By Wale Alonge

If someone has the ears of the president, he should be advised not to take with levity the protest being orchestrated for October 1st.  It is also not coincidentally that Presidents Obasanjo General Abdusalam and General Danjuma all within days are focusing attention and making what seem like coordinated public pronouncements on food insecurity and national insecurity.  The president should prepare for the night of the long night.  Let me reiterate that he needs to give an “I feel your pain” major presidential speech to the nation before October 1st.  The speech must go beyond the usual perfunctory feel good, “bear the pain, the future will be better” fluff.  A hungry angry man with hungry children and no hope for tomorrow doesn’t give a crap what a president, who rightly or wrongly has been portrayed as an uncaring profligate, living in luxury when his citizens are starving to death, have to say about the future.

Sadly, President Tinubu’s media has not served him well.  His former spokesperson the Yankee accent speaking, out-of touch-sounding, sounded too exotic, almost foreign and unrelatable to the common man.

Government is part policy part public relation and public perception.  The citizen will put up with a pain-inflicting policy if it is properly sold to them and if it is backed up with shared sacrifice by all. The president is losing  both the policy and public relation battle all at once, even though the policies are what the country needed to avoid falling into the apocalypse, the way they were deployed and the public relation effort to sell them were badly bungled.

The president’s media team adopted old school analog public relation model in a fast-moving, propaganda and fake news on steroid, social media era where most citizens get their news from WhatsApp fora.

Sadly, his media team has allowed the President’s image as an out of touch, self-dealing, rent and favor-distributing profligate to stick in the mind of the public. Hence, with confirmation bias already planted in the citizens minds, even the most ridiculous fake news becomes fact.

The President would be well advised to address the nation ASAP, coming to the table  with substantive policy correction measures.  The reported cabinet reshuffle gimmick which  is a time tested diversionary tactic used by government in trouble would not suffice.  Nigerians across class and ethnicities are souring on the Tinubu regime due to the excruciating pain inflicted by his policies, no matter how well meaning and timely they are.

The president needs to come to the nation with substantive cuts in his cabinet, massive reduction in cost of governance including cuts in remuneration across the legislative and executive branches, reduction in the bureaucracy, including ban on foreign trips unless the most essential one.  The citizens must see those in power as leading in making the same cut and sacrifices they are being forced to make in their own family lifestyle.

The recent announcement by the First Lady, of a price of 25 million to a designer for a proposed national aso-ebi to celebrate the Nigerian independence on October 1st, on the face of it looks like a well-intentioned effort to engender national unity in a time of ethnic animus and despondency.  However, the timing and optics in a time of national pain and disillusionment might feed the perception of out-of-touchness,  insensitivity and insulation from the pain of the citizens.  To ask the citizens to buy aso-ebi when their children are going to bed on empty stomach may reinforce the opposite of the First Lady’s great intention.

Time is running out and the night of long knife is at hand. A stitch in time saves night.  It might in fact be the saviour of our hard earned democracy.  The urgency and the stakes are that high.

The president like most politician is a supremely self-confident man. In fact most politicians are known to evidence some measure of egomania, otherwise who in their sane mind would state on their inauguration speech as they take the mantle of a decrepit nation whose economy has been run into an inextricable muck, state “don’t pity me, I know what I am getting to and I was the one who asked for this nightmare”.  I know I am paraphrasing here, but who says such things knowing how dire the situation of the country was when he took over.  It would be interesting to know how the president feels now.

The president needs a dose of humility and reality.  He needs to listen and come to the nation with a humble, empathetic understanding tone.  He must admit and own where mistakes have been made and acknowledge the real pain of the people.  I share his optimism, but optimism is not a petrol that powers the people’s car, nor dinner than can be fed to the starving children.

May God bless our President and may God save the republic.