Ambition Without Plans

President Olusegun Obasanjo said Tinubu’s government came to power without a plan. The response from the Villa is the number of people who committed suicide under the government headed by Obasanjo. When one reads such base responses from the president’s handlers, one begins to wonder what happened to the antecedents of those guys in the Villa!

If Obasanjo accused the government of being without a plan, what could have been a better response than to give the retired General the plans the government had initiated and executed? If it is true that more people died under the Obasanjo regime, must the Tinubu administration struggle to beat that record?

And without holding brief for Obasanjo, how on earth would Aso Rock want to convince the dullest of humanity that more people committed suicide in the government where a bag of rice was sold for N3,500 and a litre of fuel at N87 than in a government where a bag of rice is now N115,000 and a litre of fuel is N1,200?

Do we need a Professor Kunle Ogunbameru or an Emile Durkheim, or any clinical psychologist, to tell us that there would be more cases of depression when the people cannot afford basic things of life than when there is abundance of life?

Poets and cartoonists are the most ‘dangerous’ users of language. They hide meanings in terse phrases, symbols and metaphors. Even at that, poets speak too much in their few words. You must be deep enough to understand their messages.

I am close to one of them, a poet. He retired from the University of Benin precisely on June 4, 2023, after a teaching career that spanned 43 years. Professor Tony Afejuku is loud on any issue. He is not the type who is afraid to take a stand on any matter. The one known as No-Paddy-for-Jungle, is equally not bothered if his position is the most unpopular. Afejuku tells you that truth is never a popular phenomenon.

But one thing I find strange about the Itsekiri poet is that in most critical moments, when you expect him to be elaborate, he gives you a few poetic lines and moves on. At an academic seminar a few years back, someone lied openly against him. All of us present expected an outburst. We were shocked when Afejuku simply responded by saying; “Everything passes”, laughed heartily, and moved on to discuss the merits and demerits of the presentation for the day.

I confronted him at the end of the exercise. I asked why he did not defend himself against the lie. He laughed again and asked me if I knew that the man lied. I affirmed that, adding that everyone present knew. Then he responded: “No one defends a lie. Lie always lies against itself.” Events that followed in the subsequent weeks after that encounter confirmed Afejuku’s position that lies go around in a vicious circle.

This is not the best of times for the Emilokan apologists as the government they invested their trust in keeps disappointing them. I honestly feel their frustration in their futile attempt to wake up a dead horse that the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has turned out to be. My sincere sympathy, however, goes to the few among the president’s men who have come to realise that what they supported in 2023 is a typical Oja okunkun (goods purchased in the dark).

One of the Tinubu Abobakus (those who must die with the king), a friend, sent me one of their usual lines a few days ago. The message is about the Sokoto-Badagry ‘Superhighway’, another elephant project of the Federal Government.

The author of the message accused those who had in the past criticised President Tinubu’s Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project, but who had not said anything about the Sokoto- Badagry Road, 24 hours after the project was announced, as suffering from “Selective Amnesia.”

My friend forwarded the message to me because in his estimation, I fall into the category of those suffering from “selective amnesia”. He could not summon the courage to say that directly (probably because of the age difference and our past relationships); I nevertheless got his message. In my response, I simply highlighted the message and wrote: “This is permanent idiocy.” The exchange happened last Saturday. I am shocked that he has not responded their usual way! Strange!

I have reflected on the purpose of that message and several others like it that the President’s men send from time to time to those who are not in their sinking boat. I keep wondering why these folks think that because Tinubu is their god, he must also be god to other fellows! Who thinks that way?

“The Lie” (1592), is a 13-stanza poem of a disputed authorship. But because of its similarities with the Elizabethan work like “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana”. the other work of Sir Walter Raleigh (1553-1618), a British soldier, writer and explorer, the poem was ascribed to him.

The poet employed the instrumentality of literature to dwell on the political, social and economic situations of that era. He knew that his efforts would never be appreciated by the political class and their hangers-on, he therefore deliberately embarked on a “thankless errand” to tell those in power their wrong policies and how such affected the lives of the average people. Raleigh publicly accused the political locusts of his time of lying in all they did.

The main message of Raleigh in “The Lie” is that writers have one sole responsibility, to wit: expose the truth irrespective of if that will sit well with the rulers or not. For every writer, who has adopted the mantra of truth as his take-off, Raleigh, in stanza one of the poem, says, must say to himself: Go, soul, the body’s guest, /Upon thankless errand;/Fear not to touch the best;/The truth shall be thy warrant/ Go since I needs must die,/And give the world the lie/.

Raleigh encouraged writers to: Say to the court, it glows/And shines like rotten wood. To the church the message is: Say to the church, it shows/What’s good, and doth no good: He had this for the locust political class: Tell men of high condition /That manage the estate, /Their purpose is ambition, /Their practice only hate; /And if they once reply, /Then give them all the lie.

