Waziri Atiku Abubakar
Waziri Atiku Abubakar of PDP, or was it APC in 2015, then back to PDP in 2019 to compete against the guy he helped put in office in 2015; if you think this was a joke, no it was not, I kid you not, it’s a fact! This man has been jumping through parties more than some can count, doing anything to become president, why?
The wealth amassed by Atiku Abubakar is without a source; the remuneration of the vice president of Nigeria even when inflated at 200,000,000 Naira per annum, does not tally with his income. It begs the question, where and how did he acquire such wealth? The opaque nature of his nominations as PDP head, the kickbacks and ‘Godfatherism’ will disqualify any candidate in a transparent system of government. Nigerians have let these unfit, visionless, backward thinking politicians play with their future for decades without holding them accountable, in fact, they are celebrated when they share their largesse in ways that would send shivers into the veins of any unbiased person.
Nothing in Nigeria functions as they do in other countries of similar standard; from setting up a company to driving home to/from work, going shopping to applying for jobs, socialising to staying home, nothing functions normally. To register a company in Rwanda can be done in less than 6 minutes online, but in Nigeria, you have to go to some office surrounded by touts acting like predators looking for prey to feed off. Without monetary inducement to person A, B, C or D, your application will not be processed, if and when you do the needful, i.e., offering monetarily inducement, the process still has hurdles – we must discontinue this practice if we are to encourage investment, trust, and entrepreneurship.
Driving home to/from work, you have endless police checkpoints with officers literally begging for monetary inducement, sometimes they will keep you hanging for resisting to engage in illegal monetary solicitation without fear of repercussion as nothing ever happens; this is done in the open because we don’t have a normal country. From our leadership to the hawker on the streets, bribing, monetary inducement, handout culture, or preferential treatment to those who can afford the former three options are in full display. It is so bad that most Gen Zs have not seen otherwise, these practices have become their norms – I call them, the handout generation.
The reader will be asking themselves, why did I go on a tangent? Well, I did not go on a tangent, I was just connecting Atiku Abubakar to the points. The PDP presidential candidate is an embodiment of these detriments that has befallen Nigeria. He doesn’t understand the digital teeming youth, the need to create a working environment so that our young people can thrive and power the economic revolution that is the only way out of Nigeria’s state of penury. Atiku Abubakar thinks that promising handouts, third class infrastructural edifices, sharing off our national endowment (oil revenue), and appeasing the elites is a modality of equal representation. In other words, keeping everyone quiet but solidifying the position of the elites in keeping the populace within the status quo. Atiku Abubakar does not understand the change Nigerian youths are waiting to take them off their misery. Atiku Abubakar does not reckon that over 60% of Nigerians live in extreme poverty, if he loves and cares about Nigeria as he often professes, he should have left the leadership in the hands of a Nigerian with the right policies to transform the country. Nigeria is not a talent show where you keep trying the same thing hoping for a different result.
Atiku Abubakar does not understand Macro and Micro economic policies geared towards small businesses, innovation and invention which is the 21st century newfound black gold. How can you elect a man with such limitations and shortcomings? If this exact Atiku Abubakar were to contest for election in any advanced country, he would be disqualified on the party’s primary stage; oh no, I am sorry, he’d be in prison in the first place. Atiku Abubakar does not understand women’s rights, we are a country of almost equal proportions of men and women, all young and vibrant, how do you explain to an educated 20-year-old that she can be wife number 4 to a man? There is nothing that a man with 4 wives can do for women’s rights, a self-defeater in my opinion.
