TINUBU’S BROADCAST: A PALATABLE PRESIDENTIAL PRESENTATION THAT WAS PRECEEDED BY PERILOUS PROTESTS

TINUBU’S BROADCAST: A PALATABLE PRESIDENTIAL PRESENTATION THAT WAS PRECEEDED BY PERILOUS PROTESTS

By Bala Ibrahim

There is the popular saying that, after the rain comes sunshine, which metaphorically aims to console the human mind that, in every situation, people can make the best of their lives, even if they are miserable for some time. Yes, the sunshine might not be as bright as it could, but could give the human spirit the comfort, courage and confidence, to overcome those unexciting and uninteresting events of life, eventually. For the people of Nigeria, and those of my native Kano specifically, who are constant custodians of high sunshine, and who were visited by a soul-destroying situation, under the pretext of a peaceful protest, the President’s presentation should pave way for consolation, or solace, that can even be celebrated with pomp and pageantry. It may be unthinkable, undesirable or even impossible, to expect people to celebrate after the visit of a calamity. But the bulk of Kano people are Muslims, who believe in Allah, believe in destiny and believe in the preaching of Mohammad, PBUH, the prophet of Islam.

The Holy Quran, (93:4) says, “Indeed what is to come will be better for you than what has gone by. (93:5) Verily your Lord will soon give you so amply that you will be well-pleased. (93:6) Did He not find you an orphan and then gave you shelter”?. Even to the non Muslims, I mean the Christians among us, there is Timothy 1.7 that says, “The Lord did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind.” Here, the Bible encourages the believer to focus on the mind of faith as against the mind of fear. Fear distorts how we see, disrupts how we feel, and limits what we do. It diminishes our thinking and produces poor decisions. Faith expands and widens our perspective. It clarifies our thinking and produces wise decisions. The mind of fear fixates on problems and perceived threats. Fear distorts and diminishes our thinking and produces poor decisions. Fear doesn’t trust, it worries.

And precisely that is the mission and the message I see in the President’s presentation today. It has come not only to de-escalate tension, but console the minds of the people, to know that indeed the Government and the President feel their fears and pains. The President wants to take away the fear of Nigerians about the future of the country under his control, by giving them the assurance that God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

The spirit God gave us should not make us timid, but give us power, love and self-discipline to address challenges, includingsuch challenges like the ones we are witnessing now. Indeed there is hunger in the land, and no one can deny that. But let not the hunger translates to anger that may give way to mayhem. We should know that after the rain comes sunshine. It’s a kind of comfort after sorrow, misfortune, or trouble, that would alleviate the distress or discomfort. The President appealed to the protesters to shelve the protest and come forward for dialogue, which he said he always acceded to at the slightest opportunity.

The President was particularly pained by the situation in the north, where the protest was evidently hijacked by hoodlums. He said and I quote, “I am especially pained by the loss of lives in Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna and other states, the destruction of public facilities in some states, and the wanton looting of supermarkets and shops, contrary to the promise of protest organisers that the protest would be peaceful across the country. The destruction of properties sets us back as a nation, as scarce resources will be again used to restore them. Nigeria requires all hands on deck and needs us all – regardless of age, party, tribe, religion or other divides, to work together in reshaping our destiny as a nation. To those who have taken undue advantage of this situation to threaten any section of this country, be warned: The law will catch up with you. There is no place for ethnic bigotry or such threats in the Nigeria we seek to build.

To press home the efforts the Government is making in clearing the mess, and as a promise of good things to come, that would pave way for pomp and pageantry, the President said, “For decades, our economy has remained anaemic and taken a dip because of many misalignments that have stunted our growth. Just over a year ago, our dear country, Nigeria, reached a point where we couldn’t afford to continue the use of temporary solutions to solve long-term problems for the sake of now and our unborn generations. I therefore took the painful yet necessary decision to remove fuel subsidies and abolish multiple foreign exchange systems which had constituted a noose around the economic jugular of our Nation and impeded our economic development and progress. These actions blocked the greed and the profits that smugglers and rent-seekers made. They also blocked the undue subsidies we had extended to our neighbouring countries to the detriment of our people, rendering our economy prostrate. These decisions I made were necessary if we must reverse the decades of economic mismanagement that didn’t serve us well. Yes, I agree, the buck stops on my table. But I can assure you that I am focused fully on delivering the governance to the people – good governance for that matter”.

He went further to say,

“In the past 14 months, our government has made significant strides in rebuilding the foundation of our economy to carry us into a future of plenty and abundance. On the fiscal side, aggregate government revenues have more than doubled, hitting over 9.1 trillion Naira in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023 due to our efforts at blocking leakages, introducing automation, and mobilising funding creatively without additional burden on the people. Productivity is gradually increasing in the non-oil sector, reaching new levels and taking advantage of the opportunities in the current economic ambience. Coming from a place where our country spent 97% of all our revenue on debt service; we have been able to reduce that to 68% in the last 13 months. We have also cleared legitimate outstanding foreign exchange obligations of about $5billion without any adverse impact on our programmes. This has given us more financial freedom and the room to spend more money on you, our citizens, to fund essential social services like education and healthcare. It has also led to our State, and Local Governments receiving the highest allocations ever in our country’s history from the Federation Account”.

Additionally, President Bola Tinubu said, “We are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting it’s gas resources to power the economy. We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for, and subsidise it’s use. To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (CNG) to power our transportation economy and bring costs down. This will save over two trillion Naira a month, being used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education. To this end, we will be distributing a million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicles that transport people and goods and who currently consume 80% of the imported PMS and AGO. We have started the distribution of conversion kits and setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector. We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation. Our administration has shown its commitment to the youth by setting up the student loan scheme. To date, 45.6billion Naira has already been processed for payment to students and their respective institutions. We established the Consumer Credit Corporation with over N200billion to help Nigerians to acquire essential products without the need for immediate cash payments, making life easier for millions of households. This will consequently reduce corruption and eliminate cash and opaque transactions. This week, I ordered the release of an additional N50billion Naira each for NELFUND – the student loan, and Credit Corporation from the proceeds of crime recovered by the EFCC”.

The President’s presentation came on the 4th day of the protest, and indeed it’s a pointer to the coming of pomp and pageantry, that would precede the promised peaceful protest that some how some where, turned perilous.

With this broadcast, we pray it helps to appease, placate and pacify the protesters to the total postponment of the protest. And may Allah help Nigeria, ameen.

TINUBU’S BROADCAST: A PALATABLE PRESIDENTIAL PRESENTATION THAT WAS PRECEEDED BY PERILOUS PROTESTS