By Steve Osuji
Disturbing Vibes: This is a letter that has to be written. It’s actually about matters concerning the Tinubu Presidency as the column title suggests but EXPRESSO has grown weary beating on an old tired horse.
This column has given up on President Bola Tinubu. Most Nigerians too must have lost every hope: this presidency is a NO SHOW.
Presidential leadership, its think-tank and cabinet have proved beyond doubt that they have nothing to offer Nigerians beyond pain and hardship. They serve themselves.
This column therefore, reaches down directly to the personnel in strategic duty posts who could deliver some results if they are minded to do so.
This letter therefore addresses Mr Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser (NSA) , Gen. Christopher Musa, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the service chiefs and all the helmsmen of the military, security and intelligence ( MSI) corps. Though they report to the president who is the C-in-C, there’s hardly any light at the end of that tunnel anymore. These men are acting largely, according to their own whims and initiatives which is why we address them directly:
Dear, Mr. Ribadu, yours truly had known you since the early 90s when you were but a young, fledgling police officer. You had a no nonsense mien, had a facade of integrity and bore the weight of a privileged family name.
Those factors must have moved then president Olusegun Obasanjo to appoint you the pioneer chairman of the newly established Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
For a police officer way below the commissioner cadre, that was a big career jump and an epoch-making assignment. There’s no doubt that you did a damn good job of setting up the EFCC from the scratch, block by block, personnel by personnel; berthing an elite anti-graft institution that was the pride of Africa at the time.
Of course with ample help from our western friends, your performance record remains quite stellar. You exhibited exemplary courage and character, reining in feared barracudas that swarmed Nigeria’s sea of corruption. Your four-year stint was remarkable for being probably the best days of the Commission.
Since then, EFCC has gone South and has remained there in the muck.
Unfortunately, you too seem not to have recovered from the trauma of eventually being yanked off your perch by the corruption monster you tried to kill. The Umaru Yar’Adua presidency powered by the inordinately corrupt James Ibori cabal ran you out of town, making you a refugee for a while. Was that your epiphany?
Upon return, you hurriedly, if not blindly, dove into the bracken sea of Nigeria’s politics swimming with the devilishly corrupt sharks and barracudas you had pursued on the high streets and alley ways of Nigeria.
Of course, they made sure you were initiated and tainted to the point that all the Hypo bleach in the market would never wash clean your dainty babanriga, not to mention cleansing your soul. More troubling is your vaulting political ambition. First you gunned for presidency in 2011 and the for governorship in 2015 and 2019.
The impression out their is that you seem bent on becoming a president or governor. Perhaps you need to be at the very control post to be able to vanquish the treasury thieves? It is believed that your quest for the top job is relentless and adversely affecting your performance in your current job as National Security Adviser (NSA).
This brings us to the reason for this missive. The Tinubu administration is flailing, the country is failing, and all we get from every corner is bad news.
From our observatory, your office, which ought to be the de facto engine room of government is sadly, grossly underperforming – gaff after gaff; goof after goof!
The debilitating security challenges seem to get worse by the day. The people are worsted and Nigeria bleeds from an endless and senseless terror challenge.
Then this: Last weekend, Nigerians were confronted by the Binance bribery accusations against you. Ordinarily we would ignore the brouhaha if this government gave us a modicum of reason to ever believe it. But no, Nigerians don’t trust Tinubu and his crew. We don’t trust anymore. Not one of you.
The entire Binance saga – the arrest of officials and the handling of it all have presented a similitude of a debacle and failure of your office and by extension, this government. Your high target detainee escaped in a very lousy circumstances. Unheard of. Dumbfounding!
What about the international odium and the reek of ineptitude that is apparent in the entire sordid affair?
Long and short of it: the office of the NSA manned by you hasn’t lived up to our expectations. We expected far more. Even if the presidency is a let down, the ONSA ought to stand in the gap and sort out some situations. Though discerning minds think the entire episode is an attempt to nix some arch-enemies of government as well as some governors who have encrypted Nigeria’s treasury into their crypto wallet. If so, they have the last laugh.
We must raise the game, that’s what all this is about.
CDS MUSA OUT OF SORTS: It’s the same message to Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Christopher Musa. He appeared in an Al Jazeera interview with Neave Barker early February and we are left in bewilderment.
