“I’m just as confused too. Just processing it. It’s like abracadabra. Government magic.” That was my friend and editor, Kola King, to whom I had expressed confusion on an editorial the Punch newspaper wrote on the news that it had cost the NNPC 17.5 trillion naira in oil subsidy and oil pipeline security. How can it be? The average man like me in Nigeria has accepted his fate that the petrol price has been deregulated and can sell for any amount that Dangote and Tinubu want. President Bola Tinubu and his spokespersons, who can number up to twenty, depending on what subject you are talking about, have boasted about the economic magic their principal had performed on the economy that Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, brought down the cliff in his eight years of misrule. Those who can walk are walking, and those who cannot have been staying at home, going only to places that are necessary. So how come the financial statement of NNPC for 2024 is reading that explosive figure again on subjects that Nigerians had thought were done with?
That is Nigeria for you; the more you look, the less you see. Government is magical; this Tinubu administration much more. Up to the time of writing, I’m still looking for a person, an accountant perhaps, who will explain the issue to me. The only functioning refinery at Porthacourt has been shut down, and so the nation is back to the era when, during Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, thousands of workers collected salaries for eight years without doing anything. Even that is understandable, but what about subsidy? What then is the meaning of Dangote Refinery, a private refinery in Lagos, which the Tinubu government is reported to have conceded many things to and which is said to have enough capacity to meet our domestic needs? But in Nigeria, the more you look, the less you see. The summary is the nation is back to square one, with ever-increasing prices, and the government is still claiming it is subsidizing the petrol price. If you remember, the issue also was there before President Tinubu’s magic.
The president said the issue of turning the economy around has engaged his attention so much that he has had little time for the gaping insecurity in the nation. His lieutenants have been quoting GDP figures, which economic illiterates like me have been marvelling at. If the GDP has been rising as they said, we should be having foodstuffs at reduced prices on our tables. But we are not. So what is the effect of the rising GDP and the rising foreign reserve? Since Magic shaving powder became N21,000 about two months ago, I have reverted to a blade to keep my beard trimmed. Again, the more you look, the less you see. Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele boasted about his good work on the economy until he was forced out of office, and we began to see how much he is said to have stolen and the estates he alone built in Abuja. The more you look, the less you see. The economy has not improved; somebody is cooking figures, and there is some international conspiracy to put Nigerians to sleep, believing that all is going well. The more you look, the less you see. Nigeria is dancing round in circles; President Tinubu is receiving accolades he does not deserve. Who will help ordinary Nigerians decipher these lies?
The economy is not improving; the president and his team are telling lies to Nigerians in collaboration with international agencies. But thanks to Donald Trump of America, who shouted at our president like a stern teacher scolding an erring pupil. That woke the president up. That took his attention away for a while from the lies about the economy to the reality of unwarranted deaths that have become the lot of Nigerians. But that has helped Nigerians to know a little about the insecurity problem, especially about the origin of banditry. Only God can decipher the tons of lies that have been told here too. It is beyond the capacity of mortals. I met a politician who told me the origin of banditry. Who else should know? They know things we, the ones that elect them every four years, do not know and may never know. Tinubu is in the know of the origin of the banditry, this gentleman told me. How? The more you look, the less you see. In 2015, when the APC of Buhari and Tinubu knew they would win but suspected that the sitting government of Goodluck Jonathan may not quit, Nasir El Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State; Usman Bugaje, a chieftain of the APC who had crossed there from the PDP; and Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC for that year, had allegedly recruited, through Myeti Allah, an umbrella organization for Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria, Fulani from the foreign nations of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, etc., with the intention of deploying them to make the nation ungovernable should Goodluck Jonathan refuse to leave. That was the reason for the popular statement of Buhari that blood will flow. The current president, Bola Tinubu, was also in the know of that plan. Apart from that plan, they also visited America, where they sought help to remove the government of Goodluck Jonathan, who they accused of being inefficient and clueless.
It was alleged that they had recruited and fully armed thousands of these foreign Fulani in the north. But surprisingly, Goodluck Jonathan placed a call to Buhari when it became obvious to him that he didn’t win the election, even when INEC had not officially released the result. The foreign Fulani were no longer needed, but where do they go? Those who brought them had no plan to return them. These Fulani had seen the wealth of Nigeria compared to their impoverished countries. Left in the bush, the foreign Fulani devised the plan of kidnapping Nigerians and running to the bush, from where they demanded huge ransom. They became very rich in a very little time. And they won’t go back to their nation again. They have tasted the good of Nigeria.
