By Frank Tietie
The only way President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be different from former President Goodluck Jonathan, who served one term, is to do things differently than Jonathan did.
President Jonathan attempted and failed to remove the petroleum subsidy because misguided civil society activists intimidated him. APC power-hungry politicians led by Tinubu and Buhari desperately sought to unseat him by latching onto any populist grounds.
Jonathan also tried to reset Nigeria onto a path of progress by convening the 2014 National Conference. Still, he failed to implement the recommendations when some prominent governors and members of his own ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, including Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State, Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, Aliyu Wammako of Sokoto State and Abdulfatah Ahmed, opposed him and created serious tension for him by defecting to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
Other prominent PDP members who terrified Jonathan from implementing the far-reaching recommendations of the 2014 National Conference were Aminu Tambuwal and Bukola Saraki, who led about 50 serving members of the House of Representatives and about 25 serving Senators at the time to defect from the PDP to the opposition APC.
A confused President Jonathan was further hoodwinked in 2014 by fifth columnists in his administration and some prominent PDP leaders. They persuaded him that implementing the Conference recommendations could wait until after the elections, which they had primed him to win. But they indeed hated his planned reforms and preferred the status quo, which benefited them. So they set him up for a humiliating defeat by first promising support across the North and South, then swore to themselves to work against him. Jonathan lost, but he didn’t really lose. Nigerians lost the opportunity to remove the petroleum subsidy much earlier under an administration that was more responsive and accountable. Nigerians also lost a golden opportunity of a lifetime to implement a national consensus provided by the National Conference to correct the irregularities of a forced and convoluted federation whose progress and development had been, and remain, arrested by its politics of domination, suspicion, and corruption.
President Bola Tinubu is again at the threshold of creating history after he displayed courage in removing the petroleum subsidy and attempting to establish State Police, matters once considered impossible to achieve because of entrenched interests.
Through a mathematical historiographical lens, President Tinubu’s current push to establish State Police aligns with the earlier intrigues that led to Jonathan’s botched implementation of the National Conference. The clear common factors in the two situations include upcoming presidential elections just months away and a crucial national fundamental shift in Nigeria’s security governance as a federation through the establishment of state police, which is as significant as implementing the conference recommendations.
What President Jonathan failed to realise was that if he had implemented some, if not all, of the National Conference recommendations, he would have been rewarded with re-election or an extended presidency, all for Nigeria’s good.
President Bola Tinubu must continue to steer and stay on his path of courage in establishing State Police to the end, especially before the January 2027 presidential elections. He must resist being intimidated and blackmailed by the mixed reactions following his decision to remove petroleum subsidies, to which a focus on gains and the deployment of cooperative communication may help to elicit a greater national understanding, but to baulk and kowtow to critics who have urged him to defer the establishment of state police till after the election would spell catastrophic consequences for his reelection.
Frank Tietie
Nigerian Lawyer, Media Personality and
Executive Director,
Citizens Advocacy for Social & Economic Rights (CASER), writes from Abuja