prosperity for all hard working Americans through the example of a different type of President. After all, Trump was reputed to have built his humongous wealth and prosperity through hard work and entrepreneurial bravado. No one knew what a Manhattan real estate entrepreneur would make of the White House. But the risk fitted into the adventure prone American mass psychology. “Sure, why not?, was the refrain in bars, restaurants and subways.

Mr. Trump looked at Washington and saw mostly a political swamp that needed to be drained. And he assigned himself the task. Between the White House and the Capitol in Washington, there is a cultural assumption that the politics of American democracy is a cultural ecosystem in and of itself. Washington has its meta language, its traditions, its conventions, codes and manners. Mr. Trump was aware of the outlines of this political ecosystem but said he was determine d to replace same old Washington with a new spirit. But he had no name for his new system nor had he thought it through in any systematic way. He was later to come face to face with it in a historic collision that left a political and physical carnage. By the end of his turbulent and chaotic first term,  America was a junk yard of its former self and no where near the threshold of a new republic.

His first catastrophic tenure ended up enthroning  an American version of illiberal democracy. To a large extent, he came to embody the antithesis and corollary of classical American democracy. Mr. Donald Trump was stubbornly recalcitrant, unrepentantly rebellious and unrelentingly bullish in his affront of the best traditions of democracy. He constantly sought to bulldoze his views through Congress, adopted abuse and insult as his standard political language. He posited the demagogue and thug as the archetypal leader, a model from the authoritarian play book.

In his choice of leadership models around the world, Mr. Trump consistently showed a clear preference and open admiration for the worst autocrats and dictators. His chosen models have been Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jiping of China, Kim Jung Un of North Korea, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Tayeb Erdogan of Turkey. Against these authoritarian models, he has excoriated the past leaders of his own country like Barrack Obama, George Bush Jr. and the Clintons. He cherished and admired the traditions and habits of dictators including reckless abuses of human rights. He openly admired elaborate parades and open displays of military power like those in Moscow’s Red Square and imperial France.

Most leaders who crave a second shot at power usually show signs of some repentance or maturation in their intervening period outside power. Not for Donald Trump. It would instead seem that the last three years have only served to reveal, through the American judicial system, the real tragic essence of the identity of Donald J. Trump. He has faced investigations for storing classified official documents in the bathrooms of his Florida Maralago mansion. He has faced countless judicial indictments over his role in the January 6th mob invasion of the Capitol. He has been indicted for lying abut the net worth of is businesses. He has been variously indicted for business campaign funds  in payments for the services of porn artists and for defaming and harassing numerous women. His serial indictments for electoral offences in a number of states are on record just as some states supreme courts have ruled him out of the ballot in their states.  The vast majority of lawyers who staked their reputation and professional careers to defend or associate with Trump have ended up in jail themselves. Only Trump, courtesy of the elastic immunity of his office as a former President is still walking free but vastly injured and deformed. Yet, America’s rule of law provisions and strict judicial codes have not yet established anything that could possibly stop Donald Trump from standing in the November elections as the candidate of the Republic party.  The man remains fit to run for as long as he is not yet in prison uniform.

Yet there is an undeniable level of populism that has trailed Donald Trump ever since his chaotic first tenure ended. For a president who was impeached twice by the House of Representatives and only saved by the Republican Senate majority, his political base remains strong. It is a base of the vast majority who probably never went to college, work long days in factories, live mostly in rural America and are predominantly white, cocooned in the illusion that America was once the exclusive homeland of white middle America. They dream of a land with little immigrants, that abhors persons of color and those who do not look like them. But that is an illusion, a myth spurned by Trump and his mobs of rough thugs and supremacist bands.

In pursuit of his bigoted image of America, he has set up and inspired any number of white supremacist militias and street terror gangs. He has promoted any number of toxic conspiracy theories and pioneered countless divisive  loyalties. The Proud Boys, QAnon, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Brigade etc. In response, other groups like African Americans and Hispanics have set up self defense outfits and groups (Black Lives Matter etc), creating a very divided nation out of what used to be a multicultural and integrated  nation of diversity. Even in his Republican party, Trump has splintered the  GOP, alienated the mainstream Republic party elite and driven them to fringes of silence. The mainstream of the  party is now occupied by Donald Trump and his attack dogs and racist thugs.

