How Tinubu has been governing Nigeria by impulse – Tunde Bakare 

Nigeria is being run on the impulse of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, according to the Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare.  

During a speech at his church on Sunday on the theme, ‘Vice, Virtue & Time: Three Things That Never Stand Still,’ the cleric and politician said the first impulsive act of Tinubu was the removal of fuel subsidy on the day of his inauguration without a cushioning plan. 

He also cites the declaration of war against Niger which Tinubu’s led ECOWAS announced without first exploring a peaceful resolution of the crisis. 

Hear him: “When, in his inauguration address on May 29, 2023, President Tinubu announced that ‘fuel subsidy is  gone’ despite the cautious exclusion of that contentious subject from the inauguration speech by his advisers, it was clear that our nation had been unwittingly plunged into chaos by very poor change management process.

“Whatever the president’s true motivations were, it is clear that he put the cart before the horse. What is also clear is that the resident was economical with the truth by giving Nigerians the impression that he was taking a courageous move to remove the fuel subsidy when the previous government had already taken that step.

“As Nigerians would later learn, subsidy payment had already been ended by the Buhari administration, and no subsidy was paid in 2023 even though there was provision for it on paper up to June 2023.

“What is again clear is that, in line with change management principles, the president should have handled more circumspectly the announcement of such an issue that borders on the livelihood of the Nigerian citizen. That would have spared Nigerians the reactionary scarcity and price hikes that immediately followed his announcement. 

“Furthermore, what is even clearer is that the president had been handed a month of grace by the previous administration; a month that should have been used to put in place cushioning effects before the official expiration of the subsidised economy,” he said. 

Bakare added: “Let us now consider the cost of just one impulsive action to Nigerians in the past few months. Even as the president in his July 31 address celebrated the N1 trillion reportedly saved from subsidy removal, what he did not tell Nigerians is the cost of his approach to the Nigerian economy. 

“According to the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME), about 4 million Micro, Small and Medium 

Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country have shut down in the two months since the subsidy removal was announced. This is even as jobs have been lost and households have been thrown into disarray due to a poorly managed policy.”

Bakare cites another impulsive action of the President, which was the declaration of war against Niger. 

He said: “This same impulsive leadership style is evident when the president recently led the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to violate an ancient principle of diplomacy that is recognised even in the Holy Book: offer peace before declaring war.

“By placing military invasion on the table from the very start before subsequently exploring diplomatic options with the coup plotters in the Republic of Niger, President Tinubu once again put the cart before the horse, thus placing Nigeria and the subregion in a precarious situation.

“Truly, those that are the loudest in their threats, are weakest in the execution of them.”