Jonathan also took Tinubu’s difficult decisions

On Thursday morning, Nigerians caught that rare sight of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu addressing them himself. The occasion was indeed special, because it was a live broadcast. It was Nigeria’s 66th Independence anniversary and it seemed that the president was duty-bound to address the nation. Yet again, through that nationwide address, he tried to brighten the day and renew the hope of Nigerians in the country and in his administration. President Tinubu rehabilitated his usual promises and tried to lift the mood of a beleaguered citizenry by telling the results of his government’s reforms. He said we have “passed through our own Red Sea” and that “our destination is in sight.” He did what a president, who is not authoritarian, should do on such occasions.

However, in the course of doing that, Tinubu contended that our country had routinely postponed the difficult decisions which would have driven us faster to that promised land. He said: “For too long, the promise of Nigeria was undermined by choices that postponed difficult decisions and allowed deep economic distortions to grow.” Obviously, he was referring to past Nigerian leaders, even though he took it from 2023 when he came in as the successor of his APC’s Muhammadu Buhari. Then, he reminded us that “hope was nearly gone” and that “the country’s situation was darker than ever.”

That ‘difficult decision’ President Tinubu is referring to is the removal of subsidy on the price of petroleum products in Nigeria. To be fair to the president, it was not difficult for him to remove petrol subsidy. Indeed, he did it with a simple wave of the hand and the casual pronouncement that ‘subsidy is gone’. For his government, it was that simple and unplanned. The other difficult decision of President Tinubu which also boarders on the economy, is the scrapping of multiple foreign exchange rates. That step was geared towards a particular destination in the country. It must therefore have been something difficult to do because of some particular dollar beneficiaries whose pilfering hands were removed from the till. But the single exchange rate regime did not resonate as a bold step as the audacious removal of subsidy on petrol.

To President Tinubu, this was him being bold and decisive. But Buhari’s government also approved a decision to end the fuel subsidy regime in Nigeria. It set its implementation date at July 1, 2023 before he completed his second tenure on May 29, 2023. In fact, the 2023 budget presented by the Buhari administration earmarked N3.35 trillion for subsidy payments for only January to June 2023, after which no other money was budgeted for subsidy payments. That was also bold and difficult. It was also escapist. But what it meant, as can be argued, is that Buhari gave whoever that was going to succeed him the window through which he could look at that decision on fuel subsidy and plan his steps accordingly. That was bold and humane.

But even before the cloud called Buhari, there was a certain storm called Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Ex-President Jonathan took that same bold step. He pronounced the removal of fuel subsidy in December 2011. He came up with some economic safety nets to cushion the harsh effects of this decision. Jonathan and his government also immediately put some of these safety nets in place. Nigerians could should remember some of those things. We should still remember Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P). Respected Dr Christopher Kolade was put in charge of that committee, and it was mandated to manage the 42 per cent federal government share of the subsidy savings. The world was let into what that committee did with the subsidy savings. There was accountability and, even if it didn’t last as long as it was envisaged, Nigerians knew how much was being saved from subsidy  removal periodically, and they were also briefed told at intervals what the money was being used for.

However, Jonathan was not courageous enough to follow through with his ‘bold’ decision on petrol subsidy. He caved in to a sustained resistance mounted by poor, angry Nigerians who had the strong backing of some powerful people. That time, during the massive Occupy Nigeria protests in Lagos and parts of the country, fingers were pointed in the direction of subsidy beneficiaries as the force behind the protests.

The same Tinubu, who called out his predecessors on October 1, 2026, was among those Nigerians who stood solidly, and also spoke vehemently, against subsidy removal in January 2012. He even warned that Goodluck Jonathan risked a people’s revolution if he insisted on going ahead with the subsidy removal policy. Is it not interesting that, today, President Bola Tinubu has officially and unofficially described subsidy payment and its beneficiaries in quite ugly platitudes?

The world will eventually mock a man with something the same world had afflicted him with. That age-long wisdom of the Yoruba played out in the subsidy regime somersaults and petrol pricing gymnastics as it concerns ex-President Jonathan. Tinubu, in his 2012 official statement as the National Leader of the Action Congress said the removal of subsidy was a “Jonathan Tax”.

A speech like that of Tinubu inspired the stout resistance mounted by Nigerians against one of the most difficult of the decisions Goodluck Jonathan took as Nigeria’s president. Tinubu refused to understand the intricacies in petrol pricing his spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, is now explaining in reaction to an Atiku Abubakar on the same issue. Musicians took turns to perform at a stage dedicated to the Occupy Nigeria protest in Ojota, Lagos and denigrated the Jonathan government. Nollywood actors also reported at the protest venue daily to entertain and call out the government.

Kola Ogunjobi, a gifted playwright, created a character around the 2012 subsidy crisis in the radio drama series, Story-Story, bankrolled by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The name given to that character is Subsideen and it was coined from ‘subsidy’. One of the remote ideas behind Subsideen was that since Nigerians were only protesting and were not going to work, and were only locked in their homes, they would give birth to subsidy babies. That gave rise to various jokes around ‘subsidy children’, and Subsideen became both a joke and an entrenched metaphor.

So, it is not fair for President Tinubu to dismiss these efforts. It is uncharitable for him to say that his predecessors did not take difficult decisions. He cannot deny that past Nigerian leaders had also led spirited fights against subsidy, and that such decisions had cost some of them some precious things. As a beneficiary of the benevolence of Nigerians, he should be magnanimous enough to admit that he along with his All Progressives Congress (APC) has enjoyed a wide latitude as a president and ruling party.

Others – at least the Jonathan administration – planned the removal of subsidy along with the introduction of measures to cushion the effects of the policy. Tinubu did none of that. He did not have a cabinet when the subsidy removal chaos started. It started right at his inauguration. When he eventually formed his government, there was no time it was announced that the Minister of National Planning or the Minister of Finance or any of those agents of government was doing anything about the confusion. The organised labour and Nigerian workers at large needed to descend into the arena with the government before wage awards and other such things came as emergency, haphazard measures to contain the chaotic economic situation. Nigeria is still suffering the pangs of that unplanned decision. Inflation has remained at double digits and has been driving Nigerians deeper into poverty.

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Now that the president has, again, assured the citizenry that better days are here, Nigerians are hoping that this assurance is true this time. The breathless wait to see his reforms (or are they prophecies) manifest is killing. And he should be human in the implementation of his reforms.

After a shout comes the echo. The president spoke and the reactions are coming in torrents, including the arguments that he is uncharitable to his predecessors.