Is Nigeria's Political Class, Represented by the APC, an Agent of Dehumanizing Suffering for Nigerians?

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

 Is Nigeria's Political Class, Represented by the APC, an Agent of Dehumanizing Suffering for Nigerians?

                                                    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Is Nigeria's Political Class, Represented by APC,  a Largely Parasitic Cause of Suffering for Nigerians?

Can Nigeria's political class, represented by the APC, be described as a party of dehumanizing suffering for Nigerians?

Can it be seen as  a party whose landmark dealings with the Nigerian populace defines a culture of attempting to dehumanize an already deeply deprived people?

A party creating a culture of suffering represented by the opening initiatives of the two Presidents they have so far produced, Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

Is it a party creating a culture straining party supporters to invoke various kinds of whitewashing explanations for what may readily be understood as sheer inhumanity?


The Ascendancy of Terrorist Fulani Imperialism Enabled by the Buhari Govt

The Buhari government's history of suffering for Nigerians  was initiated by a slaughter of non-Fulani in Agatu in Nigeria's Middle Belt by Fulani militia associated with Fulani cattle herders.

         Miyetti Allah Fulani Organizations Justifications for Fulani Militia Terrorism Unresponded to            

         by the Buhari Govt and Unchallenged by Most Fulani

This massacre was openly owned and justified by Miyetti Allah, an umbrella name for two Fulani organisations composed of some of the most elite of Nigeria's Fulani, with one of them headed by the Sarduana of Sokoto, the foremost Northern Nigerian Muslim authority in a region where Islam is dominant and the then Emir of Kano and former Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

Miyetti Allah was never responded to by the federal government of Muhammadu Buhari, talk less challenged and tried by law, even as they made their declarations in meetings with law enforcement agents and in defiance of outcries from Nigerians as this pattern continued for years of further massacres and a culture of extortion  in the Middle Belt and elsewhere for which Miyetti Allaha acted as the spokesperson justifying those massacres, and the Nigeria's Fulani largely kept silent, tried to mitigate views of the horror or even explained  the atrocities as not the fault of the herders and their militia, a private military  formation the existence of which the govt has never affirmed even as their operational history and scope of killings  has been openly mapped by various international groups monitoring global terrorism.

      Multiplication of Terrorist Initiatives by Fulani Criminal Groups

The Buhari govt was instead more visible in choosing silence on the massacres, unless strongly challenged, urging farmers to give up their land to herders rather than be killed, blaming victims for the massacres,making sure the killers were hardly or never apprehended, sentencing to death a  farmer who killed a Fulani herder as the herder struggled with the herder  on the farm and seeking to legitimize Fulani herders' claims to land across Nigeria through policy initiative, a state of orchestrated chaos that ballooned into the ascendancy of free ranging criminal groups often identified as Fulani, across Nigeria,  identified as Fulani even by such Fulani elite as the then governor of Kaduna State El Rufai and his Katsina counterpart,   ravagers who made kidnapping and murder a norm across Nigeria, and later concentrated themselves in the North, adding attacking elite military installations there, as the security forces proved unable to address a situation in which even the locations of the criminals were well known even as they remained untouchable.

The general consensus has been that these horrors are possible because  Buhari is Fulani, operating an administration known for extreme ethnocentric nepotism.

               The Lekki Toll Gate Massacre

Youth protesting police brutality at the Lekki toll gate escalated their protests to include peaceful demands for fundamental changes in how Nigeria is governed, moving from its current quasi-feudal structure to an equitable socio-economic system, a protest that drew the approval of authority figures from across the world, a threat to the political class, leading to the drafting of a military unit to the site, the shooting of the protesters and the removal of bodies by the army, with the army initially denying its presence at the site until forced to admit it through the release  of incriminating satellite images, upon which thy claimed they shot into the air.

                  Buhari Govt Naira Redesign Policy

Buhari's tenure concluded with a naira redesign policy that withdrew money from circulation during the elections, leading to devastations of Nigerians, and deaths of some people out of hunger on account of not being able to access money to buy food while some others went berserk, stripping themselves naked  in banks in  frustration at being unable to access their own monies. The administration claimed it withdrew money from circulation to prevent monetization of the  elections but those who bore the terrible brunt of the policy were the general populace.

These developments reinforced such negative economic developments of the Buhari era as the drastic fall in the value of the naira. 

Immediate Fuel Subsidy Removal

Buhari's successor and fellow APC politician is Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Tinubu's first major act was to initiate the removal of oil subsidies, a contentious program that has enabled Nigerians cope with energy needs in an underdeveloped economy with most Nigerians living in multi-dimensional poverty of poor electricity,  low incomes,  largely inadequate transportation systems, , access to water, good roads, health care, education and social justice.

