On August 31, the Minister for Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, SAN, announced the suspension of the Nigerian Air Project, thus stirring up more controversy over the PPP project signed by the Federal Government with the Ethiopian airline under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Keyamo, who served as the Minister of State for Labour in the Buhari administration did not elaborate on the reason for the suspension except that “A few months after Nigeria Air was launched with so much fanfare, using a borrowed airplane, it is now suspended.”
The Minister said further: “I owe it to the Government and Nigerians to provide an honest assessment.”
What Keyamo did not say, according to the critics of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, is that Air Nigeria is one of the untidy legacies of his predecessor, Buhari which should either be done away with, or completely reviewed.
The now still-birth Airline was the baby of Hardi Srika, Buhari’s cousin and the immediate past Aviation Minister who was roundly criticized over the alleged corruption which trailed the project. As an icing on the cake, Kayamo, also, cancelled the concession of Airports.
Since the incumbent came into office on May 29, 2023, he has not left anyone in doubt of his readiness to do away with some policies and projects that he inherited from his predecessor.
Three months in office, so far, as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, Tinubu has not directly attacked the former President, according to those watching what is going on in the polity, but they hinted that the incumbent has taken actions that indicate that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with a number of decisions made by the man who handed over power to him.
Tinubu and Buhari are of the same ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. Tinubu was, also, the Leader of the Party as everybody called him that. So, why do away with some of the actions taken by his predecessor.
A day before Keyamo brought down the hammer on Nigerian Air, Tinubu had bared his fangs by appointing a new Board and Management for the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, after sacking the former Board led by Lauretta Onochie, an ardent supporter of the former President.
The former NDDC Management had barely spent eight months in office out of its four-year tenure before it was sacked. The fact that the President retained Samuel Ogbuku as the Managing Director / Chief executive of the interventionist agency, some say, is a pointer that Onochie was the target.
“There’s no other way to show that he, perhaps, wany a clean sweep president in utter disdain than what he’s presently doing. Even though Tinubu has not verbally attacked Buhari, from his body language, you can clearly see that he’s fighting a cold war with his predecessor,” an APC chieftain from the North said to the magazine in confidence.
The APC politician may be right in a sense, considering what other analysts described as an alleged ongoing vendetta against the former president since he left power barely four months ago.
“Apart from the policy decisions taken by the administration of Tinubu, some utterances of his aides lately have clearly pointed to the direction that all is being done to discredit the former president,” Sam Akintola, a political analyst said. According to him, “You can deduce from what the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said recently that Tinubu’s administration ‘met a bad economy’ from Buhari”.
President Tinubu is not only trying to dissociate himself from his predecessor, he explained, the president is also trying to ensure that key figures “in that administration he considers as enemies” are punished too.
This may not be far from the truth as President Tinubu has not left anyone in doubt of his anger against some key functionaries in the immediate past administration, particularly those believed to have worked against his election as President.
One of such, according to close watchers of events in the country, is Godwin Emefiele, the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN governor.
Since his suspension from the vantage position in June, and eventual arrest the day after, the embattled Emefiele has been detained by the DSS, who initially accused him of economic sabotage and for sponsoring terrorism, but later charged him with illegal possession of firearms. That has since been withdrawn.
Emefiele’s detention has been declared illegal by a Federal High Court in Lagos, which ordered his release. But that has not been done.
The former apex bank governor has now been charged with a 20-count charge of contract fraud totalling over N6 billion while in office. The charge has been described by not a few critics of President Tinubu as a plot to keep Emefiele in detention perpetually.
Those who know also said Emefiele is being punished for some critical actions that he took while in office, including the Naira redesign policy, believed to have been targeted at Tinubu to stop him from being elected President in the February 25 Presidential election.
The Naira swap policy introduced in December 2022 by the CBN has been seriously criticized by not a few Nigerians as a result of the pains it inflicted on them, but analysts insist that Emefiele could not have carried it out without approval from Buhari, his boss.
The policy was suspended immediately Tinubu took power from Buhari three months ago.
Apart from Emefiele who was suspended from office, Abdulrasheed Bawa, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is among the top officials from the former administration that has been removed from office.
Bawa’s case is very instructive, close watchers of this administration said, because he has also been detained by the DSS without any charge against him following his suspension by President Tinubu.
Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, while reacting to the detention of both Emefiele and Bawa described the action of the Federal Government as illegal, noting that the administration of Tinubu has no regard for the rule of law.
Critics of Tinubu’s administration insist that the two former officials are being punished for the role they played in Buhari’s government, particularly how they treated some ex-government functionaries in that government who are now serving under Tinubu’s government.
For instance, Bawa’s predicament has been linked to his prosecution of the immediate past former Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, for alleged corruption. The ex-governor is now a Minister in Tinubu’s cabinet. Instructively, both Emefiele and Bawa were away the third highest National Honour, Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR, by Buhari, for their invaluable service by a few days before he left office.
Meanwhile, analysts insist that President Tinubu is following the precedence set by others before him considering that Nigerian leaders rarely continue with the legacies of their predecessors.
He’s only trying to be his own man, by asserting his authority his supporters said.
