President Bola Tinubu has now been one month in office, and we must lay his governance on the examination table, dissecting every step he has taken and every breath he has breathed. Before he was duly elected and legally sworn in, he promised to hit the ground running and so if he has not started running and picked up the pace, then he needs to be prodded. In a word, even the very ground must testify that he has hit it running.
Of the four major contenders to be President, Tinubu was the most slandered and the unaware was made to think he could not perform well. One contender was up to something that no one really knew what at first, so he was generally viewed as a clown. It later emerged he was on to a religious war and he was armed with all sorts of ethnic and religious propaganda. To his credit, he wheedled many, who are now repentant, during the contention. The political space still suffers him, however, as long as he retains the make-up, wig and ball nose, but his name will soon fade out of circulation.
Yet another was on the scene – a relic contending with a fractured party and made infirm by his own inability to unify those who should have been his allies. But, it was Tinubu who struggled with the dark places of this world, the habitations of cruelty and came out tops.
In his swearing-in speech, he caused great anxiety to those who had gotten so fat on subsidy money that they did not know what to do with money anymore. They were the faceless mysterious billionaires, shadowy figures, only known to exist but not known in personam.
It was the equivalent of yanking a feeding-bottle out of the mouth of an obese toddler.They naturally protested. The subsidy on petroleum products was a load stone that everyone knew ought to go. It was probably the policy measure that all the major candidates were agreed upon that they would eliminate as soon as they assumed office.
Not only did President Tinubu do it, he stood by it despite the very spirited efforts of certain injured political actors to discredit it.
The next was with the swift axing of Nigeria’s chief calamity and former CBN governor. It was reported that before he was axed, he was so knock-kneed that the eventual axing was something of a relief to him, as the execution of a prisoner on death-row is a relief to him instead of waiting everyday for death. Meffy knew he had been a naughty boy, and he had done bad things. He knew bad things were coming his way, and that those bad things would be just things because justice is bad to those who are bad and good to those who are good.
One of his most damaging policies had been the multiple foreign exchange systems through which the man had mastered magic, his favourite trick being the sleight of hand. Upon assumption of office, Asiwaju promptly did away with that economic Jonah by unifying the foreign exchange system and steadying the unstable economy. People now see that the exchange rate does not determine the stability of the economy. Fortunately, President Tinubu knows the importance of subjecting the currency to the market forces and strengthening the country’s performance in the market to lower the rates.
For the first time in over a decade, Nigeria’s stock market crossed 60,000 points. It is an important indication of the readiness of investors, apparently delighted at the exit of Meffy and his voodoo economics, to do business again in Nigeria. Meffy’s going is a relief that keeps on relieving.
Another step he took was one which he had long promised. He midwifed the gestating student loan policy that he had known for a long time would provide access to funds for student who had historically struggled with funding for their education. This particular step, progressive in thought and substance, made lawyers of most as those with little to no training and those with legal backgrounds went and read the legislation to know what was there for them.
Pacing his strides (for long distance runners must plan) he ran the course of addressing Nigeria’s power problems as he had promised he would. The time, it now appears, draws near that “UP NEPA” will be strange to our coming generations. Although grinches have made much noise about electricity tariffs, they have been very mute about the increased power supply that the country has been generally enjoying as a result of the president’s strides.
For those whose limited understanding of governance starts and stops with a youngish, spry, umbrella-carrying, one-wristwatch and no visible track record personality, President Tinubu is a failure. Progressive minded people, prophets of the new Nigeria, know that a president is merely head of government, and so government positions must be occupied by individuals whose heads are screwed on right. People who know their onions and not those that recolour the currency at the slightest brainwave.
Thus, the president has steadily been on a track of appointing proven technocrats and bold political reformers to key positions. These are not the sort of mountebanks who save money in their personal banks instead of developing the country. Neither are they the sort of men you throw tomatoes at for being rotten managers. They are skilled, expert professionals who can tell their left from their right. He did it in Lagos, and his initial 30 days in office appear to be yielding similar fruits.
These positive strides, anathema to senses of paid media actors who mope and rail and find imaginary faults, have restored the confidence of investors and the ground has been so shaken up that it testifies that a giant is running and this giant is that of Africa under the influence of one man, the Asiwaju, whose initial 30 days in office have renewed the hope of the fainting giant. Nigeria, once more, has a name and a pride. Nigeria’s policies, once more, reverberates across the length and breath of Africa.