By Steve Osuji
President Bola Tinubu doesn’t seem to give a damn about Nigeria. It has become apparent that in all he does, he puts himself first. His cronies come second and his country a distant third. Consider his presidency: it’s arguably the puniest since independence. As we know, past presidents and even military rulers, would headhunt the best and seasoned minds in the land and beyond to help run a new administration. This is especially so for the most sensitive cabinet positions like finance, economic advisory and strategic sectors like power and infrastructure.
Tinubu doesn’t seem to care if the country develops or moves forward under his watch. This must explain why he rigs his office boys and bag carriers into very important positions requiring deep experience and specialised skills.
FROM EDUN TO OYEDELE: Frying Pan To Fire: Mr Olawale Edun who has just been sacked from his perch as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy wasn’t the proper fit for that all-important job in the first place. For an economy brought to its feet by erstwhile President, Muhammadu Buhari, one expected a new president to scout for a transformational technocrat to fashion a reform that would return the economy to growth by half term.
Rather, Tinubu picked his errand boy from his governorship days. A man who’s at best a bean-counter who didn’t understand broad socio-economic matters.
For two and a half years, Edun doodled. Like fish out of water, he seemed not to quite understand what was happening in his environment while his boss yakked about a nebulous reform that nobody sat down to plan. Thus Tinubu has so far run the stupidest economy since independence.
Tinubu basically mops up cash from the pockets of Nigerians, keeps a good chunk; squanders a lot of it with his cronies and shares the rest with the so-called state governors.
And he tells us it’s reform. Some reform! With negative indices and outcomes, year on year… What manner of reform willfully shoves the citizenry into the abyss of poverty? Over 40 million Nigerians have become poor in less than three years Tinubu’s brain fag of a reform. We thought reform was supposed to make things better in the short run?
Wale Edun was actually out of his league, carrying a responsibility far beyond his ken. Whether it was the job that made him ill or it exacerbated an underlying condition, one can’t really tell but the point is that Edun literally keeled over on the job. He was a colossal failure.
Recall how it was his junior minister, Dr Doris Anoka-Anite who was answering questions during the last Senate Committee probe of failed budgets. He couldn’t give account of the N1.13 billion approved for capital projects funds that were never disbursed.
Recall again, that under Edun’s watch, Nigeria’s budgets have failed woeful since the inception of this administration in 2023.
Not even under the military regime were federal budgets trashed as we have witness today.
And now, another Tinubu man Friday has been eased into a big shoe. While Edun was a banker, erstwhile Finance commissioner and fund manager for over three decades, the new helms man Mr Taiwo Oyedele was Tinubu’s tax consultant and handy man.
He has no prior experience in public service and would probably come off worse than Edun in economic policy formulation and implementation.
Oyedele’s appointment has made it apparent that Tinubu merely wants someone to cover his tracks and not to run the economy. Nigeria’s economy is too important to be left in the hands of neophytes and wide-eyed popinjays.
Of course, Oyedele has no experience, gravamen nor grit to manage Nigeria’s finance, how much more coordinate the economy. So Nigeria remains in the muck while embroiled in the worst economic situation in her history.
Like most of Tinubu’s ministers, Oyedele will only take orders from his master instead of initiating policies and reforms to bring Nigeria’s economy out of the woods.
TINUBU AS ALPHA, BETA AND OMEGA: Again, nigh all past leaders/Presidents of Nigeria always had economic advisers, economic management team or even a kitchen cabinet. These are usually highly respected men and women, pre-eminent in their fields, who would serve as a sounding board to number one.
These are people who could tell a president in his face that his reform prognosis is flawed. They would usually be pressed to work in fashioning and driving workable reforms and policies.
Such teams are absent in Tinubu’s government. Tinubu is the alpha and omega of his government.
Even the provincial President Buhari had Abba Kyari, Mamman Daura, Isa Funtua, Babagana Kingibe, to name just a few as his inner circle members or cabal if you like. These are men experienced and well heeled in public service. They would proffer alternative views.
Tinubu has no such team or such luxury.
FINAL ANALYSIS: The axing of Wale Edun offers no respite yet for Nigeria. The economy will continue to falter if it remains on the current harebrained reform trajectory. Oyedele seems to have neither the capacity nor audacity to confront the president in order to reverse it at the least, review this error of a reform. So it remains a long night as Tinubu’s molue economy rattles down the slope.
LAST LINE: ONE YEAR ON, FG ILLEGALLY WITHHOLDS OSUN LGA FUNDS STILL
Over N130 billion at the end of January, the federal government continues to illegally sit on the Osun State’s LGA funds.
This is as unconscionable as it is unacceptable.
First, on the face of it, the FG has no authority to withhold any funds accruing to the sub-nationals because the subs are not a jurisdiction of the FG.
The FG and the subs (which basically is the State) are equal partners as far as the federation account is concerned. So ab initio, you do not need a lawyer or a court to establish this fact.
The FG is not dispensing any favours or lagesse to the States and LGA from the federation account.
Second, it is the states that the constitution assigns the authority and jurisdiction to oversee and supervise the LGAs in their domains. It is therefore unlawful and an overreach for the FG to deign to seize a property that rightfully belongs to a co-confederating unit.
If LGA chairmen in Osun State were illegally sacked by the governor as claimed by the FG, their recourse is to the courts and not the FG or the police as enforcers.
It is uncanny that the same lawlessness then President Olusegun Obasanjo meted to then Governor Tinubu of Lagos State in 2004 is now being repeated by a President Tinubu two decades later in 2025.
This singular action by Tinubu’s administration of withholding a state fund that accrues in a common purse is a pointer to the fact that Tinubu is far from being a democrat.
As Osun election approaches in four months, it’s apparent that the president is playing politics with the lives of millions of Osun people in the quest of a political advantage in Osun.
And what with the double standards as the same situation played out in Edo State where the new APC governor sacked all the sitting PDP LGA chairmen!
As it goes, Tinubu is fast earning his epaulettes as the most anti-democratic president in Nigeria’s history yet.