Who’s idea was the interview in the first place? Generals are usually busy and taciturn. But if the head of our military must seat before a global news outlet like Aljazeera, he must be well prepped by professionals.
Not only that our dear general fluffed all the questions, you left Nigerians wondering whether there was any basic strategy or method to the terror malady in Nigeria.
The 15-year mindless, senseless blood fest can only by attributed to international conspiracy? Some foreign elements have sustained the horror this long in Nigeria, training and funding them with a view to destabilise Nigeria?
What’s to be done? The UN needs to come in to trace and track fund flow to terrorists, you said.
Haba General! How did you seem to forget that since 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari was handed a list of both individual and corporate terror financiers by the US and UAE. He did nothing.
President Tinubu claims that over 100 terror financiers have been tried and jailed in this last two years. But both the names and processes were kept secret to the citizens who have lost limbs and dear ones in near two decades.
Most troubling sir, is that while you and many officials are looking at some nebulous foreign enemies, the problem is rooted at home. How do you want to solve a problem you can’t discern the root cause.
Do we need experts to tell us that the north of Nigeria is hardly being governed? We have huge monthly allocations to all LGAs in the north yet these spaces are largely unmanned territories – no administration, no security, no economic activities. So these places are fertile grounds for armed groups to fester.
The north is the almajiri headquarters of the world. Why can’t we rally elite consensus; work out some legal framework to eradicate this vile almajiri system that has perpetually set Nigeria back? Why are we all silent and living with this madness?
Dear General, why does the north boast of the most out of school children in the world; the worst malnourished children, the worst vaginal fistula cases and the most poverty stricken location on earth? Yet, the north gets the lion share of Nigeria’s budget every month. These are the fodders with which terror is fed.
Before we blame outsiders we must call out our political elites to do more for their people and push back poverty, misery and darkness.
You told Aljazeera that over 120,000 terrorists surrendered and are being rehabilitated. What happens after you have repaired them? They are thrown back into the morass of dust and grime and hunger only to be recruited again.
THE USAID EXPO! While we blame some phantom elements without, you and I know some of the elements within, some of whom are high up in government today, who in their quest for political power, “created” the blood suckers terrorising Nigeria today. It’s in the open that APC politicians worked closely with USAID undercover agents to terrorise Nigeria and hide Chibok girls. Until we openly and frankly interrogate these atrocities, we may never reclaim our father land.
OF CANADA-GATE AND DGDSS: There’s much more to be said. Recently Canada denied you, our number one military officer visa. In my over 60 years, no country has so affronted Nigeria. What really happened? Nigerians may never know. You claimed in the interview that everything seems to be working well. That’s very far from the truth. Nigeria has become a seething hell under Tinubu.
We don’t hear no good news here anymore. The police is in a mess. Never had an IGP been rendered so ineffectual by the laughable contradictions of an illegitimate tenure!
The other day, the DGDSS had a viral video on the net. We wonder who’s idea it was to record and upload such a skit in the place of a serious speech. Weaving from side to side, he charged communities to defend themselves against armed terrorists. That’s shocking coming from our number one spook. Terror groups the combined Nigerian Army, Air Force, Navy, DSS, Police, etc cannot defeat for 15 years you ask communities to confront? Are you urging mass suicide?
DSS personnel are posted to all the 774 LGAs in Nigeria, yet they can’t provide intel to vanquish Boko Haram. Yet he urges village rustics to confront armed terrorist!
NO END GAME: We have never heard any members of the security Council articulate strategy for the end of terror in Nigeria. Not the CDS, not the NSA, not the DGDSS. Nobody seems to see the end in sight.
Perhaps, there’s no intention to end the ‘war’! Generals are of course, profiting from terror and blood of Nigerians. From Col. Sambo Dasuki to Generals Adesola Amosu, Umaru Mohammed, Alex Bardeh and Aminu-Kano Maude, to name a few, it’s a tale of Nigeria’s military as the worse terror, the real evil indeed.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: This goes to all other players in this administration who have significant duties and roles. The pictures emanating from the Tinubu administration to the world is garish. The odour oozing out is worse than toxic gas. Our dear land is in dire danger. She may not survive this dispensation if she continues on this licentious trajectory.
You guys have dropped the ball long enough. Pick it up!
You must determine to end banditry and terrorism; you must eschew corruption and greed. You must shun nepotism and enthrone meritocracy.
You must remove your knees from the necks of the people.
