By Segun Adediran
Amid the cacophony of deafening political noises of a battle royale for Nigeria’s soul in 2027, it is heartwarming to hear that The PATRIOTS in collaboration with the Nigerian Political Summit Group are offering an anchor to save a sinking ship, Nigeria. The noble goal is “to lay the groundwork for a new, people-centred constitution that reflects the country’s diversity and democratic aspirations”.
The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria unduly confers so much power on the president. This explains why most former Nigerian presidents since 1999 lost their identities immediately after they moved to Aso Rock. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, perhaps realising the enormity of the power of the Nigerian president once boasted that he would have got the infamous third term in office if he had wanted it.
In a series of interviews, even President Goodluck Jonathan has lately been talking about the temptations he faced not to concede victory to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
Now, very much more than any previous Aso Rock tenants – indeed, they were tenants – President Tinubu is a first-class student of power in all its trappings. I had to watch and rewatch the comic relief of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, while moving a motion for Tinubu’s automatic adoption as the APC presidential candidate in 2027. It’s normal for people of power to regale themselves with a few jesters. Even in the olden days when kings were kings, jesters and drummers had an auspicious space in the palace.
In the biblical narrative, young David plays the harp for King Saul to soothe him when an evil spirit from God torments him. But it is another thing entirely when you have more jesters in the palace either the professional ones or the chiefs.
Since the return of democracy in 1999, I don’t think we have ever had more assemblage of jesters and cheerleaders in government than what we have in the Tinubu administration. As bullish as he was, Obasanjo used to have Oby Ezekwesili, Charles Soludo, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nuhu Ribadu and a few other strong personalities to contend with. Jonathan was even overwhelmed by his ministers, especially Okonjo-Iweala and Akinwumi Adesina. With the Tinubu government, we know that just one man calls the shots in Nigeria!
“Shall We Tell the President” was the final instalment in the Kane and Abel trilogy by the master storyteller himself, Jeffrey Archer, that captures the treason and betrayal, which threatened to topple an American dynasty, the Kennedys. In the first edition, (a revised edition was published in 1986), a plot to kill the President of the United States, Edward Kennedy, is stopped by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Mark Andrews, working with the head of the FBI.
The takeaway from the novel is that only one man, FBI agent Mark Andrews, knows when the assassins will strike, and even he doesn’t know where, how, or most importantly, who they are. One wrong word, one false move, and both a nation and a dream will crumble.
Nigeria is at that crossroads.
The political plot facing Tinubu ahead of the 2027 presidential election may not be as dramatic as Archer’s “Shall we tell the President?”, but it is real. It is real for Tinubu, but it’s more real for Nigeria.
Nigerians, especially the poor, had sacrificed so much under the burdens of Tinubu’s two signature policies-fuel subsidy removal and the floating of the currency.
It will be so simplistic for anyone to argue that President Tinubu handled the implementation of these two policy measures humanely. Many lives were lost; many startups closed up; many workers lost their jobs and many hopes were shattered. It was a heavy price to pay. Yet, it will be as well a grand political mischief for anyone to pretend that the gains are not gradually coming.
Now, the economy is showing signs of recovery, though slowly. The painful reforms are starting to restore macroeconomic stability. The World Bank acknowledges that recent reforms are beginning to stabilise the economy.
Most strikingly and paradoxically, too, currency and petrol price stability have helped to dampen inflation. It is reported that the economy grew by 3.4 per cent in 2024, the highest since 2019.
But shall we tell the President that his administration’s signature achievements so far are just an introductory part to a holistic reform that Nigeria seriously needs? I will explain.
Towards the wee months of his eight-year rule, Obasanjo introduced and implemented a slew of reforms, including the pension system, the unbundling of the notorious National Electric Power Authority and the sale of two of the moribund state-owned refineries.
Without wasting time on his assumption of office in 2007, the late President Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s anointed President from the same Peoples Democratic Party, re-bundled the electricity firms and nullified the sale of the two refineries without a blink. Till now, the two sectors pose binding constraints to the economy. Let’s face it, sectional and parochial politics are the main determinant of the Federal Government’s economic policies in many instances when power switches to the wrong hands.
Shall we then tell the President how to sustain his economic reforms? Restructure Nigeria. The priority in saving a sinking ship is to identify and address the source of the flooding. The current atrophied and centrist Constitution is the reason why Nigeria is unworkable. Interestingly, The PATRIOTS and the Nigerian Political Summit Group are, again, offering a lifeline. Shall we tell the President that it will be perilous if Nigeria misses the anchorage again? Like the fuel subsidy removal and the currency floating, history will record and remember Tinubu that he saved Nigeria from an impending implosion.
Adediran, former Chairman, Editorial Board of THE PUNCH newspapers, writes via olusegunadediran@gmail.com.