Tinubu and his 2027 confidence, by Abdu Labaran Malumfashi

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu told a story of one day meeting “a friend who used to use five Rolls Royce, but I saw him driving a Honda Accord. When I asked him what the matter was, he told me that ‘I have made the country very hot for everybody’, and I laugh and said that the country would no more sponsor free loading on anyone again”.

A tall tale, that must be, because the same president had the country purchased brand new aircraft, brand new yacht and a brand new Cadillac Escalade for him to add to his fleet of official vehicles. He also singlehandedly awarded a mind boggling N15.6 trillion contract to his front, the Paris (France) based Lebanese businessman, Gilbert Chagoury

Despite his apparent determination to kill democracy by any means possible, some people still believe in the country’s ‘elected’ president, especially the many power and money hungry Northerners, who would do anything to obtain their goals, support him, his avowed desire to excise the region from Nigeria. The corrupted ‘rubber stamp’ National Assembly (NASS), would not help matters, as it would pliantly do anything wanted of it by the president.

It is now becoming clearer why the president and his crowd of loyalists are confident of rigging the 2027 general elections. The president and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have successfully factionalised the two leading opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) into two each. The factions given the go-ahead by the courts to run the affairs of the parties are the appendages of the presidency.

A trending video clip from ‘The Honest Bunch, aired by ‘@glitchafricastudios’, which refers to itself as ‘Home Of Africas Most Viral Podcasts’, claimed that the two opposition parties were all serving the APC.

According to the unnamed speaker in the video, “The current PDP is in the pocket of Nyson Wike at the national level. The current PDP Chairman he goes to serve to serve tea in Femi Gbajabiamila’s house, the Chief of Staff to the President. While the National Chairman is serving tea, the National Secretary, Sam Anyawu, will bring KILISHI from the kitchen . They eat. They are the people who are in charge of the PDP. They are Tinubu MOLES. Just like Julius Aburi guy in the Labour Party, he is an APC mole.

“That is why none of them is challenging the system. Right now, there is no opposition in the country. There is no opposition to the Tinubu government, that is why there is practically nothing that Tinubu wants to do that he does not do. They just approve $2.2 billion loan. Where are the PDP lawmakers, where are the Labour Party lawmakers, where are the other political parties in the NASS? They have not opposed ONE THING of this government”.

Meanwhile, the president goes ahead with his so called reforms that have turned out to be nothing but unproductive, unnecessary, and poverty-hunger inducing and corruption driven policies that are meant to keep the Commonwealth at the picking of Tinubu and a select few in the government. This is despite the people’s strenuous and often fatal opposition to these reforms, as the democrat turned dictator president knows that the NASS would always be there at his beck and call. Good or bad ( BAD most of the times), the NASS will always do his bidding.

Some of these reforms are on fuel subsidy, which led the price of fuel skyrocketing from N195 to N100O per litre, on the currency, and the Naira skyrocketed to N1750/$ from N460/$, on electricity, with many people, like yours sincerely forced moved to the so called ‘Band A’ attracting higher tariffs but providing less than seven hours of electricity per day, a far cry from the 20 hours of electricity promised and on food security, which saw a bag of rice catapulted from thirty thousand Naira to one hundred and thirty thousand Naira per bag.

The president also introduced reform in the education sector, making Unity Colleges education way out of the affordability of most parents, because of the exorbitant fees, introduced reforms in the aviation sector making the cost of tickets for local flights equivalent to flight tickets for international flights, reform in Customs and Excise, resulting in the astronomical rise in import duties to the extent that it is becomes higher and more expensive than the goods being imported, and the latest so far reform introduced by him, is the contentious tax reform, which surreptitiously includes government as a beneficiary to a wealth left by a deceased. His very own company, Alpha Vetta, which has been handling the tax collection in Lagos State since time as the first civilian governor of the state in the current (4th) Republic.

Just this week, the Nigerian president was embarrassingly declared as the third most corrupt person in the world’s list of 2024 most corrupt people in the world. Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international corruption and criminal investigation organisation announced the list of top corrupt people for 2024.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said it had conducted the polls by collecting votes from different people around the world, to find out those who were primary responsible for the progression of bribery, injustice increasing poverty and hunger in their countries. Former president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo came second, with President William Ruto of Kenya, being on top of the list, as the number one most corrupt person in the world during the year 2024.

