A new dawn in Nigeria as Tinubu rises, By Kassim Afegbua

The reality in Nigeria today is that we are disjointed along religious, ethnic and geopolitical lines. This is self afflicted. We have deepened the faultlines and schisms for very parochial reasons and sentiments. We look at one another as adversaries and hate mongers struggling for space in a country of many tribes and tongues. Homogeneity of purpose is missing, and the struggle for national cohesion and patriotism has more recently, further ebbed by this and other realities that dominate public discourse. The 2023 general elections have come and gone, leaving in its trail, discontent, grievances, ethnic chauvinism, religious bigotry and other divisions that have brought our brotherhood as referred to in our anthem, to question once again. The President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has huge tasks ahead of him: the task of nation building, the task of weaving together all the centripetal and centrifugal forces to create aggregate interest for all, under the intricate logic of the skewed federation that we run. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be facing a greater task to heal the wounds in the land through robust engagement, and dialogue to address the issues that stare us in the face, especially now, in the aftermath of the general elections. He will be inheriting a backlog of issues from the outgoing government. Issues of nepotism, religious extremism, insecurity, geopolitical balancing, and national peace and stability will occupy the centre-stage of our national discourse.

Asiwaju Tinubu is no stranger to constructive engagement and dialogue. He understands the need for a stable polity. He knows that for him to achieve the optimum in delivering his electoral promises, he needs to be reconciliatory and ensure that there is a sense of belonging from every geopolitical zone. He has the insecurity challenge on his hands: insurgency, armed banditry and kidnapping amid a horde of other challenges of unemployment, job losses and poverty. If dialogue and constructive engagement would address and solve the problems of insurgency and IPOB in the South East, Tinubu should not hesitate to deploy it. If the boko haram insurgents are ready for dialogue, why not? Ditto for armed banditry and ipob operators. We need to stop the blood-letting, killings and kidnapping. We need to create a stable environment to be able to drive a national objective of state. We need to take the country as a single constituency and pursue goals and objectives that would deepen our nationality and cohesion. The country is heavily polarised along ethnic and religious lines. We expect him to consciously and deliberately put in place measures that would abate all the negatives by politics of inclusion and not exclusion.

After elections, all the issues at play during campaigns are expected to be dissected and critically analysed to obtain their positives and negatives, processed and appropriate steps should be taken to deploy what will help enrich the agenda for the country. Now that the President-elect has taken a deserved rest in Paris, during which time he must have recalibrated and redirected his thought processes toward achieving his set objectives, as enunciated in his renewed hope agenda, the expectation is that he is now ready to assemble his team of experts and appointees who would join him to deliver, and meet the expectations of the people. It is trite that he has tremendous courage and boldness to take certain decisions for the overall wellbeing of the citizenry, so we expect he would apply uncommon wisdom to win over adversarial groups and persons through actions that are altruistic and productive for the collective. The entire country is his constituency. He should demonstrate his nationalism by employing collective bargaining in dispensing with power. The success or otherwise of his government will be dependent essentially on how he’s able to win the hearts of the average Nigerian out there. We hope he instills hope, because that is what keeps the continuum afloat when all else fail. The president-elect need to bring on a new dawn. He must resonate hope and represent a new beginning that will usher in hope in the citizenry. Marginalisation, nepotism, chauvinism, selective amnesia and a culture of entitlement must be quashed in a most holistic manner to enhance national enthusiasm and patriotism. The president-elect needs friends and not political enemies if he must carry everyone along. His appointees must be inducted to propagate this style as a deliberate way to promote nationalism.

The new dawn under Tinubu’s new Nigeria must be an agenda for national rebirth and democratic accommodation. It must be anchored on the belief of national consciousness and participation. It must be a new Nigeria that is fired from the point of view of our place in global affairs while building internal cohesion and stability through politics of inclusion. Those who have ideas to help drive national narratives should be approached to be part of the new thinking, to relaunch the country on the path of growth and development, progress and prosperity. Our country and its growth must be uppermost on our minds. In confronting the challenges of national rebirth, every hand must be on deck to contribute their own quota to addressing these issues bedeviling us, so we can soon and very soon too, put paid to national acrimonies. The president-elect must expand his horizon to embrace ideas and thought-processes that would give birth to therapeutic decisions to heal the wounds in the land. Nations take decisions that would help create internal peace and tranquility, and government must come down to the level of the people, to understand and address issues from the point of view of the ordinary folks out there. The resource of Town Hall meetings which Asiwaju Tinubu deployed during the campaigns must be expanded and utilised in explaining governmental decisions at the right time using the right messaging. We cannot afford to leave behind anyone in our collective effort to building a new Nigeria where every voice matters.

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Asiwaju Tinubu, the President-elect must show his knack for excellence and brilliance in tackling our economic crises. He has the political will to stop the multiple exchange rates that have become controversial economic drawback over the years. The concept of round-tripping and making briefcase business men billionaires overnight through dollar profiteering should stop forthwith. Once the president-elect can boldly take this decision to eliminate multiple exchange rates, and subsidy removal also, he should with the support of economic experts, unlock the economy and put us on the road to prosperity. Prosperity for all and posterity. Every government has its army of economic predators, buccaneers and saboteurs who are ever ready to frustrate governmental policies, but the President-elect as a man of tremendous knowledge and insight on economic issues who can take decisions without minding whose ox is gored, must be resolute in taking decisive action against those economic predators. The ultimate aim of every government is the security and welfare of the people; that can usually not be achieved without stepping on the sore toes of some ego-defensive ideologues who never mean well for the collective. Nigeria must move away from a consuming nation to a productive one, to attract the needed foreign income to boost our international trade. It must not be all about borrowings for consumption, but borrowing to boost our economic infrastructure that would propel our growth and productivity. Some of the gains of the outgoing government must be sustained while new frontiers have to be opened up to meet the needs of the present.

The President-elect should exploit and explore the agricultural sector to widen its present scope for more productivity. One way of doing that is to engage bandits and insurgents to finally put an end to their struggle. We need to grow as a nation. We need to live amongst ourselves. We need to promote nationalism and not tribalism. We need to build a federation and fiscal federalism to engender an all embracing approach to our nationalistic engagements. We need to encourage state and local government to be part of a new thinking to make for democratic involvement in dispensing with state responsibilities. In addressing the need for restructuring, states and local governments should be given more responsibilities in specific areas of primary education, primary health care and infrastructural development. This way, the federal government will have ample time to handle foreign policy, defense, economy and agenda setting for our national rebirth. The problems that the President-elect will be inheriting are humongous but they are not insurmountable; once there is readiness to step on toes. Tinubu’s new Nigeria is one that should promote harmony and peaceful co-existence amongst all the minority and majority tribes across the country. His emergence, no doubt, is a product of long years of strategic planning, he must be seen to apply such strategic methods and approaches to doing things to get the desired results. As the nation awaits the commencement of a new dawn, we are looking forward to the renewed hope that will take us to another pedestal. God bless the new dawn.