Both sides of infinity

When the thought of the bright side first came to mind, I thought it is just part of the old routine, the institutionalised ritual we now have to observe every eight years. It starts with an all-out effort to maintain the illusion of an upright president bogged by teething challenges. With this in mind, you just spin the narrative conveniently to make sense to you. Then the ball is dropped one or more times and you still want to hold on — in denial. Somewhere in the middle of that, it starts to sound like someone paid a voice in my head to talk the president up.

But, surely anyone with more than a dozen brain cells can see how amateurish the idea of invading Niger Republic for instance. Add to that, the anticlimactic portfolio assignments to federal ministers, you get a picture of someone who was never really serious about leadership, or will have to overcompensate in manifolds to make up for the glaring gaps in terms of intellectual skill and ethical challenges of the executive foot-soldiers of his government. To boot, it followed very disruptive policy statements such as the announcement of fuel subsidy cancellation and the chaotic forex management regime which has seen the US dollar closing on an exchange of rate of about N1,500.  

Even if the rumours about the president’s health are not true and he is in actual fact as fit as a fiddle, the president cannot hope to be able to keep up with that much workload. This was the “ash-sha”! moment which may or may not seal the doom of this administration.

Again, the president also seems to be treading the very dangerous path of disregard for the rule law. It is never the same once you go down that road. There was never a honeymoon for Nigerians from this government; the whole country was on the receiving end of its policy decisions not more than a few hours after it was sworn in. It was the same gang of the same usual suspects we all know that fought for it and spoke for it; and it is the same zombified electorate corralled by “stomach infrastructure” that voted it into power.

Yes, the seeming non-interference in judicial processes which made it possible for opposition parties to win electoral cases against the ruling party is also good and deserves commendation given past experiences–but there is still a long way to go as far as the rule of law is concerned.

The party Tinubu rode into power on not only lacked (internal) democracy, it is a place where selection replaced election, where decency is just a word… and where transparency and accountability are but obnoxious technicalities.

Those who do not like the president, especially where he hails from in the South West accuse him of political imperialism in the region. He is like a king almighty who sits in court and pronounces who will and will not be a governor or senator. Just like that – his word is the beginning and the end of careers.

Demonstrating the great power he wields; he is known by many as the Lion of Bourdillon who foisted his daughter on the market women of Lagos with a mere wave of the hand. He denied the traders the opportunity of choosing a leader from amongst themselves or even the courtesy of lobbying for anyone. He just woke up one morning and pronounced his daughter who was not even a trader, the President General of market women and traders in Lagos State. No wonder he hates dictators! “Military” dictators, I mean.

To drive home the message from this other infinity, the state was shutdown to mark his first visit after his enthronement as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He personally admitted being overwhelmed by the sheer frills of the experience, saying he never knew what it meant to be president until after that.

Well, from reports, the attendant traffic build-up stretched kilometres and many motorists and pedestrians endured a harrowing deal getting to their various destinations while Tinubu’s partying and celebration lasted. What better way is there to massage a material ego than for the economic capital of a country to surrender itself so completely to you?

All said and done, the Jagaba(n) is the president of the republic. And though lacking in terms of the intellectual accomplishments and philosophical fecundity of such legends as the patron saint of Yorubaland, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Tinubu makes it up with political dexterity, strategic engineering and shrewd calculations that sometimes border on the ambitions of empire-building. He does not have what most great leaders have in terms of lucid oratory and the charismatic charm in a way that creates the capacity for condensing a long narrative into short and inspiring soundbites that fire up followers. But he seems to have a good command of the power of money and influence and has used these to build bridges and political latitude that sustained him from the Lagos State Government House all the way to Aso Rock.

In his first days as governor of Lagos, he outlined his grand vision for the state and set out a practical roadmap for achieving the new and grand Lagos we have today. He was indeed challenged by the enormity of the problems he inherited with Lagos being Lagos. Tinubu rose to the occasion with a team of competent hands hired from across different walks of life all over the world. Soon enough, Lagos began to change and transform into a new clean mega city that has relinquished the ignoble title of being the dirtiest city in the world for the more ennobling and enviable label of the fastest-growing city in Africa.

Many of his initiatives have been impactful and changed the narrative of Lagos forever. He practically laid the foundation for a new Lagos upon which his successors are building with effective results. Tinubu brought resourcefulness and ingenuity to revenue generation in Lagos that has seen the state’s IGR revenue balloon into the multi-billion naira bracket.

His creation of LAWMA, LASTMA, the optimization of the Lagos revenue footprint and the rest–has reset the environment and helped to bring some semblance of sanity and purpose to the meaning of governance in Lagos. Will that happen in the context of nationwide governance. That is the other of infinity.