The President’s Working Holidays

By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.

It is now more than two years that Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been in office for his FIRST TERM, and during the entire time, his Vice, Senator Kashim Shettima has never been PROVIDED with the opportunity to act during his principal’s many ‘working holidays’.

Tinubu is now so powerful in a ‘conquered’ Nigeria that his wife, the unconstitutionally recognised First Lady (Senator Remi) and the equally unconstitutionally recognised First Son (Seyi), are more influential than the constitutionally recognised Vice President. Hence, his new unofficial designation of ‘Emperor-in-Chief.

The Nigerian number one citizen is currently on his second working holiday, denying his vice the opportunity to be president on acting capacity. The president’s immediate predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari left his vice, Professor Yemi Osinbajo to act whenever he took his official leave.

It was indeed during one of his many actings that Professor Osinbajo sacked the Director General (DG) of the Department of State Security (DSS), Lawal Daura, the then President’s townman and dependable ally. When the substantive president returned from his holiday, he did not reverse the decision (sacking).

Even the vindictive, combative and manipulative President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the quiet and alculating President Umaru Musa Ýar’adua gave their respective deputies opportunities to act during their absence, but Emperor-in-Chief Tinubu prefers to go on a working holiday, so that the vice president will have no opportunity to act.

Unless the Emperor-in-Chief has something to hide (it would appear so), there is absolutely no reason for him to keep on going on ‘working holidays’, without allowing the Vice President to act even for once in their more than two years in office as a supposedly ‘united’ team.

The situation has made many compatriots to wonder what the Emperor-in-Chief is hiding or protecting so much that he is apprehensive, or even fearful, that he would not want his vice to discover.

Perhaps the Emperor-in-Chief does not want the Vice President to make appointments that might mitigate the earlier lopsided ones he had made, especially in the ‘Nigerian’ cabinet, which is about 80% made up of his tribespeople. He has also filled the Security agencies, the parastatals, and the Rubber Stamp National Assembly (NASS) with mostly his tribespeople, or his ‘boys’ (all of whom do as he wants blindly without asking themselves its constitutionality).

Even the national election umpire, the so-called Independent National Election Commission (INEC), has been pocketed by the Emperor-in-Chief, as his desperation for a second term knows no bounds. The election umpire does as he commands, not as the Nigerian Constitution says. The ongoing CHARADE called ‘registration’ of voters is one proof of that.

Is this the wish of the majority (Nigerian Electorate), or the wish of one person (Emperor-in-Chief Tinubu)? It is definitely NOT Democracy where the president of the country Does as he pleases, NOT as majority of the citizens of the nation want him to do?

Of course, the president is free to take working holidays, but to do it all the time is constitutionally inadvisable and politically imprudent. What is constitutionally advisable, and politically prudent is to delegate authority to his vice whenever he is going on a holiday, whether annual or less/more than that.

The duo’s campaign slogan is ‘RENEWED HOPE’, which makes it preposterous that the vice’s hope is not renewed, but constantly discouraged, as he is denied the acting opportunity enjoyed by his immediate predecessor.

And every time the Emperor goes on his ‘working holiday’, he runs to France and England where the life of the citizens of Nigeria and of the yet unborn Nigerians, are mortgaged for a few billion dollars, most of which normally end in his many insatiable accounts.

It is the HIGHEST UNPATRIOTISM to serve Western Countries and their people, at the EXPENSE of your NATION and your fellow compatriots. It is the HIGHEST SELFISHNESS to serve JUST yourself IGNORING the citizens who voted, and made it possible for you to be the president.

The country is today controlled by the United States (two Britton Woods financial institutions), United Kingdom (Chatham House) and France (the country of his so-called friend, Emmanuel Macron, and his FRONT and Labenon-born Albert Chagoury), as well as Israel (the so-called expert on security).

Nigeria is today in a situation where if you do not obsequiously genuflect before the Emperor-in-Chief, sycophantically telling him that he is the best thing to ever happen to the country, you will automatically be considered an enemy. Ask the immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufa’i and the immediate past Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. They were separately attacked by ‘THUGS’ for no reason other than their opposition to the Emperor-in-Chief.

May God get Nigerian citizens out of this ONE CHANCE vehicle within which they innocently found themselves captured, before some more are sent to their early graves.

Malumfashi writes from Katsina