Trump’s belief in electoral democracy begins and ends with elections if they end up re-anointing him as ‘winner’. For him, ‘winning’ in a democracy is triumphing over opponents and vanquishing political “enemies”. This is why he stopped at no excess in meddling with the presidential elections of November 2020. He endorsed all manner of conspiracies, election meddling antics, and open attempts at rigging which led to the fiasco of an attempted ‘coup’ of the Capitol invasion and storming of January 6th 2021.

What is remarkable about Donald Trump’s career to date and which has converted the next election into a virtual referendum is that he has hardly changed in his rhetoric, beliefs, defining warfare concept of power and overall  style. He has remained insolent, abusive, uncouth and thuggish as ever. More dangerously, Trump has remained unrepentant in his divisive views of the American nation. He wants to shut the borders, preside over the largest immigrant repatriation and deportation in American history. He has branded immigrants from Africa, Latin America and nearly everywhere else as toxic presences who are ‘poisoning the blood’ of his phantom pure idyllic America. The implicit racism, bigotry and decadent nationalism are right in your face.

The implications of a relapse into Trumpism in the United States for the rest of the world are too stark and frightening to contemplate. Trump will throw Ukraine under the bus and celebrate the triumph of Putin’s “Mother” Russia even if only to annul the emergence of Zelensky as a global super star and hero. The Palestinians had better forget their lifelong dream of an independent homeland. He will return to North Korea with a more elaborate utopian computer animation of what the Hermit kingdom will look like in return for dining with America. The hope of African countries (“S…hole countries”) for greater economic leverage in a new world of free enterprise and democracy would end up in the thrash can. An endless trade war with China will rage and bring world trade to a standstill. Europe will pretty much be on its own on world affairs, deprived of America’s historic trans Atlantic solidarity and support with which Europe stopped Nazism, Fascism and communism on their tracks for the decades after World War II. NATO would be deprived of American money if only to strengthen Putin as a counterweight to European strength and expansion.

China, Russia and their allies in the emergent axis of evil are waiting with optimism for the return of Vladimir Trump to the White House. That would give authoritarianism a major leverage in the coming world contest between liberal democracy and authoritarianism.

But the statistical reality both globally and in the United States is hugely in favour of the triumph of democracy and freedom. The inevitable defeat of Trump in America’s November elections will herald a setback for the advance of authoritarianism as a counter force to the global wave of democracy.

Politics has probably one million definitions but, for the purpose of this article, I mean the art of winning, keeping or jostling for state power. There is nothing wrong with politics, even though the conduct of many politicians tends to give it a bad name and you always hear a lot of decent people vowing to never dive into the “murky waters of politics”. Politics could be dirty but it does not have to be. Politicisation, on the other hand, is the framing of issues for political gain by those who have won or are jostling to win state power. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but it almost always leads to political polarisation, where commonsense has the tendency to disappear without a trace.

When I say “politicisation of politics”, therefore, it should be understood within the context of the Machiavellian politics “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith” — as the Merriam-Webster dictionary describes it. Machiavellian ethics are built on the maxim that “the end justify the means”. It doesn’t matter what you do to achieve your goal — it is your goal that matters. That is the philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian political philosopher whose classic treatise, The Prince, ranks among the most famous books ever. Machiavelli said his experience and reading of history showed him that “politics has always been played with deception, treachery, and crime”.

From my balcony, I have been observing recent events under President Bola Tinubu and I am asking myself: haven’t I seen this kind of politicisation before? With kidnappers on a renewed rampage, someone whispered to me that “the north” is trying to destabilise Tinubu’s government because some “juicy appointments” have been taken away from them. Truly? Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president and PDP candidate in the 2023 presidential election, has called on Tinubu to resign if he cannot tackle the insecurity in the land. Really? The relocation of certain offices of the CBN and FAAN from Abuja to Lagos is being described as an attempt to relocate the federal capital. Sure?

