Tupac Shakur Vs. The Notorious B.I.G.: The Greatest Rivalry In Hip-Hop History

By Polycarp Onwubiko

 

It is laughable that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, indulged in fantasy by suggesting that foreign investors would rush into Nigeria to establish industries, despite the ever-growing and pervasive insecurity throughout the country.    

He stated, "The budget will position the economy for foreign investors to come into the country through private partnerships."

The fact remains that using unethical means to seize power to become the President of Nigeria, as Tinubu has allegedly done, is a far cry from what governance demands. The stark reality has confronted the president, and he has failed to acknowledge the searing reality in the upswing of the country's misery index.

During the election campaign, the masses are usually deceived with fantastic promises, aligning with the age-old saying that "political campaign promises are like pies made to be broken." Tinubu's election manifesto promised a 10 percent allocation to the health sector, but in the 2024 budget, it ended up with a paltry 4.9 percent. The Appropriation Bill allocates 12.5 percent to the social sector, including health and education.

To show that Tinubu has not been seriously committed to improving the overall growth and development of the country, away from the eight years of his predecessor, Buhari, he paid no heed to the age-long clarion calls for reducing the ever-growing cost of governance. There was no mention of the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye Report, which recommended substantial reduction in the cost of governance through the merger and scrapping of many MDAs with overlapping duties and some MDAs acting as drain pipes of public funds, which need outright closure.

Furthermore, it is self-deception and optical illusion to hope for massive foreign direct investment (FDI) while foreigners are far better informed about the pervasive and intractable insecurity in Nigeria. Foreigners are aware that multi-ethnic nationalities should have multi-level policing for efficient and effective security. 

They also understand that Nigerian leadership, from the Buhari administration to the Tinubu administration, is seemingly indifferent to the pervasive and intractable insecurity throughout the country. This is evident in their insistence on maintaining a centralized security architecture, seemingly to please the venality of "Caliphate Colonialists and Cabalist hegemonists" who believe that the country is within their control.

Tinubu's budget ignored the nationwide calls for restructuring the lopsided federation for equity, fairness, justice, and fair play in the distribution of national wealth. It turned a blind eye to the imperative need for a people's constitution through a National Conference of ethnic nationalities to discuss how all Nigerians want to live together with realistic principles of a federal system of government, as practiced in the First Republic.

The fact remains that without restructuring the lopsided federation, President Tinubu is merely wasting his time, as his four-year tenure in Aso Rock would be akin to that of his predecessor, Buhari, who believed that the country belongs to his Fulani tribe. Buhari achieved the catastrophic agenda of opening the borders in the northern part of the country for the infiltration of Fulani invaders masquerading as herdsmen from the Sahel region of West Africa. 

These invaders embarked on ethnic cleansing in southern Kaduna and middle belt states, occupying ancestral lands, and causing mindless slaughter of the indigenous population. While the surviving ones languish in makeshift refugee resettlements, President Tinubu seems to pretend that the people dying in droves are not worthy of attention.

 

Polycarp Onwubiko, public policy analyst.