Nasir’s Odious Endgame
In 24 hours, Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State, embarked on a media blitz. Between Wednesday and Thursday evening, he granted interviews to Channels TV, TVC, BBC Hausa Service and Arise News. The theme has been the same – to blame some so-called elements in the Villa (Nigeria’s seat of government) for the naira and fuel shortages threatening to undermine the economic fabric of this country. According to the governor, the naira redesign and fuel scarcity are aimed at making the presidential candidate of the ruling APC Bola Ahmed Tinubu unpopular and undermining his campaign to become the next president of Nigeria. Irrespective, Tinubu, he is convinced, will triumph in the February 25 presidential poll. So why is Nasir fretting?
In all the interviews, Nasir has been careful not to blame President Muhammadu Buhari and the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele (LOL). These amorphous fifth columnists, he claims, have somehow managed to convince the president of the propriety of the naira redesign policy and the short timeframe within which Nigerians are expected to transit from old currency notes to new currency notes. He also revealed that as far back as 2021, he advised Buhari to stop subsidising the price of fuel due to the debilitating impact on the country’s finances and government’s capacity to fund capital projects. Yet, some unnamed persons, hoodwinked the president to retain unsustainable subsidy payments, resulting in the protracted fuel queues that we have today. Mind you, Nasir promised to unveil these nebulous creatures, resident in the Villa, after February 27. Why wait till February 27?
When probed by his interviewers as to why Tinubu and his surrogates are losing sleep over the naira redesign and if the scarcity of new naira notes might upend attempts to bribe voters on election day, Nasir pushed back, alleging that the APC (or is it the Presidential Campaign Council of the ruling party) is concerned about inconvenience Nigerians are going through accessing new currency notes at the banks and ATMs. How disingenuous!
The gospel truth is neither Nasir nor Tinubu care about the suffering Nigerians are experiencing accessing cash from the financial system. Their goal is to cause disaffection, incite the public, and engineer a conflagration that would force government to suspend the naira redesign policy until after the elections. For crying out loud, there are 18 presidential candidates contesting to become Nigeria’s next president, come February 25. We have barely heard a whimper from 17 of them on the currency redesign due to their quest for a level playing field and desire to ensure that the general election is not monetised. It is only Tinubu and his surrogates who have suddenly become the most sensitive people on mother earth and now worry about the plight of Nigerians.
Why have Nasir and Tinubu not demanded to know why the naira is very scarce, yet it somehow manages to make its way into hands of revellers who have been spraying newly minted bank notes at parties with reckless abandon? Why have they not interrogated and called on the security agencies to authenticate the veracity of a viral video showing an alleged terrorist and his cohorts boasting that they have amassed sufficient new bank notes to procure more weapons for their criminal enterprise?
Another curiosity is where Nasir was when Buhari (who he finds blameless) suspended the Petroleum Industry Act in January 2022 because the president considered it politically suicidal to eliminate petrol subsidies one year before the elections. Did he at the time rush to the president and advise him not to embark on this path, as Nigeria lacked the fiscal space to sustain subsidy payments until June 2023? Did he attempt to advise Buhari that a law that already provides for the removal of subsidies cannot be suspended? Did he remind the president that Nigeria would be pushed into a cul-de-sac reminiscent of 1996 to 1998 when NNPC was the sole importer of petroleum products and Nigeria was bedevilled by protracted fuel shortages and queues under the military junta headed by General Sani Abacha? Did the Kaduna governor try to joggle Buhari’s memory that Nigeria under Abacha had scant forex reserves, was caught in a debt trap, and lacked the wiggle room to juggle its finances? Did he tell the president that the APC government that he leads was likely to set Nigeria back by some 25 years?
It is very easy to discern that Nasir, due to his coherence, was either assigned the role of interim spokesman on the naira redesign and fuel shortages, or volunteered to do so on behalf of Tinubu, who has become very susceptible to talking gibberish that only the APC presidential candidate understands. Well, we are watching with bated breath to see how successful Nasir or Tinubu are at rallying the public to their side. It is an abominable effort by both men to fan the embers and provoke the Nigerian people into the streets with just a few days left to the elections. It is our fervent hope that they do not succeed.
- MAIN