In truth, there is nothing new in this sort of politicking. In 1999, when President Olusegun Obasanjo directed that the headquarters of the Nigerian Maritime Authority (NMA, now known as Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA), and the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) be relocated to Lagos for administrative convenience, there was a similar outcry that he was trying to relocate the federal capital. Nearly 25 years later, Abuja remains the federal capital. The outcry over relocation is always from one region. If Abuja is indeed a neutral territory — as it was intended to be when the capital was moved from Lagos — why are the northern senators the most concerned?

Claiming that a part of the country is “fighting back” for losing power is not new either. In the early years of Obasanjo’s first term as president, there were ethnic and religious killings in several parts of the country, most notably Kaduna, Plateau and Kano. We were told then that fifth columnists were at work to end the “nascent” democracy because they were not comfortable that a southerner was in power and “restructuring” Nigeria. They wanted the military back, we were told. Almost 25 years later, ethnic and religious killings have not stopped, no matter who has been in power — Muslim or Christian, northerner or southerner — and, well, the conspiracy theories have not stopped either.

Nigerian politics has been predominantly Machiavellian since the return to democracy in 1999, but the endless politicisation of our politics appeared to have fully taken off in 2009 when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua fell terminally ill and it became glaring that power would return to southern Nigeria in less than four years of moving to the north. There were calls on his deputy, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, to respect the power rotation arrangement in the PDP by not running in 2011. He did run and did win — with the backing of major northern power brokers — but that did not stop accusing fingers being pointed at “the north” when Boko Haram terrorism and insurgency exploded later.

Recently, when Atiku asked Tinubu to resign over the renewed insecurity in the country, it brought back memories of what the APC said to President Goodluck Jonathan ahead of the 2015 general election. At the time, Book Haram was at the height of its power. Alhaji Lai Mohammed, then APC’s spokesperson, asked Jonathan to resign. We are in 2024 and the APC is getting a dose of its own medicine. We spent valuable time then debating who was behind Boko Haram. We spent valuable time under President Muhammadu Buhari debating who was behind “Fulanisation”. We are spending valuable time again debating who is behind kidnappings under Tinubu. It is our political culture.

I would repeat what I said when PDP and APC were having a go at each other under Jonathan: it does not matter who is behind or beside Boko Haram — all Nigerians desire is for their lives and property to be protected by the government. That was what Jonathan owed all Nigerians. The rest is detail. I repeated the same argument under Buhari: it does not matter whether it is Fulani or Kanuri herdsmen — Nigerians are being kidnapped and killed by criminals all over the country and all they desire is security. The rest is detail. Now that we are back to our favourite ritual of propounding conspiracy theories, my message to Tinubu is the same: secure Nigeria. The rest is detail.

We have a big problem in Nigeria: politics always takes precedence over everything. A sense of responsibility to peace and progress is often an afterthought. We are immersed in polarising politics 24/7. At what stage do we focus on the purpose of politics which, as ironic as it may sound, is for the greater good of the society? At what time do we put partisan interests aside and see ourselves first as Nigerians who have a duty to make our country better, no matter who we voted or didn’t vote for? We are already fiercely preparing for the 2027 presidential election, less than a year into a new administration. We play partisan and divisive politics every day of our lives. That is who we are.

To be sure, playing politics is the food of democratic contests. I cannot argue against that. The intrigues and high-wire games could be exciting. There is nothing wrong with that. As I said, politics is not a bad thing, for as long as you are trying to win, keep or jostle for power. My worry is what we play politics with or over. It is okay, in my view, to play politics with the economic policy of the current administration. You can pillory the fiscal and monetary policies. You can ridicule the industrial, trade and agricultural policies. You can tear the policies on education and infrastructure apart. They will even become sweeter when you claim to have better policies if you are in power.

We saw the APC do a lot of that to the PDP and Jonathan ahead of the 2015 elections. It was N300/£ and N216/$. The APC made plenty political capital out of the falling exchange rates then and asked Nigerians to vote out Jonathan. There was a popular Muhammadu Buhari/Yemi Osinbajo advertising board with the message: “Is N216 to $1 Okay?” Today, the rates are N1600/£ and N1400/$ and PDP supporters and sympathisers have every right to play politics with it. There was this Buhari/Osinbajo poster beside a petrol station where the price displayed was N87/litre. Today, it is over N600/litre. Why should anyone begrudge opposition supporters who make fun of the APC? It is return match.

