Since August, Tinubu began the rape of the Nigerian democracy after sedating the economy with uneconomic policies and fiscal recklessness. These twin assaults have deflated the economy by forty percent thus running the nation aground in less than eighteen months of seizing power by sleight of hand.
Insecurity wherein we are witnessing a rapid descent into the Hobbessian hole where life is short, nasty, brutish and private property precarious is pervasive. The icing on the cake is the egregious clampdown on the voices of reason. There are no hours too holy nor places too sacred for Tinubu’s goons to sack. From 2am abductions to church kidnappings of Nigerians in bandit-like fashion, we are flabbergasted by these rapes of our democracy and the rule of law.
Of Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope”, if Nigerians had a choice today whether to renew or eschew his “hope”, they’ll eschew. Nigerians won’t even chew our cuds about this hopelessness. However, we are afraid that our judiciary, the last hope of the common man, is choking under the stinking armpits of Tinubu’s “executhieve” arm. Our courts are in an unholy courtship with Tinubu and are being influenced to rubber stamp these travesties. We are witnessing an incest. A threesome among the organs wherein our legislature and judiciary are being screwed by Tinubu’s “executhieve”. Organs that are supposed to be independent and to undertake checks and balances are now in bed cuddling under the same duvet. Our hard-won democracy is mutating into an “Agbadocracy” – a “total” State Capture “by and for” the president and his men.
Scores of patriotic Nigerians who had the balls of steel and the teats of human milk to speak up demanding good governance and fiscal responsibility from this maladministration were massacred in the first week of August. Thousands of Nigerians have been hunted down and hurled into the gulag under very ridiculous and concocted pretexts. We have seen State-sponsored abductions happening in the dead of the night and also in places of worship.
We are afraid! Afraid not of fighting but of not fighting for the Soul of our Nation. We are afraid for the future of the next generation if we let this totalitarian “Agbadocracy”, this Emilokan Stalinism, fester unchecked without the antiseptics of resistance. We have every reason to be afraid. Unfortunately, our patriotic reasons have been reduced to treason. Under Tinubu’s republic, the exercise of constitutional rights has become treasonable rather than reasonable. Treason used to be the most serious crime against the State. Now treason is cheaper than chips. As a matter of fact, it is being thrown around for free, and you could definitely catch some for reading this article.
Members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm have also suffered aggression. Bloggers and whistleblowers have been abducted, held in solitary confinement, starved, denied and delayed access to legal and medical aid. The leadership of the Nigerian Labor Congress has had its own share of the treason being thrown around by Santa Clauses of treason – Tinubu and Ribadu. However, we have more reason to be afraid about the docility of the Nigerian Bar Association which used to be the traditional bastion of resistance when the rule of law and civil liberties come under attacks such as is currently unfolding.
The Emilokan administration is in overdrive mode in its clampdown while the triggers, inflation, insecurity, over bloated government expenditure, a skewed political structure, a crumbling economy, energy and fuel crises, multidimensional poverty, etc. remain rife yet ignored.
WAY FORWARD:
We can go on and on but you do not have all day. We have not shifted the goalpost on our demands. Except that our original demand for the unconditional and immediate release of all prisoners of conscience now includes thousands of Nigerians in Tinubu’s captivity. Let our people go!!!
We patriotic Nigerians who do not have our own share of the treason bounty yet, strongly demand that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu make a U-turn from his blind rush towards the cliff.
He has much more pressing issues to tame vis-à-vis the people’s demands, a crumbling economy, energy and fuel crises, insecurity, hunger and hardship, reinstatement of a corruption-free subsidy regime, overhaul of INEC and the judiciary, a sovereign national conference to reconstruct the constitution, and also reconstitute this lopsided federal structure among others.
We the people hope that President Tinubu will halt his season of treason and hearken to the voice of reason!
Olusegun Opeyemi Oduntan,
Ikenne, Ogun State.