PRESIDENT TINUBU MUST STAY THE PRESENT COURSE WHILE BRINGING SUCCOUR TO NIGERIANS

By

JESUTEGA ONOKPASA.

My brother, Reno Omokri, recently shared some statistics which revealed that contrary to the propaganda of the opposition, President Bola Tinubu’s policies are gradually bearing fruit for our national economy.

Indeed, I most earnestly concur with Reno’s position on SUBSIDY REMOVAL and NAIRA FLOATATION and urge Mr President to stay the course.

Every fruit takes time to mature and that’s what we are presently experiencing.

Yes, our dear citizens of this great country are facing challenges but if truth be told, we have always faced challenges in Nigeria and what has now happened to us is the inevitable consequence of the chickens coming home to roost because past administrations preferred to paper over the cracks rather than do what was required to prevent the house from collapsing.

It is now up to President Tinubu to ensure that doesn’t happen and that is precisely what he is doing.

Those calling for the reinstatement of fuel subsidy and pegging of the Naira either don’t understand the issues or fully understand them but are acting out a clandestine script from the pit of Hell, itself.

The latter category know exactly what they are doing and we are not falling for it.

While staying the course and doing the needful to finally place this country on a strong, solid and irreversible footing for sustainable progress, there are many things the administration can do to ameliorate the condition of our citizens.

Nevertheless, whatever President Tinubu does must be similar to what he has already been doing to ensure fuel is available to Nigerians at a stable rate but most certainly NOT policy reversal.

Any REVERSAL of policy will be similar to what President Jonathan ended up doing after unadvisedly removing subsidy on New Year’s Day.

In fact, those calling for policy reversal are only trying to subject our President to the same aftermath and its consequences.

These people are trying to set us up for President Tinubu to end up as President Jonathan did and we must not let that happen.

They are entreating us to willfully fail, thus enabling them to take over, four years from now, resume their looting spree, and, finally and permanently destroy this country.

Any truly politically savvy person would immediately see that.

Indeed, it is those that got us into this mess that are urging us to return to the mess they created and may God judge them harshly.

We know the script and, sorry, it will not work.

Politics is politics and governance is governance.

This is the time for governance and governing is what President Tinubu is doing.

Many roads lead to Rome; President Tinubu has already shown us one road to stable fuel prices and we can take a similar one to solving exchange rate volatility.

Indeed, these policies of subsidy removal and Naira floatation MUST NOT be reversed because the opposite is simply both UNAFFORDABLE and UNSUSTAINABLE.

WE ARE BROKE AND DON’T HAVE THE WHEREWITHAL TO PAY FOR THE UNPAYABLE.

Let’s all do well to understand that inescapable reality in order for this country to move forward.

Nevertheless, and as we forge ahead to restoring this nation to progress and prosperity, we can ameliorate the challenges of our dear citizens via other creative solutions our President has already shown himself to be adept at.

There are many additional steps Mr President can take to correct the grotesque anomalies and macabre dislocations he met on ground.

He must go after the crooked bankers, the shady currency speculators, the food hoarders and other categories of maniacal saboteurs across the country.

President Tinubu must call the Governors to order and clamp down on their diabolical greed which induces them to convert a substantial part of the monthly allocations of their states into dollars instead of investing it on development, agriculture and salaries of workers and pensioners.

All tiers of government must be functional and Mr President should insist on the local government councils effectively playing their roles with absolutely no excuses from the local government Chairmen.

President Tinubu must realize that by far the biggest part of the present challenge is something that seems to have escaped most analysts, which is the age old abomination of satanically low salaries, wages and emoluments in this country.

There is some form of inflation everywhere in this world and a major plank of the coping mechanism developed economies have constructed to deal with it is regular and inflation-sensitive remunerations.

This country is a terrible place from the point of view of how much workers are paid.

Nowhere is this atrocity more vicious than in the private sector.

Some people have been paying their gateman, driver, cook, cleaner, house help, secretaries, waiters and other categories of workers in the private and domestic sectors the same pittances since ten years ago!

How in the world are they supposed to survive in an economy wherein prices have increased tenfold in that period?

The same people who as entrepreneurs, businessmen, company executives, restauranteurs, supermarket owners, hoteliers, etc who have increased the prices of their goods and services tenfold over that span of time are still paying utter crap to their workers, forgetting that labour is actually the MOST IMPORTANT factor of their cost of production and is already reflected in those price increases.

But they will never increase their workers salaries, will brazenly steal that increased labour cost and then blame government for everything.

We have become a nation of blame shifters who do terrible things to one another only to turn around and blame our President for what we ourselves are most guilty of.

The same hypocrites who pay their workers N30,000 and their managers N40,000 will come on television and lambast the President for not doing enough to improve the economy that they, themselves are the ones destroying.

But, they are paying their childrens’expensive school fees, changing their cars and servicing their girlfriends.

Mr President must insist that absolutely no worker, public, private or domestic, must be underpaid or howsoever cheated or denied their just remuneration in this country, henceforth.

If you will not pay your workers fair wages, do your work yourself.

If you are not willing to pay your domestic staff properly, please feel free to open your gate yourself, drive your car with your own hands, bend down and mop your house and cook your own food, for God’s sake!

If workers were being well paid, the challenges our citizens are currently facing could never be as excruciating as they are.

Any other steps we take to solve this problem without doing something drastic, onerous and fundamental about remunerations in this country will only amount to beating about the bush.

Against the background of the sabotage being orchestrated to undermine this administration by those who lost elections, two things must be made crystal clear to those who don’t care if the country collapses in their desperation for power:

1. This government is not going anywhere;

And,

2. If this government does not succeed, we might not even have a country anymore.

Any idiot out there hoping that through gaslighting, propaganda, incitement, ethnicism, regionalism or vide any other subterfuge, this government will go away is only wasting his time.

The Bola Tinubu administration is here to stay and actualize renewed hope in Nigeria.

It is in our collective best interest to ensure it succeeds.

I assure my fellow Nigerians that their President and Commander-in-Chief, President Bola Tinubu has what it takes to do what it takes.

All he needs is our support.

Onokpasa, a lawyer, is Chairman, Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG, and writes from Abuja.