Since the APC came to power in 2015, we have seen a dramatic fall in the economy. Prices of goods and services have hit the sky. The APC government spent eight years blaming the economic downturn on “16 years of misrule by the PDP”. Many PDP supporters asked the APC to shut up and do the job since they promised Nigerians that they had the solution to the economic challenges. With the APC unable to solve the problem till today, the PDP and other opposition supporters are accusing the APC government of bringing misery on Nigerians. I do not see anything wrong with this kind of politics. It is a competition of words that is worth watching. That is very good for politics.

However, I cannot withstand the politicisation of insecurity. I think certain things should be off limits. Nobody should go around saying “northerners” want to destabilise Tinubu because he didn’t give them their “born-to-rule” appointments. We’ve gone this conspiracy route before and it only further hurt our nationhood. Politicians should also avoid the route of saying “I can secure Nigeria better” just because they want to win elections. The APC said more than this in 2015 but nine years later we are still fighting terrorism, insurgency, banditry and kidnapping. Talk is cheap. Our sincere concern should be about finding a lasting solution rather than engaging in grandstanding for political gain.

It is the duty of Tinubu, as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to secure every nook and cranny of the country. We cannot begin to argue over that. As the chief security officer of the federation, he must find a solution. But, in the name of God, we should not go into another era of conspiracy theories because we want to play politics. Nigerians — northerners, southerners, Muslims, Christians, traditionalists, non-religious, men, women, children, APC members, non-APC members — are at the mercy of these criminals. Let us play politics with the relocation of CBN, the economy, and such like. But let us not return to the unhelpful politicisation of insecurity. Anathema.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

MURDERING MONARCHS

Two monarchs returning from a meeting in Irele-Ekiti were gunned down on Monday. Oba David Ogunsakin, the Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, and Oba Olatunde Olusola, the Onimojo of Omojola-Ekiti, were brutally murdered. This was the first time monarchs would be killed in this manner. School children were also kidnapped in Emure-Ekiti. This also looks like a first of its kind in Ekiti state. In nearby Ekiti local government in Kwara state, Oba Peter Aremu, Onikoro of Koro-Ekiti, was also killed in cold blood. I am no security expert but these killings do not look random. Suspects have been arrested, thankfully, but police must dig deeper to establish the real motives of these attackers. Abominable.

FIRST AID

FBN Holdings Ltd, the parent company of First Bank of Nigeria, on Wednesday appointed Mr Femi Otedola, the billionaire businessman and investor, as the new chairman of its board of directors. Otedola became the bank’s biggest shareholder two years ago when he increased his stake to 7.57 percent, but a lot has happened in the boardroom that has not painted the bank in good light. With the squabbles, everything started going ding-dong. First Bank, as Nigeria’s oldest bank and one of the biggest financial institutions in Africa, should put its house in order if it wants to remain competitive in these times. I hope Otedola’s tenure will finally bring the needed healing and direction. Focus.

GO, EAGLES, GO

The Super Eagles beat Angola 1-0 on Friday to qualify for the semi-finals of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations. Angola does not give me good memories — I always remember the death of Sam Okwaraji in a 1990 World Cup qualifier against them in Lagos. I also remember Angola knocking us out of the 2006 World Cup. I had a sense of satisfaction that we beat them to make it to the last four — our first since 2019. I must confess that these Super Eagles are nowhere near the most exciting teams we have had, but I am impressed with their discipline and work rate. As things stand, I would take any form of win. I wish the team all the best — meaning they should bring the trophy home. Goaaaaaal!

NO COMMENT

In the last few weeks, Governors Abba Yusuf of Kano, Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi and Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers all thanked President Tinubu for the supreme court verdicts that affirmed their elections. Yusuf and Mutfwang, in particular, thanked Tinubu “for not interfering in the judgments”. Since when did the apex court start taking instructions from the president before deciding how cases would go? Or was it tongue in cheek? Ironically, Tinubu did not say anything to dispel the notion. The implication, at least from an ordinary reading of it, is that he admitted interfering in supreme court proceedings but was only kind not to do so in these cases. Wonderful.

