18-11-2024.

This is a very patient question that every right thinking Nigerian should ask Godswill Akpabio, the Nigerian Senate President, given the facts that he enjoys a very cosy relationship with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and that his immediate predecessor, Distinguished Senator Ahmed Lawal from Yobe State, had aspired to be the country’s number one citizen, which never came to pass.

I have never seen the Senate President now or when he was the governor of Akwa Ibom State. I however, came to hear about him on three other occasions, and on each occasion I heard a very unedifying tale about him. Mine is therefore not a hate observation in this time of extreme existence, occasioned by the absence of the benefit of good governance in the country.

A trending claim was recently made by one Mr. Jackson Udeh, in a statement, accusing the Senate President of padding the 2024/25 budget of N25.7 trillion presented to the Nigerian Senate by President Tinubu, by a mind boggling amount of N687 billion.

A lady Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NDDC also alleged that the Senate President, apart from bringing many companies to front for him for contracts, was a rabid bigot, who wanted her to sack her the Financial Controller for no reason other than the fact that he was a Northerner. She further alleged that she got the sack from the job because she refused his many requests.

On his X account, the famed Charlie Boy, alias Area Fada, once joked about Akpabio as one of the three worst politicians from the South of the country. He claimed that the imposition of Tinubu on Nigeria as President, was ‘Yoruba’s revenge for the North’s Buhari.

“Northerners think they have the monopoly of sending their worst leader to rule Nigeria; they gave us Buhari. Yoruba gave them Tinubu and transaction was successful. Aura for Aura. Failure

to counter failure. In the next transaction, if North like, let them give us Ganduje or Matawalle! No problem. The Southerners will reserve Uzodimma, Ikpeazu or Akpabio to reciprocate. Our SHEGE pass their BANZA. Do me I do you man no go vex, Dia fathers”.

It beats the imagination why he wants to possess unimaginable tons of money this time of his life, unless he also plans to do what his immediate predecessor, Distinguished Senator Lawal did, which was to openly aspire for the office of the president of the country.

To think that a person who still has a serious case of graft against him, is today the number three (3) man in Nigeria, says a hell lot about the type of politics we play, and leaders we have, in the country.

The pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu, who is today the National Security Adviser (NSA), accused Akpabio, then immediate former governor of Akwa Ibom State and a host of others, who are also in high places, of grossing mismanagement of the Commonwealth entrusted to him as the Governor of Akwa Ibom State.

This brings me to wonder as to why the clueless, unpopular and the tribally bigoted President Tinubu, ordered the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Wike, to build fantastic houses for the country’s Supreme Court Justices in Abuja before the next presidential election in 2027. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported it last Thursday.

Perhaps, it is to serve in advance, a part of his payment and bribery for his plan to rig the 2027 presidential election, in which he is very much aware that he is going to fail woefully, especially in the region that he was said to have ‘elected’ him, the North. His beating area seems to be the Northern region which is a constant victim of his misrule and bigotry.

Rigging the election would be the only available way for him to retain power for a second term, because, not only has he proved the multitude of his tribe people, including his biological daughter, Adetoun Tinubu, who distrusted him, doubted his ability to be president, and therefore rejected him at the polls, to be dead right, but that he is also ‘allegedly’ working for a foreign agency, noted for its toppling of any government that does not do the bidding of the agency’s home country. 

It was a confession made by a court in the foreign nation in respect of the Nigerian president. The confession that gained more traction with the accusation by a former Vice President and an opposition candidate in the 2023 presidential election, that the Nigerian leader was allegedly a drug pusher. The former VP’s allegation was repeatedly echoed by the then spokesman of the PDP, Daniel Bwala, who is now the present President’s Special Adviser on Media.

Ex leaders and, even the international power house of money, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have described the Tinubu administration as a disastrous failure, well below the misgiving of everyone who never believed in his ability to be a successful president.

In his speech at the Chinua Achebe annual memorial lecture held at Harvard University in far away US, the former President Olusegun Obasanjo said that the administration of Tinubu is a mitigated disaster for the country.

The ex leader, who is a world renown statesman, said that the your slow administration has confirmed Nigeria as a failing state, which is sinking into a chaos.  “Nigeria’s situation, as we can see and understand, is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more nation sinks into chaos insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence and underdevelopment.

“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity.

“What is happening in Nigeria — right before our eyes— is state capture. The purchase of national assets by political elites -and their family members — at bargain prices, the allocation of national resources — minerals, land, and even  human resources — to local, national and international actors. It must be prevented through local and international laws”.

In a report that International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Deputy Director, Catherine Patillo, presented at the Lagos Business School, Nigeria’s ongoing economic reforms were said not to deliver substantial results eighteen (18) months after their introduction.

The IMF observed that while many countries had achieved monetary consolidation and a reduced microeconomic imbalances, “Nigeria continues to lag in critical areas”, with rising interest payments “consuming a disproportionate share of the country’s revenue, limiting funds available for development”.

Nigeria is a very abundantly mineral resources rich country but is unfortunately endowed with a very rich bad, poor, corrupt and thoughtless leadership, which has led to the suffering of majority of its citizens from extreme poverty and lack of everything that will lead to a fairly comfortable lifestyle. 

Whereas its very CORRUPT politicians, very CORRUPT security heads and very CORRUPT judges, as well as COMPROMISED media and religious heads, are swimming in obscene luxury financed by the commonwealth, which is used, misused and abused by the leaders. These have become the reason for their do-or-attitude to acquire power. Unfortunately, Nigeria is now saddled with such people parading themselves as leaders, while in actual fact they are but self serving rulers. 

They have forced the country to be in constant romance with the status of a failed society, which has not only extinct its Middle Class, but supplying majority of its citizens one meal a day is something that has now become increasingly uncommon in the country.

This is not the first time we are saying this. The three institutions of the security, the judiciary and the media have to do a rethink about their patriotism to the nation, not the absolute advancement of their personal interests. The judiciary is  all the time petted as are heads of the Tinubu-time security agencies. 

Now the country’s private media also want to be part of, and add to the, public problem which is now very overwhelming. The media wants the present government to “consider subsidies or tax relief to help media houses cope with the current challenges”, caused by the fuel subsidy removal and the exchange rate volatility on the Nigerian economy.

The fact got even worse, when a foreign leader accused Nigerian leaders, without mincing his words. Nigeria, according to him, has leaders who steal their country blind, and keep the proceeds in Western countries’s banks, which however, not only regulate what they are allowed to withdraw, but convert such hidden stolen money the moment the ‘hider’ is no more.

May God free Nigeria of all leaders who consider the depth of their pockets more important than the wellbeing of their citizens. Their priority is not at par with the interests of the country, it would appear. People who have His fear, and the fierce love of their country, as their all time preoccupation, are what the country desperately needs.  One of such people is definitely a budding Northern politician from Yobe state.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.