If President Bola Tinubu knew of the existence of this kidnapping gang in the bush, why was Tinubu short of plans to evacuate them? Why did he promise to recruit half a million soldiers to the Army to combat the terrorists and the insurgents? The more you look, the less you see: the deliberate attempt of leaders to hoodwink Nigerians. Create problems and tell lies about the solution to it. Nobody except Bugaje told anything about it to Nigerians. But it is difficult that big men like Buhari and Tinubu and Nasir El Rufai, a man that must be acknowledged as one of the most deceptive Nigerians alive, will hatch such an evil plan against their fatherland. The more you look, the less you see. The one who proposes to solve your problem is really the source of that problem, and he makes his living out of the problems he created in the first instance. Nasir El-Rufai is nowhere to be found as the threat of Trump invasion looms over the nation. Nothing has been heard from him. Tinubu is feigning being overwhelmed, but he knows the origin of the problem. Buhari, on whose behalf the foreign Fulani were brought, was given a hero’s burial even when these people knew he was either by acts of ommission or commission partly responsible for the terrorism ravaging Nigerians and killing thousands. They kept mute and are telling lies. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria!
The domestic Fulani who has criminal tendencies also joined the now lucrative business of kidnapping for ransom. A Fulani bandit from Zamfara was seen on a WhatsApp video with his AK-47 hung on his shoulder entering a mall to buy a phone. Many people swam around him to take photographs with him. He was their enemy; he was the one who kidnapped them and made life difficult for them and their families, but they cherish a photo op with him. Nobody reported him, and nobody arrested him. He has become a celebrity. How do you explain that? The man every soldier in Nigeria is looking for appeared in a mall and became a celebrity. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria. Maybe those of us in the south of Nigeria don’t know what our brothers and sisters up north know. In the southwest we are complaining and asking Tinubu and the state governors to go for the jugular of these bandits. But in the north they are celebrated. I asked the daughter of my friend, who dared all dangers to take up a teaching job at a university in Katsina, to tell me whether all those things we read on the net about bandits walking freely and who the government negotiate with are true or just the usual social media noise. She said they are true, that the bandits freely enter the markets to collect money from the traders. And in the days they want to kidnap, she told me, they come in large numbers on their bikes. How does she keep herself? “I don’t stay in the market for too long. I transact my business and leave.” The more you look, the less you see of the confusion that is Nigeria. Maybe for the north banditry has been accepted as a permanent feature of life. Or maybe banditry is part of the plan to Islamize Nigeria. The more you look, the less you see.
My politician friend warned me not to take the president for a joke. “He is more vicious than Buhari.” He said Vice President Shettima’s vice presidency is a reward to him for the roles he played during the Goodluck Jonathan era. Well, the more you look, the less you see. Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket does not make sense, but it is a planned work. Kabiru Sokoto, the young man who bombed Nyanya in Abuja, was allegedly found in the Abuja house of Shettima. And up till now nothing has happened to Shettima. The more you look, the less you see. The confusion that is Nigeria. “Don’t be surprised,” my politician friend told me, “if you see Nigeria become a one-party state before 2027.” And don’t be surprised if you see President Bola Tinubu going for a third term after winning the 2027 election. “But do you think there will be 2027 in the first instance?” I asked him. The more you look, the less you see of the confusion that is Nigeria. “Everything is scripted; everything is written. Just don’t look too much, but watch,” my politician friend told me.
President Bola Tinubu moved swiftly to subdue the attempted coup in the Republic of Benin. Many Nigerians are praising him, but they did not see the hand of Esau in the move; they only heard the voice of Isaac. Nigerians looked more but saw less. This is what Nigerians didn’t see. President Emmanuel Macron in faraway France gave the assignment to Tinubu, who was close enough to Benin to be able to do the job. France must not lose another of its cash cows in West Africa. She has lost some, and losing one again will have a telling effect on France. But Tinubu’s intervention may turn Nigeria into another Ukraine. When Volodymyr Zelensky, the ruler of Ukraine, decided to jump into the Russian-American tango, he did not think deep enough, just like our president didn’t think deep enough before he dived into the Republic of Benin attempted coup issue. Now Ukraine is totally ruined, and America, which had promised postwar repair in Ukraine, has reneged, courtesy of loquacious Trump. In West Africa, Burkina Faso is angry with Nigeria. It is detaining a Nigerian military jet that it accused of landing in its territory without permission. Who will believe Tinubu that the jet, a military one for that matter, had a problem and had to land in Burkina Faso of all places? A war is looming, and Russia may camp behind Burkina Faso. Nigeria and confusion. Will Tinubu be able to cope with all these wars? I don’t think so.
Nigeria has signed a memorandum of understanding with France on our new tax law. France will manage for us what our experts can manage well. Bosun Tijani is doing excellently at the digital economy ministry. He knows his onions, but Tinubu can’t trust him enough to allow him to arrange a Nigerian deal to manage the tax data. How will he do that? If he did, where will money come from? France and not Tijani is a good deal for the president. France is far away, where the loot will be safe, but Tijani is in Nigeria, where things can get out of hand and where Sahara Reporters can sniff and report to Nigerians. “Confusion break bone,” courtesy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nigeria’s late music icon who sang “ITT (International Thief Thief).” Late MKO Abiola, the president of ITT for Africa and the Middle East, is dead now, but “international thief thief” is still going on. Ask Hightech Construction Nigeria Limited, which is constructing the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, and ask Macron of France.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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