This initiative plunged Nigerians into great suffering as the immediate rise prices of fuel led to scarcity of public  transportation and people being unable to drive their cars, as walking to one's destination became the order of the day, an outcome ironically anticipated by Tinubu's 2012 speech  arguing that removing oil subsidies was not realistic until major transportation and other infrastructural developments had been established in the country.

     Tinubu's  Oil Subsidy Suggestions before Becoming President in 2013

A Google search for ''Tinubu on Fuel Subsidy 2012'' brings up various responses presenting the development of APC and Tinubu's  orientations to this subject:

1. ''APC ‘Occupied Nigeria’ in 2012. What Changed Now That Tinubu Has Removed Subsidy'' a historical overview.

2. ''Don’t Dare Nigerians By Removing Fuel Subsidy, Same Move You Rejected During Jonathan’s Government, Labour Congress Tells President Tinubu'' a critical response to the new development, quoting Tinubu's 2012 speech arguing that  subsidy removal without correlative infrastructural  development  is disastrous.

3. ''Tinubu: Jonathan Has betrayed the people''- a January 2012 report of Tibunu's speech arguing for phased subsidy removal integrated with infrastructural development to enable Nigerians manage the economic fall out. 

4. ''Tinubu makes U-turn, wants fuel subsidy removed''- a 2015 report, the year APC came to power after removing the previous govt it had challenged on account of its efforts at eliminating fuel subsidy.

The report headlines Tinubu as changing his vision to the approach of immediate rather than phased and infrastructure building integrated subsidy removal.

The quotes from Tinubu, however, present him as stating 

“Let us begin a process of a thoughtful but decisive subsidy phase-out. While this is occurring, we should simultaneously phase in social programs benefiting the poorest, most vulnerable among us.

Programs such as transportation subsidies, school feeding, improved basic medical care and coverage for the poor, and potable water projects are some of the things that can be done with the funds.''

This is different from what he eventually presented in his inaugural speech as President in 2023.

What has changed?

Theories of Oil Subsidy Removal from the Nigerian Public 

          ''Tinubu Did not Remove Oil Subsidy. Buhari Did''

One argument is that Tinubu did not remove oil subsidy. It was done by his predecessor fellow  APC President Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu has only announced the content of the budget he was presented with.

       Empowering Privileged Private Sector Oil Refining 

Another argument is that Tinubu/APC  are creating an enabling environment for privileged private sector refineries  launched by the newly commissioned new Aliko Dangote refinery, with another such privileged refinery  by a different investor also envisaged.

These are privileged because they enjoy the support of the govt unlike the modular refineries operated in the Niger Delta, the central source of Nigeria's oil, and which are illegal and dangerous on account of engireering inadequacies, from the little I  know  of this distinctively controversial technology and political angle of oil refining in Nigeria.

Positive responses to this view argue, as in Timothy Adekunle Seyi's response to comments on his Facebook post,  that even though the govt has been unable, across decades of successive govts and different political parties, to make its own refineries work, its enabling the Dangote refinery partly by being a shareholder in its is a way out of the crisis.

Negative responses argue that a political class that cannot make the nations refineries work, instead buying refined oil from abroad, creating the subsidy regime in the first place, is a predator political class for which the subsidy removal and the consequent empowerment of private sector investors in oil refining  is another avenue  for sharing monies among  themselves and their private sector enablers.

Dangote has been described as significantly benefiting from monopolistic practices  enabled by the fed govt run by  different parties and a recent presentation by his company  to the  fed govt on the oil accessibility scenario, as analysed by Aoiri Obaigbo in a Facebook post and thread,   is seen by Obaigbo  as pointing in the direction of another monopoly that would centre Dangote's company for financial  inflows from deprived Nigerians.

What is the Defining Philosophy of Nigeria's Political Elite, Represented by the APC?

The Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, sums up his vision, ''One thing I preach, brethren, now and always. Suffering and deliverance from suffering.''

The Buddha saw suffering as integral to the nature of the material universe. Things unavoidably change.   Yet the human being remains inflamed by  what is desired,  even as the desired undergoes change, becoming something different from what was once desired.

How to escape from this cycle? Remain steadfast within change while seeking what is beyond change. 

What is the APC philosophy, an expression of the philosophy of the Nigerian political class,  that leads to so much suffering for Nigerians?

How can this stranglehold be broken, given that most Nigerian politicians are cut from the same cloth, enjoy the same bloated revenues used in running the govt in a world in which they live in a vastly different economic universe from most Nigerians?

Its argued that the removal of oil subsidies means the money saved will be put into national development. 

Such promises have long been a staple of Nigeria's politicians, who cannot be described as generally making the electorate their primary consideration, given the scope of resources available to them and those which they arrogate to themselves.

What happens next as the new President inaugurates his tenure with suffering?

How will the resulting inflation be managed?

How will Nigerians cope?

What will be history's  verdict on APC?