Buhari’s failure repeating itself all over again in Tinubu’s young Presidency

My fear now is that President Muhammad Buhari’s failure is about to repeat itself in double portions in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. 

The failures which were catalyzed by making hasty decisions and introducing quick policies with no proper consultations or research which ended up causing unwarranted suffering to the masses. 

For instance, remember February this year when the presidency working together with the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the new naira notes prohibiting the use of old naira notes without getting sufficient new naira notes into circulation. Well, that caused a lot of suffering and citizens revolted, the revolution caused the damage of properties and the loss of lives.

The same thing repeated itself yesterday during the inaugural speech of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he said specifically that “fuel subsidy is gone” and also said that he’s working on making sure that there is a unified exchange rate on foreign exchanges. I can bet that he said all those things out of excitement thinking that’s what people want to hear without him and his aides carrying out enough research into those topics; well those statements caused fuel prices at the petrol stations to jump from N194 to N600 naira per litre and it also caused long queues again at the petrol stations. Before his aides could issue a statement that the subsidy removal will not be happening immediately it was already late and the masses are already suffering from it. The same thing is happening with the price of dollars now. Because of the statement made on foreign exchange, the price of dollars at the black market also jumped up today.

Nigerian leaders do not know that whatever they say even jokingly always has an immediate and long-lasting effect on the economy. Tinubu barely spent 24 hours in office and he’s already causing suffering for people by what he said during his inaugural speech. 

Since we are finally back to this subsidy talk again, I have no problem with subsidy removal but what is the assurance that the money will be properly utilized, accounted for and not embezzled by political kleptomaniacs? Things as deep as subsidy removal should never be done in a hurry, it should be a gradual process because it is the fuel that drives the economy of Nigeria; only the panic that subsidy will be removed caused fuel to be sold at N600 per litre at filling stations and as a response to this, the price of Uber/ taxis also jumped through the roof. The cost of production will increase as well further causing the price of consumer goods to increase. It’s a ripple effect and it’s no magic. 

I wish President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration well and I hope they won’t be making hasty decisions that will have brutal effects on the masses just like President  Buhari’s administration.