By Palladium
After resisting for more than 18 months the call to hold a presidential media chat, President Bola Tinubu finally relented days to Christmas. None of the interviewers asked why he had not held a chat for so many months, and he proffered no unsolicited explanation; but the anchor, Reuben Abati, had volunteered the information that the president was not armed beforehand with the questions posed by the eight-member panel. Whether armed beforehand or not, the president shocked the panelists and most Nigerians by his composure, his self-assuredness, the candour of his answers, and his understanding of the subjects discussed. He sometimes omitted to answer parts of the often double-barrelled, or even triple-barrelled, questions, and needed to be prodded to address what he omitted, but he had full grasp of the subjects, was single-minded on controversial economic issues, and was unabashed and determined.
The president’s strength was his grasp of the subject matters in discourse, not whether he possessed the oratorical powers that often impress and mesmerise audiences. He sometimes paused, and the interviewer wondered whether he had completed answering the questions, but he resumed soon enough and tried his best to exhaust the subject. Beyond the questions posed to him, which he answered with considerable sanguinity, he also answered many other questions not verbalised, such as whether he was sentient of his surroundings. The bitter presidential campaigns of 2023, which however really began in 2022, had led many to question whether he was not already in his dotage. To catalyse public fears, opponents composed poems and musical scores to alienate him from a wavering electorate before the polls. But last Monday, he dealt with every question firmly and knowledgeably, and with even temperament, lacing many of his answers with earthy and uncomplicated humour. There was no overreach, no grandstanding, and no attempt to impress, causing some highly-placed Nigerian leaders to question his democratic credentials.
Did he answer every question to the satisfaction of everyone? Impossible. The president is not a practiced polemicist or a rhetorician of the first order in the class of Plato, Aristotle or Cicero, men who could spot the fallacy of undistributed middle from one kilometer away, and for whom syllogism was sinew over their bones. He was curt in his response to the tax reform bills, but sighed at the end that he was open to reaching some accommodation. He was not sure critics of the bills had digested its elements, not to talk of arguing its many parts with the adeptness expected of political leaders. Yet, he would not mind placating the bills’ opponents, he said. How he will mollify the rage and security and electoral threats of those, like Bauchi governor Bala Mohammed and Borno’s Babagana Zulum, who have regionalised the VAT component of the bill will, however, test his wits to no end. And when he declared peremptorily that the reforms would stay, it was red rag to a bull, the northern bull.
On price control, he said tersely that he was unalterably opposed. He said he was aware of runaway price increases, but the tenor of his answer to the question of food inflation seemed to give the impression he was inured to the pains and sufferings of the masses. Yet, his answer, for an economist and numbers man such as he is, was both inescapable and appropriate. He was almost didactic on the fuel subsidy removal and forex harmonisation issues. He argued that these measures could not be done in phases, contrary to his interviewer’s suggestion. It didn’t make sense, and the problem would not only be complicated but become calcified. Interestingly, he then proceeded from being didactic to being philosophical, for, as he put it, Nigerians were deceiving themselves and wasting resources defending the naira and miring the entire process in what he described as a cesspit of corruption. Both issues amounted, in his opinion, to spending the future of Nigerian children. If he knew it, he didn’t say so, but Nigerians resent pain, and would not mind kicking the nuisance down the road for future generations to grapple with. He also didn’t say it as provocatively, but he seemed to suggest that nothing is as dispiriting and painful as a prolonged surgery.
Critics have suggested that his views on cabinet size vis-à-vis the 2012 Steve Oronsaye Report that recommended the rationalisation of ministries and agencies showed his detachment from reality. Fortunately for him, none of his interviewers contextualised his position on the subject quiet as inelegantly. He, therefore, got away with his blithe response that he was going to retain his cabinet size, for he needed them to do the work of safeguarding the interests and welfare of more than 200m people. His answer is a tough sell, but, well, that’s the president’s perception of how he wants to get things done. Where his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, regaled his audiences with bucolic humour, President Tinubu was more difficult to stereotype. In addressing the question of whether Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike had not become a liability to the Tinubu administration going by the rambunctious manner he was carrying out his tasks, the president decried the public penchant for lawlessness and contempt for regulations, and concluded, gesturing, that he doffed his hat to the former Rivers governor. The response would of course cause trepidation in the FCT, which had hoped to get the president to clip the wing of the boisterous minister, and in the Rivers State Government House which is engaged in a deathly struggle with the former governor.
Overall, despite longstanding misgivings in some quarters about President Tinubu’s capacity to lead, the media chat has dispelled such notions and done him a world of good. He looked fit, even feisty and eager to contend with every shade of argument on the Nigerian condition, particularly the economy and politics. It is not often easy to have a president with a comprehensive grasp of national affairs especially at the strategic and ideational levels, but President Tinubu has after 18 months appeared to have settled snugly into the job. He probably knows that both he and the country are not out of the woods yet, and that even when salvation eventually dawns there is a limit to how euphoric he must get, having suggested privately that he seemed to be a tool in the hands of God for this moment. It is, however, not known whether his team prepared him for this chat, considering that his answers had no trappings of stock responses but were almost all extemporaneous. But buoyed by his television performance, it should ginger him up for far more detailed appreciation of national issues and far more knowledgeable responses. He will probably take the hints.
Perhaps it made more sense, in retrospect, that he let himself to settle into the job and be apprised of the difficult and intractable national issues he would be contending with before he ventured into the open to offer his reflections and panaceas to a discerning and exceedingly discriminating nation. His naira policy, subsidy removal, and occasional but embarrassing reversal of appointments had led many Nigerians to wonder whether he was actually prepared for the presidency as his Lagos governorship mystique suggested.
Some of his calculations might be flawed, but he was smart and sensible enough to know that in the first two years of his presidency he needed to enunciate and execute most of the volcanic measures required to retool the economy and realign the nation. Most of his measures are unpopular, and have caused tremors many Nigerians find quite unbearable. But in the months ahead, and before the politics of reelection begin to heighten, the pains should have subsided, and the wounds begin to heal. It is probably the best approach, instead of the drawn-out or phased remedies that cause pain to linger thereby stoking lasting anger well into the election period.
Sometime after this first media chat, the president and his team may need to do a post-mortem. Let them view the video all over again, particularly the unedited version, to see what corrections need to be administered, and what other positives need to be reinforced. His composure and humour in the version aired last Monday were remarkable and reassuring. But who knows, next time, whether he will not be called upon to give a long and exhaustingly extemporaneous interview that would test the texture of his composure and reveal the elastic limit of his humour. His team will hope that on that hypothetical day, when his patience and policies will be tested to the limit, nothing about him would seem choreographed or artificial. In their review of the broadcast, the president’s team must also help him understand how not to make superfluous comments, serious or humorous, until the microphones have been switched off. He was lucky last Monday that he said nothing incriminating when he bantered with the anchor, Reuben Abati, before the microphones were disconnected.
Culled from The Nation
