Editorial : Tinubu Has Much to Worry About in 2025
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his new year broadcast sounded optimistic that “By the grace of God, 2025 will be a year of great promise in which we will fulfill our collective desires.” But deep down in his heart, Tinubu knows that the tap roots of a deeper malady – struggling economy, rising social tension and a decapitated livelihood which frequently grabbed headlines in 2024 will continue to test him in 2025.
Every Nigerian knows that our nation seems to have lost is moral fibre, and even more so under President Tinubu’s watch. Nigeria, a country that used to be bold and assertive has become so hapless that it ended up being at the bottom of every positive global index and at the top of every negative global rating in 2024. Yet, the president has recently invented a verbal amulet and pressed it into constant service of those helping him to rule the country, who continued stuffing our ears with the cliche “patience is required” by citizens because policies of the government will ultimately yield positive results for the economy.
This “patience is required” cliché has continued to assail of ears since the dawning of this administration. Perhaps, we have become so blind that the gains which were promised have eluded our sight so far. Yet, to drive home this verbal amulet, at a time when Nigerians were trying hard to dispel the boring hangover of 2024, President Tinubu drew to the fullest of his diminutive stature reeling statistics which are several kilometres away from reality, and declaring that “Economic indicators point to a positive and encouraging outlook for our nation. Fuel prices have gradually decreased, and we recorded foreign trade surpluses in three consecutive quarters. Foreign reserves have risen, and the Naira has strengthened against the US dollar, bringing greater stability.”
Without doubts, it must be clear even to the hardest of optimists that belief in Tinubu’s policies is now taking a supreme effort because the intervening months after the removal of fuel subsidies and abolishing of multiple foreign exchange systems, have spun a cobweb of disappointments across our yearning minds since the country has been at its economic worst, suffocated by debts and wobbly economics with a collapsed currency. Most Nigerian are dying every day in hunger. Not the hunger of one day or one week, but the hunger that knows no end. For many Nigerians, the year 2025 seems to presage a more disastrous repetition of 2024 because the president’s New Year speech continued on the same path of mouthing doubtful cliches, with less action as handmaid.
The biggest punch at Tinubu’s New Year broadcast comes from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which made a statement through its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba that President Bola Tinubu’s New Year broadcast paints a gloomy picture of what lies ahead of Nigerians in 2025. According to PDP, the entire address confirms its fears that the President has since lost touch with the realities being faced by Nigerians as a consequence of his administration’s policies.
What Tinubu need to do this year is to shift the accelerator by accompanying, as fast as possible, his policy reforms on fuel, electricity, exchange rate etc with tangible complementary policies that will bring succour to the citizens, policies that will not lean too much on the catch phrase “patience is required” while the sordid reality of people dying in hunger and deprivation continues.
A policy that is in the interest of “we, the people” is not the one that will continue to strangulate us to death, it is not a sort of antechamber to the tomb. Tinubu’s social contract with the people should not be performed in the manner of the brotherhood of the axe. You climb up the tree with your axe snugly tucked into your shoulder, but as soon as you have chopped off the tree branch you fling the axe away to the ground, and it drops – sometimes with a broken handle. This, certainly, is not what Nigerians want.
A Nigerian citizen and public affairs analyst, Nick Agule, in his stinging indictment against Tinubu’s policies spoke my mind when said that President Tinubu needs to know that Nigerians have been patient but the patience is fast running out because the pains are becoming unbearable! Policies to mitigate the sufferings must be activated urgently and only then will the patience of Nigerians be obtained. When you are hungry but there’s evidence that food is being prepared in the kitchen, you are more patient! Nigerians aren’t seeing action in the kitchen which is resulting in the impatience! The President and his cabinet need to get into the kitchen in this 2025.