The backward compliment on the Nigerian leader is of no surprise to many people, least of all Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President of Nigeria. Alhaji Atiku, who was the Presidential candidate of the opposition PDP during the 2023 election, had on many occasions during the campaigns, called Tinubu a druggists and pusher, an allegation that was echoed several times by the then spokesman of the party, Mr. Daniel Bwala, now one of the spokesmen of President Tinubu. Bwala had at one time, claimed that Tinubu would not be able to fix Nigeria in the next even if he tried for 30 years.

The immutable Dan Bello has always focused his searchlight on the increasing corruption in the country under President Tinubu. Expose’ after expose’ reveal that the most common way of doing government work is corruption at both federal most of the states levels. This therefore explains the pervasive poverty and hunger in the country at the moment, which the present regime has however, continue to live in denial of the fact.

So is also the outspoken Northern woman politician, Hajiya Naja’atu Mohammed. She severally spoken on television and radio programmes that Tinubu had nothing positive to offer to the North, in particular, and the nation in general. She often backed her allegations with the apparently multi faceted challenges faced by the country, but the Northern region in particular. These include insecurity, lack of electricity, lack of education, and excruciating poverty and hunger.

Dr. Garus Gololo, an APC stalwart from Nasarawa state, also accused President Tinubu of being very undemocratic, and person who would employ everything within his power to get whatever he wants, including using the state apparatus of coercion. The leadership of these agencies appear to be far removed from the people, so much that they appear to believe they owe their positions not to the people, but to the president alone.

Hired pens, in the pen pushing profession and the academia, have gone out of their way to rubbish the allegation made against the Nigerian leader by the Military leader of the neighbouring Niger Republic, General AbdouRahmane Tchiani. He alleged that Tinubu had received huge sums of money from the French government to bring her Military base to the Northern part of Nigeria, when most of the country’s former colonies had ignominiously sent them parking from their lands.

But instead of the Nigerian President responding in a like manner, as the allegation was made, some aides and hired writers were deployed to answer the Nigerien’ strongman.

If the allegation by General Tchiani was not bad enough, Western countries have made it worse. They have started issuing travel advisory to their citizens to avoid Nigeria in the very near future, believing that there might be a protest or outright uprising in the country by the poverty and hunger stricken poor citizens of the country.

The president was said to have attended an afternoon Friday prayer at a Mosque in Lagos, where the Imam claimed the Tinubu “did not disappoint us”. The Imam’s claim became a Public Relations (PR) opportunity for the Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the president’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, who issued a press statement on his X handle, celebrating the Imam’s imprimatur to the president.

It says a lot about the president’s increasing unpopularity in the country, that many people responded to the statement in the affirmative, saying that they were indeed not disappointed by the performance of the president, because they NEVER believed it would be anything but DISASTROUS.

Look at the super wedding of the daughter of the Deputy Senate President (DSP), the Kano state born, bred and elected Barau Jibrin, who ‘loves’ his people so much that he desperately wants to be their next governor in 2027. The wedding attracted the visit of the president himself, and other members of the cream de la cream of the political and business elite in the country.

But the government sponsored social media, and the ones sponsored by individuals in the government or around the government, continue to lavish praises on those in governments, when there is absolutely nothing for most of the citizens but excoriating poverty and hunger in the country, despite the denial of the few in government that are not affected.

We all the time do things to be or remain either good looking or rich or young or some of them or both of them. That, in one word, is called ‘vanity’. But all believers of God, whatever may be their religious belief, are aware that He abhors vanity, warns against vanity and distance Himself from vain people.

At the graveyard one would not tell who was good looking, or who was rich, or who was young, or who had some of them, or who had all of them. No matter how long we exist on the earth, we will eventually die, and leave everything behind, because nothing will follow us to the grave but our actions when we were alive.

May God make us “among the few” who would not be found to have been vain while we were alive. Mat we never give in to any worldly temptation, that would lead us away from the path of Allah.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.