The searing torment that everyday folks are going through in Nigeria right now is so dire, so unbearably extreme, and so unexampled in its rawness that even diasporan Nigerians like me who live tens of thousands of miles away from home can feel it not just vicariously but also experientially.

The unending streams of requests for help to meet the most basic obligations of life that we get from previously proud, resourceful, and self-sufficient family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers are the conduits through which we have experiential encounters with the ongoing cost-of-living turmoil in the country.

The lower classes are sinking deeper into soul-depressing depths of poverty, despair, and hopelessness, and the middle class is so hobbled by the economic crunch that it is disappearing faster than soap bubbles. The lower and the middle classes are now united by a common sensation of emptiness, agony, and anxiety for the future.

Every day is worse, less hopeful, and more precarious than the previous day for most Nigerians. Even hope, which French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld assured us is the last thing that dies in humans, is desperately going into a death spiral. That’s an ominous signal President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would do well to not take lightly.

Nigeria is famous for its superabundant supply of self-regenerating hope, even in the midst of the most nerve-racking existential strain. You know you’re dealing with a potentially explosive social rupture when hope is grasping for breath among people who are famed for feasting on hope.

The current state of affairs isn’t unavoidable. It’s the predictable consequence of the pig-headed pursuit of a ruinous policy of subsidy removal from petrol, the lifeblood of Nigeria. I sounded an early warning about this a month before Tinubu was inaugurated.

In my April 29, 2023 column titled “Six Agenda Items for Tinubu’s Success,” I specifically warned Tinubu to resist the neoliberal anti-subsidy seduction of Western financial institutions, which they have successfully brainwashed Nigerian economists and civil society members into not just accepting but also aggressively evangelizing.

I wrote: “I know that there is now an artfully manufactured consent, particularly among the gilded classes in Nigeria, about the undesirability of ‘fuel subsidy.’ I don’t care what it’s called, but any policy (call it deregulation, subsidy removal, appropriate pricing, etc.) that results in an arbitrary and unbearable hike in the price of petrol without a corresponding increase in the salaries of workers and an improvement in the living conditions of everyday people will sink Tinubu.”

I concluded: “I can assure Tinubu that if petrol price hikes deepen people’s misery, he’ll have a tough time governing.”

The dramatic spikes we have seen in abductions for ransom all over the country are attributable to the rising tide of unheard-of deprivation that the removal of petrol subsidies has activated. And that’s just one auxiliary after-effect of the removal of petrol subsidies without a cushion or an alternative.

Other after-effects are the total collapse of the informal sector and what remained of Nigeria’s manufacturing sector. It also instigated the unprecedentedly hyper-inflationary pressures that are being exerted on the economy. Prices of basic goods and services and even of medications for common illnesses are now beyond the reach of people. That’s an unsustainable magnitude of agony.

But it was always obvious to anyone with even a halfway functioning brain that removing petrol subsidies in a weak, oil-producing economy that is organically petrol dependent, that has no well-developed public transportation system, that has weak infrastructures, and that is the poverty capital of the world would trigger infernal anguish on the vast majority of the people and tank the economy to the ground.

These are not birth pangs. They are not the pains before the gains. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is condemned to unrelieved darkness. The blight Nigerians are contending with now is the certain and inevitable result of a conscienceless implementation of disconnected and irrelevant economic policies inspired from outside Nigeria.

I came of age during General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime. IBB started the so-called Structural Adjustment Programs (removal of subsidies, devaluation of the naira, mass retrenchment, etc.), which inaugurated Nigeria’s descent into the abyss. I heard the exact same things the current government is spouting during IBB’s time: that it would get worse before it got better, that after the birth pangs a big bouncing baby would be born, that there was delayed gratification awaiting us if only we could be a little more patient.

None of the promises materialized. Instead, suffering was elevated to crushing heights. Advanced Fee Fraud (also called 419) blossomed. Corruption was fertilized. Brain drain to the West got wings. This period also unleashed the naira’s irrecoverable slide into the deep hole of worthlessness.