God bless the immortal Sir Walter Reigh! His 15th century words remain relevant in 21st century Nigeria, where the ambition of the president is the only thing that runs the affairs of over 200 million people. Ours is a country where the government lies every second and expects everyone to believe. Whoever settles for the voyage for truth is labelled the ‘enemy’ of the president as if ‘friendship’ with the president brings food to the tables of the poor! How encouraging therefore is the immortal injunction to give them all the lie!

One analysis of “The Lie”, says “It imagines a courtier telling his servant (the soul also the poem) to visit allegorical figures and actual members of court to tell them uncomfortable truths about themselves and, if they object, ‘to give them the lie’, or accuse them publicly of being untruthful.” This mission of telling truth to power is what most of the hallelujah orchestra of the government lacks.

And because they don’t have the courage to tell their master the “uncomfortable truth”, anyone who attempts to do that on their behalf is seen as suffering from “selective amnesia.” We find figures like that in virtually all segments of the nation. The Aso Rock Villa, for instance, dedicated the whole of last week to attacking the media and President Obasanjo for telling truth to power.

At a time in our history when the deaf can hear the loud noise of agony in the land, those in power and their promoters hear nothing. It was not The Guardian that instigated the video where people openly asked the military to take over the power.

The newspapers merely issued a warning that those in government should retrace their steps and ease the pain in the land because the people are at the point where a military intervention would be a welcome development.

A reasonable government that does not tell itself the lies it tells the people, will read that stuff and reflect on it. But that is not the case here. But for what would possibly be the reaction of the public, The Guardian would have been closed. Most nauseating is the feeling that a once ‘progressive’ journalist is the one leading the charge against truth and the media! Why must Afejuku’s theory of “Lie always lies against itself” be fulfilled in this government?

It is the same act of lying to itself that brought about last week’s cabinet change by President Tinubu. One of the things that baffle me about the guys who defend this government, and its policies is how they do that without feeling personally inane!

Where is the change in that cabinet reshuffle of last week? Is it that we now have a reduction in the cost of governance, or we have people with fresh ideas coming to the government? We complained that the monkey of this government is squatting too much, the government sold the monkey and used the proceeds to buy a dog, the king of squatters (a ní òbo ńlósòó, wón gbé òbo tà, wón f’owó r’ajá; ajá fúnra é baba ìlósòó)!

I read the list of the ‘new’ ministers and Tony Robbins, the United States’ author, coach and public speaker’s famous quote: “By changing nothing, nothing changes”, rushed through my head. A medical doctor who made no impact in the Ministry of Health was asked to go and manage the Ministry of Education and they want us to accept that as a change!

Out of 45 ministers, the president sacked five, employed seven, so that we now have 47 ministers. Of the old remaining 40, he changed 10 from one ministry to the other and retained 30 in their previous ministries; yet we expect to see an improvement in the way this government runs our affairs? You retained a whole 30 flat-footed figures on the same spots and moved 10 equally lack-lustre, unenterprising individuals to new fields all in the name of change? Why would the world not laugh at us?

Tell an average Emilokan that what happened in the cabinet reshuffle was a ruse; a trick, wile and outright deception by a clueless government that “came to power without a plan”, and the response you get is “you are an Omo Obasanjo”!

Why is it difficult for those who are ‘free’ from “selective amnesia” to realise that it is wasteful if the Benin-Ekpoma-Auchi-Okene-Lokoja-Abaji-Abuja Expressway remains unmotorable, for the government to start the construction of the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway?

How come they cannot comprehend the simple logic that a serious government would first fix all highways with huge vehicular movements like the Lagos-Ibadan, Benin-Ore-Ijebu-Ode-Lagos, Ibadan-Ilorin and many others before talking about Coastal highways?

How on earth is it difficult for the Emilokans to note that the restructuring of the Ministry of Niger Delta to the Ministry of Regional Commissions as President Tinubu did last week is just for political reasons the same way he created the Ministry of Livestock the other time?

Who would explain to these Tinubu’s clappers that pairing the North-East, North-West and North-Central Development Commissions with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is a recipe for chaos?

How do we convince them that the Niger Delta would never accept, after many years of marginalisation, a situation where the resources meant for their region, would be shared with regions that bring nothing to the table? Why won’t one want to be labelled an “Omo Obasanjo” in this circumstance, when it was the same Obasanjo who conceived the idea of the NDDC in the first instance?

Permit me to close with the great English poet of his time, Alexander Pope (May 21, 1688-May 30, !744), who says: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” I had no doubt in my mind, when the idea of a cabinet reshuffle was first mooted, that it would bring nothing. One beautiful thing about Tinubu’s Presidency is that it is highly predictable! The Presidency can lie to itself that it has carried out a cabinet reshuffle; the average reasonable mind knows nothing has happened. With the ruse called a change, Nigerians, I counsel here, freely, should brace up for another season of NOTHINGNESS!