How can a man apply for the same job for over 30 years, and keep getting rejected, yet come back under the disguise of a refurbished CV hoping to be interviewed and employed by the same employer? I am not making any of these up, that is exactly how this man sees the populace. He counts on manipulation of the top who then manipulates the masses into some kind of wishful thinking that he is the ideal candidate to transform Nigeria. Atiku Abubakar does not understand the new Nigeria. The Nigeria he grew up in has died, he is not aware of this. The Nigeria Atiku Abubakar does not understand is one where people like him (less than 1% of Nigerians are over 75) make up just 1% of the population, i.e., 1% of 210,000,000 equals 2,100,000. The young Nigerians see a world where women can contribute, should have equal opportunity, go to school, can divorce their husbands and not be shamed, can tell a man you are wrong, can seek for the top position, should not and cannot be a fourth wife to any man – Atiku Abubakar does not live in this new Nigerian reality which is a replication of the 21st century all across Africa and the world.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former governor of Lagos state. This is a man who sees politics the same way a gang member sees a gang. Bola Tinubu has ruled Lagos directly or indirectly since 1999. Lagos state is his family affair, none can challenge his authority, yet for some reason, this individual is praised in Southwestern Nigeria as the change we all hope for – we must have a different barometer used for measuring success, either that or nothing else. When Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office in Lagos state in 1999, his fortunes were mediocre, but they exploded during and post-governorship. How can one amass so much wealth without owning a business? Embarrassingly, this individual, whose educational or birth record in Nigeria cannot be traced, is praised for a job well done in Lagos, another low for which I am yet to find the correct adjective. The people around him have lost every indignity so much so that they publicly display sycophantic mannerism that will give any sensible person an eyesore, still, the Southwesterners, like every other Nigerian ethnic group, are blinded by ethnocentrism – defend your own to the end.
Lagos, the Nigerian Metropolis, is an insult to the noun ‘Metropolis’ in every way you look at it. The roads are of poor quality, old and unfit for purpose, open sewers even in the heart of Victoria Island, mediocre structures of all kinds, dilapidated and sometimes collapsed or out of date buildings. Transportation systems are a nightmare, there’s a stench almost everywhere. It was recently named the second worst place to live in, are these Tinubu’s achievements? “Tinubu built Lagos”, have you heard that recently? How can you take credit for a disastrous city considered second worse on earth? Is our standard so low? I have been to every continent except Australia, Lagos is a public bin in my opinion, to consider this a success is redefining the noun “Success”. The only reason Lagos was not last was because Syria’s war torn, and ravaged Damascus made last.
The above image does not look like a city worthy of accolades of any kind, one should be embarrassed given Lagos’ GDP which is higher than the following cities, some developed, semi-developed or in the developing stage, e.g., Tunis, Algiers, Beirut, Casablanca, Bangkok, Muscat, Hanoi, Talinn, Ljubljana, Vilnius, Lima, Cape Town, Windhoek, or the two capital cities of Uruguay and Paraguay, Montevideo, Asunción. See the below image of 2012 under Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s handpicked predecessor Babatunde Fashola, the mismanagement and decay continued, Lagos is not a city to be proud of given its potential.
The below image covers Victoria Island on the right and the usual Lagos concoction of incongruent, unfit, dilapidated, and rundown shanty towns and buildings. The right side of the image where the quasi city-like looking structures stood steadfast were constructed under the federal government era when Lagos was the capital of the Federal Republic. The bridges, main roads, planning, architecture, sewage system (which Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s regime ignored), power supply system, and everything else you can think of were put in place because the city was the capital at the time. How Bola Ahmed Tinubu built Lagos, I will never get my head around this conjecture of epic proportion.
The living condition of Lagosians at the back of a $77 billion GDP should be better or at par with Metropolis of similar GDP size, however, Lagosians are amongst the worst on the face of planet earth – if anything, Lagos is the most underachieved city in the world. Comparatively to other Nigerian cities, it is easier to argue for Lagos, because as alluded earlier, we have lowered our standards by calling mediocre infrastructure quality in a typical “suffering and smiling” style. Obviously, if all you know is Nigeria, Lagos will be considered the best, or thereof, but the moment you leave this forsaken country of ours, your opinion adjusts and correlates to reality. For Bola Ahmed Tinubu to run on a platform of great achievement in Lagos shows how he has lost every ounce of ignominy left in him as a human. Oh wait, perhaps, he thinks he did well in Lagos; if that is the case, then in addition to being unequipped, a criminal, a liar, a gang leader, corruption master-planner, lack of coherence in his speeches, economically illiterate, visionless, plan-less, disconnection with Nigeria’s young people, lack of understanding of the new Nigeria, digitally-illiterate, and I can go on forever.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu has the audacity to say in public, on recorded Television that becoming the president was his turn, echoing my gang mentality characterisation of his political style. In 2015, Bola Ahmed Tinubu entered a gentleman’s agreement with our current president Muhammadu Buhari to merge parties, giving Buhari the go first, after he’d (Buhari) wrapped his two terms, he, Bola Tinubu will assume the lead. If this is not gang mentality, you tell me what it is. At no point were Nigerians consulted, considered, or even crossed their minds. Bola Ahmed Tinubu only sees numbers, if the math plays his way, he will grab it like a German Shepherd; Nigerians can scream, suffer, or die, Tinubu will nonchalantly march on making his cronies happy in the process. This man is a personification of danger, a true monster, the epitome of corruption with impunity. How this individual and APC are still competitive (our polls show) is the greatest shock of my life.
