As Nigeria and the rest of the world embrace year 2025, Prof Udenta O Udenta, the founding National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD) and a Distinguished Fellow of Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, has a stark advice for President Bola Tinubu: your vision of governance and style of service delivery have stymied their impact so climb down from your high horse, eat a humble pie and engage in a necessary course correction before we lose it all.
In a statement he issued in Abuja on New Year’s day Prof Udenta pointed out that in a major statement on the state of the nation he issued some months ago and in a series of major TV shows he did point out that President Tinubu does not only want to transcend the political state in formulating and implanting his policy choices but has demonstrated an acute sense of distaste, contempt and scorn for the political class. He warned that this authoritarian and illiberal governance model has undermined his credibility and ability to govern as he will be resolutely and stoutly resisted by political stakeholders who have deep geostrategic interests to protect. Two policy decisions in Prof Udenta’s perspective more than prove his thesis right.
Prof Udenta contends that it’s not surprising that Sen Bala Mohammed, Governor of Bauchi state and Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, in a Christmas Day message to Christians and a major Channels TV interview, stoutly and courageously pushed back on President Tinubu’s inability to consult widely and persuasively before rolling out his policies like the Tax Reform Bills but rather wants everybody in every state and in every region in a complex, diverse and multi cultural entity like Nigeria to swallow them hook, line and sinker.
Prof Udenta averred that Gov Bala Mohammed is not alone in demanding a thorough re-visit of the tax bills. The list of those who are either opposed to the bills or are urging for wider and deeper consultations are region: the Northern Governors Forum/Northern Traditional and Nationalities groups; the National Economic Council headed by the Vice President and made up of the 36 Governors and other critical stakeholders, the House of Representatives, the South East and South South Senate Caucuses; and lately the Nigeria Labour Congress, among many others.
In Prof Udenta’s words: “like I predicted countless times the nation’s political estate will visit its fury on President Tinubu for his perceived arrogant and disdainful attitude toward its collective self. The Nigerian political establishment will teach him a harsh lesson in humility and a true appreciation of the limits of presidential power as enormous as its potentials and possibilities are. As of today, the Tax Reform bills lie prostrate in the National Assembly barely breathing due to a self inflicted tragedy of putting the proverbial cart before the horse. And rather than gather accelerated momentum towards their passage their fate appears stymied, for now, by an excess of presidential hubris and insufferable arrogance. It’s time therefore for President Tinubu’s noisy aides to get off the back of Gov Bala Mohammed, organized Labour, civic groups and the media who believe that the guardrails of democratic governance must be erected, protected and sustained, and for President Tinubu himself to climb down from his high imperial horse, eat a humble pie and re-focus and re-direct his method of public engagement this 2025 and beyond”.
Concerning the situation in the Sahel region and very specifically with regard to the tensions in the relationship between Nigeria and Niger Republic Prof Udenta has a harsh rebuke for President Tinubu and his government. In his opinion “Nigeria’s ‘foreign policy’ is now completely incoherent and in a state of rapid decomposition. And I inverted foreign policy because it doesn’t currently exist in Nigeria in the sensible fashion of the nation having a Grand Strategy in all our foreign policy thrusts, and also given the absence of ambassadors in Nigeria’s foreign missions a few months shy of two whole years! It took the lackluster regime of President Muhammadu Buhari to unravel Nigeria’s carefully constructed foreign policy vision. It took President Bola Tinubu’s administration just a few months on assuming office to preside over the implosion of ECOWAS. A regional institutional platform erected nearly 50 years ago and which has weathered powerful headwinds and other structural shocks was allowed to unravel so rapidly”.
Continuing, Prof Udenta agonized that “ while the OAU of the 1960s and 1970s was conditioned by the spirit and grand vision of decolonization and the restoration of African sovereignties the 1970s witnessed both the birth of ECOWAS as a formidable regional agency for economic cooperation and integration and the deepening of Afrocentric foreign policy thrusts that resisted Western hegemony in Africa. In the same way , while the 1980s and 1990s were defined by the Concert of Medium Powers construct that saw to the establishment of ECOMOG and the implantation of the logic of peace enforcement as regional peace building prerogatives, the early 2000s witnessed the dawning of the AU and the rise of the tripartite strategic inheritances of African Peer Review Mechanism, NEPAD as a continental development paradigm, and the erection of the African Peace and Security Architecture domiciled within the Directorate of Politicsl Affairs of the AU”.
In querying the realty that underpins the contemporary Nigerian foreign policy space Prof Udenta stated thus: “What then is the foreign policy vision of the current government? The shrinking of ECOWAS geostrategic organism in terms of size, coherence, reliability and efficiency, the virtual loss of the Sahel region by Nigeria and possibly the whole of Francophone Africa if the current stance of the governments of Cote d ‘Voire and Senegal with regard to France is anything to go by, a perceived slavish kow-towing to same France when virtually all your near neighours have deep and abiding political and security disagreements with her”.
Prof Udenta believes that “the Sahelian, West African and international relations gambles of the current administration have compromised Nigeria’s national security in more than one direction, impaired our relationship with our near neighours particularly Niger Republic, project us as an unreliable regional partner and even damaged our relationship with France for good in the strategic context in which our contained relationship with her will imply a betrayal of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d’ Voire and Senegal”.
Prof Udenta also lamented that “more worrisome is,in fact, the demonstrable contempt with which his regime holds the North and the apparent lack of empathy, compassion, and respect of its sensibilities and sensitivities in the way and manner the tensions in Nigeria- Niger are being managed. Anyone remotely familiar with the reality on ground in Northern Nigeria will not fail to appreciate the wisdom in Mohammed Heikal’s assertion that the destiny of any nation is a consequence of geography and demography. The destiny of Niger Republic and Northern Nigeria is inextricably tied together in history, culture and blood and yet this government appears clueless about this. My advice to President Bola Tinubu in this regard is to again climb down from his imperial high horse, admit that he has been comprehensively misadvised with regard to managing ECOWAS and our Sahelian neighbours and change before it is too late. As it stands now Nigeria’s national security is now acutely compromised from Niger to Senegal for an indeterminate and pertinently unproven benefits in our exaggerated relationship with France under his watch”.