Decades after, the same SAP about which hundreds of books and articles have been written and whose irreversible damage we continually lament, has been artfully repackaged, disguised, deodorized, and huckstered by a well-oiled gang of soulless apes who deployed all manner of clever rhetorical trickery to coax Nigerians into consenting to their own self-incineration.

The idea that petrol subsidies had to go because they were riddled with corruption and that they consumed a disproportionate share of our national budget is a mere propagandistic cop-out. If petrol subsidy administration is rid of corruption (that is perpetrated in cahoots with the government, which explains why no “subsidy thief” has ever been apprehended much less brought to justice), it would consume no greater share of our national budget than any governmental obligation.

It certainly won’t be anywhere near the colossal venality that is perpetuated at the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development under the guise of giving money to the poor.

The truth is that we have no original, independent thinkers among people who make or influence economic policies in Nigeria. They are all hopelessly mindless parrots of ill-comprehended economic prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions. They do not have the cognitive and intellectual sophistication to transcend what I call derivative or regurgitative knowledge.

There is not a single example of a country in the world that has developed on the basis of the prescriptions of the World Bank and the IMF. On the contrary, the only countries that have achieved inclusive growth and development outside the West are precisely the countries that have bucked the World Bank and the IMF. And every country that uncritically adopts the recommendations of these institutions has been wracked by utter devastation.

Unfortunately, if either Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi were president today, Nigeria would experience exactly what it is going through now. Like Tinubu, Atiku and Obi said they would remove petrol subsidies “on day one.” When you remove petrol subsidies “on day one” in a desperately poor, inordinately petrol-supported economy with no public transportation, you get what Nigerians are going through now. It’s not rocket science.

Similarly, both Atiku and Obi said they would float the naira and let its fate be determined by the vagaries of demand and supply. When you do that in an import-dependent economy, you can’t escape what the naira is going through now.

Atiku tweeted in March 2021—and in several policy documents—that “Nigeria must move towards a single exchange rate to be determined by market forces.”

On April 9, 2022, Obi also tweeted: “The truth is that for long market forces have not determined the exchange rate of the Naira…. It has to end. Let the exchange rate be determined by the forces of demand and supply. It’s that simple.”

In other words, Tinubu is doing exactly what Atiku and Obi had proposed they would do, and the results would have been the same. The hyperinflation and hurt Nigerians are going through now won’t have been evaded because it is Atiku or Obi who removed petrol subsidies “from day one.” The naira’s glide to the bottom wouldn’t have been avoided because Atiku or Obi “floated” the naira.

That is why Atiku- or Obi-supporting critics of Tinubu come across as ignorant partisans who have drunk the Kool-Aid of their cult leaders. Atiku and Obi supporters should be grateful that their idols are not president today. They would have been bearing the reputational brunt of the boneheaded, discredited rightwing economic policies they also advocated, which have thrown Nigeria into the current mess.

Interestingly, in response to Obi’s 2022 tweet rhapsodizing over the imperative of subjecting the naira to the “forces of demand and supply,” a supporter of his by the name of Abel (with the handle @governance9ja) wrote a riposte, which has turned out to be prescient. He wrote: “So @PeterObi will float the currency for a country where most factor inputs into local manufacturing is imported? We already have cost push inflation reducing real income of many Nigerians. Floating naira will ruin many households. @PeterObi and @OfficialABAT are two of a kind.”

Obi supporters who have wet dreams of a Nirvana if Obi were president should wake up. His economic policies are exactly like Tinubu’s. Personalities aren’t the issue; policies are.

Tinubu and his team need to face the reality confronting them and change course. I know that Nigeria has been so polluted by neoliberal propaganda that even news that the government was paying subsidies through the backdoor to stop petrol prices from getting to N1,000 per liter was seized upon by the opposition to poohpooh the government, which compelled the government to deny paying any subsidies.

I’ve never seen this level of self-crushing inanity in my life. Assistance to the needy (which is what subsidy literally means) is now a dirty word that everyone avoids like the plague.

But the government should know that even hope is dying in Nigeria. When a usually hopeful nation spawns armies of hopeless and angry people through thoughtless economic policies dictated by outsiders, it sows and nurtures the seeds of its self-destruction.