Most of the people clamouring for Tinubu will not renew their manager’s contract if in the last 7 years, they’d rundown their companies. Tinubu does not understand the devil in the detail of contemporary Nigeria’s problem. This Septuagenarian, if not Octogenarian, lives in a parallel world to the 160 million Millennials and Gen Zs who make up the vast majority of Nigeria. How does a man who is the gang leader of Lagos, throve in looted funds off a city where from sewage to transportation (I dare not say public transportation), hospitals to schools, roads to walkways, employee to employer and everything else bear fruits of hardship, dysfunctional, dilapidated, or abandoned infrastructures, still be competitive in a race for the top position of the country – are we this daft?
Nigeria post 2015, when APC and Tinubu’s handpicked Buhari took control of our country went from not doing so well to the extreme poverty capital of the world. APC has created more frustrated people who have grown into a generation of handouts, do nothing, expect something.
(FDI) Foreign direct investment refers to direct investment equity flows in the reporting economy. Nigeria’s Inflow of FDI in 2011 when former president Goodluck Jonathan took over was $8 billion, it kept dropping, $7 billion in 2012, $5.5 billion in 2013, $4.6 in 2014 and $3 in 2015. In 2016, President Buhari’s first year, there was a slight increase to $3.4 billion before the drop down continued again in 2017 $2.4, 2018 was the worse year, with just $0,78 billion before it went back up to $2.3 billion in 2019 and stayed flat in 2020 at $2.3 billion.
Data Source: World Bank
MLA Citation: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NGA/nigeria/foreign-direct-investment
Compared to countries of similar size to Nigeria, we are faring to say it politely, very poorly. Egypt, half our population hit $5.85 billion, Vietnam equally half our population rained in $15 billion, and Republic of Congo, with an economy smaller than Lagos took home $4 billion.
Unemployment rate throughout the quarters of 2015 was 7% and ended the year at 10%, under APC’s Buhari, it rose consistently except for 2017 where it stayed flat at 14%. Today, the unemployment rate is at a staggering 33%, 3 times more than when this government took office, yet APC is on course to win the 2023 elections based on our polls.
In contrast to Atiku Abubakar who can stand up, speak to an audience, understand what is being said and interact, Bola Ahmed Tinubu seems to have lost his cunning language manoeuvrability which soared in 2015 as he dismissed former President Goodluck Jonathan in disparaging style. He even promised that 4 years will be 4 years, they will give 5,000 Naira to unemployed youth still, Nigerians are willing to vote for this liar, thief, criminal, unwell and a thoroughly incompetent candidate.
Our diversity is not Tinubu’s concern, our skyrocketed poverty level has left its mark on 133 million which is 63% of Nigerians – how can you elect a government that presides over such colossal, unprecedented level of poverty. Nigeria has a serious problem of inequality; Tinubu embodies inequality as Lagos is the inequality capital compared to similar Metropolis of its size. Tinubu does not care about anyone but his ambition, and his sycophantic entourage who does the groundwork to put their gang leader in Aso Rock which will then prop up the distribution of the remainder of Nigeria’s black gold amongst themselves.
A man who calls himself the uniter, people’s person has refused to participate in any TV debates, engage with other candidates to avoid scrutiny, imagine the audacity to refuse to interact with the media of the country you are applying to become the CEO. It is like refusing to interact with the employer you submitted your CV, but you have the impetus to fly on your private jet (whose source of funding is questionable) over 3,000 miles (5022km) to London to participate on a foreign TV invitation whose citizens play no part in deciding on your employment application – ridiculous is the lack of a better word. Whilst at that foreign interface, you were not able to answer questions, this was delegated to your entourage to answer them in your stead, the circus has no end in sight.
We must put these Septuagenarians where they belong, their retirement homes – they have looted Nigeria dry and ruined the future of millions, rewarding them with the presidency is setting the pace for another generation of hopeless Nigerians, insecurity, and doubling of the handout generation to a level that Nigeria will become inhabitable for Nigerians. Our country is already comatose, don’t remove the plug.
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Well researched publication.