Hunger Protest: Trading Blame Between Tinubu And Governors

By Emmanuel Aziken

As Nigerians ponder over the lessons of the recent protest against bad governance and hunger in the land, it is becoming clear that those who ordinarily should reset the course of governance in the country have not drawn any lesson from the uprising against the status quo.

That much was espoused in President Bola Tinubu’s address to the nation on Sunday, August 4 as the steam of the protest reached feverish pitch across the nation.

The speech, which even in the consideration of sympathisers of the administration was half-hearted, did not address the fundamental issues raised by the organisers of the protest.

Even in the vacuity of the leadership, there is no doubt among the citizenry and even in the heart of the ruling political class that a message has been passed.

The people, long pulverized by the ruling class have spoken. The divisions of ethnicity, religion, and such that the ruling elite in the past employed to decimate the populace to enable it to fasten its grip on power have for once been shaken.

Instead, Nigerians of every hue and tribe were united in protesting against the hunger that is increasingly felt by among all sections of the polity.

Ordinarily, the lessons of the protests should redirect the policies and programmes of government toward enthroning positive governance.

It is, however, regrettable that instead of such conscientious inward searching, the Federal Government and enablers of the federal administration have resorted to buck-passing and trading blame.

In its blame game, administration sympathisers instead of confessing and repenting of their malodorous inclinations have employed hangers-on to push the narrative of holding the 36 state governors as responsible for the protest.

One of the most passionate choristers in the Bola Tinubu Amen Choir, that is the Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC in trying to pass the buck to the governors in a statement last Tuesday, urged Nigerians to stop scapegoating President Tinubu.

“We beseech Nigerians to shift their attention to the states and local government councils in their search for bad governance and to stop concentrating on Abuja. It is high time we stopped pressuring the center. We should stop scapegoating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima. There are so many skeletons in the cupboards of state governors.”

This indecorous narrative of pushing the blame to the governors has also been lapped by recent social media disclosures of the allocations to the states following the removal of subsidy on petrol.

What the purveyors of the argument are selling is that the states are getting enough money and should be able to handle the hardship that instigated the nationwide protest.

Yes, while it is true that the states are getting much more money from the Federal Allocation, so also is the Federal Government which under the existing Revenue Allocation Formula continues to mop 52% of the entire proceeds as compared to the states who collectively collect 26.72% of the total allocation.

What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. While it is true that a number of the states have been derelict in good governance it would be wrong to say that the responsibility for the protest should be directed at the states.

This is essentially given the fact that the hardship in the land was foisted by the twin policies of removal of fuel subsidy and the free float of the naira.

These actions were not enacted by any of the governors but by President Bola Tinubu in what his praise-singing company has described as courageous moves. But we now know that the courage that they speak of was ill-advised given the failure of the administration to build the framework for the exertion of the two policies of subsidy removal and free float of the naira.

It is in this wise that this correspondent refuses to accept the narrative of holding governors responsible for the hardship.

The fact of the matter is that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Whether the crown, and in this case, the allocation goes up or down, the Federal Government with its 52% share of the pie holds by far the higher responsibility of enthroning good governance in the land. Even more, the essential ingredients needed to redirect the rot in the system lie more with the federal government than with the states.

Trading blame is not what we need now.