I stumbled on a video on TikTok yesterday, where President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was addressing party faithful.
The National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, was there and a few other stalwarts of the All Progressives Congress.
In the video, President Tinubu said: “Our success is the future of this country. If it is food, we have enough to eat for ourselves and for our children. If it is the management of our families, we can do it also for ourselves without stealing. But we all say we must come together to rescue this country, so that your children, my own grandchildren and yours will have a country they can be proud of.”
I don’t know when he made these statements. May be before he became the president. But truth is always constant.
The statements showed to some extent that the president knows now that as the number one citizen of this great country, the task and the responsibility to rescue this country had fallen on his shoulder, and that he has no excuse than to save Nigeria from the various pits of retrogression.
As far as I know, rescuing Nigeria from the multivarious problems bedevilling the country is, no doubt, a herculean task, but I have a strong conviction that it is not impossible because we have all it takes to remake Nigeria and also realise the Nigerian dream.
Here’s a country that is blessed with everything you can think of as a nation.
Nigeria is naturally endowed as a nation that flows with abundant human and material resources. Our population is the greatest strength we can be proud of among the comity of nations.
Nigeria has one of the best brains in science and technology. We have great talents in sports and arts. We are a blessed nation with wonderful people doing great and excelling in various human endeavours. Our land is very rich, our weather is the best. In Africa and all over the world, Nigeria is surely a land of abundant human and natural blessing and wealth.
But despite all these positives, our greatest undoing is leadership and the ability to turn these natural gifts and endowments to something that will be of greater benefit to the greater number of the Nigerian people.
In the past, Nigeria has had leaders who had the opportunity to change the ugly narratives of this country, but they couldn’t because they were not really prepared or ready for the task of rebuilding the nation.
Over the years, we have had many “accidental servants”. Once they left the corridors of power, they begin to beg Nigerians for forgiveness of their “sins”.
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To err is human, to forgive is divine. God is not mocked. Life, as well as power, is transient. When you have the opportunity to improve the lives of others and impact their lives positively, you ignore and forget that leadership is the ability to respond immediately and positively to a situation.
That is why it is very difficult for Nigeria to realise the dream of becoming the greatest country that we can all be proud of.
So, as I watched the Tinubu video and saw the way he presented the vision and the dream of Nigeria as a country we can be proud of, I had a rethink that maybe the president is truly ready to take up the challenge of remaking Nigeria and set the nation on the path of greatness.
For me, I know that President Tinubu is not an “accidental servant”.He had long prepared himself for this “thankless job”. As far as we all know, President Tinubu had been planning for the prestigious position for a very long time, preparing the ground through constant political alignments and realignments.
He saw the huge gap between the South and the North.He buried his ego and swallowed his pride in order to bridge the gap. And today, he is reaping bountifully from his wide political structure that had endured for decades.
Remember, he said it at the beginning of his campaign that seeking the position of the presidency has been his life long ambition. Those who know him inside out knew he was up to something.
Now that he has achieved his lifelong ambition to become the president of this country, it is now his responsibility to help realise the Nigerian dream. Tinubu must not fail because if he fails, he would live to rue it for the rest of his life.
And I pray the Emilokan of Nigeria succeeds in his desire to reposition the country.
Tinubu must be ready to listen to the voice of the wise. He must stay away from sycophants, knowing fully well that in spite of our diversity as a nation, we must work together in Nigeria’s match towards political, social and economic freedom. Nigerians must work on the things that unite us as a nation rather than those things that divide us.
The management of a sharply divided multi cultural, ethnic nationalities like Nigeria is no mean task.
Presently the Nigerian economy is biting hard on the Nigerian citizens. Most of the problems bedeviling Nigeria are avoidable including corruption, violence, crime, ethnic hostilities, insecurity, electoral manipulations,unemployment,oil theft and subsidy scam, and structural imbalance among others.
These problems are indeed not insurmountable, but the courage and the ability to face the challenge and do the right thing remains the problem. For instance,Tinubu’s new found courage to seek unification of forex rates and removal of petrol subsidy was a big move towards reclaiming this country.
And as he said recently during the reception held in his honour in Lagos that he took the decisions to remove the subsidy and seek the unification of the forex in Nigeria’s best interest.
According to the President: “We need to stop the bleeding of our finances through fuel subsidy and the arbitrary exchange regime. We have no choice. We have to re-engineer the effectiveness of control and management of our resources in order to meet the obligations owed to Nigerians. I could have said yes, I want a share of my benefit and participate in the arbitrage. But no, God forbid. That’s not why you elected me.”
While soliciting the support of governors present at the event to work with him in ensuring even development of the country, Tinubu said: “We will work together with an open door policy. We will bring Nigeria from the brink to a resilient economy. I want us to be partners so that we can rescue our land and make it a born-again nation.”
As far as I am concerned, if truly the president really means what he had been saying, then he is on course because he has started well as the the best approach to realise the Nigerian dream of a prosperous nation is in the ability to correct the mistakes of the past.
. Aderemi writes from Lagos.