By Anthony Kila/
Nigeria and Nigerian affairs took centre stage in Cambridge on Saturday, 19th 2024 when members and guests of the Cambridge Africa Roundtable (CARt) converged at the Westminster College Hall of Cambridge University to examine the present and future of the most populous country in Africa.
As usual with CARt events, champagne and canapes were served in abundance.
The theme of the conversation was “Nigeria Reforms: Road to Redemption or Perdition? Conversations with Sam Omatseye.” There are two crucial keys to understanding this high-profile event.
One is that members and guests of the Cambridge Africa Roundtable believe that to gain better insight into Nigeria’s ongoing policies, it is essential to understand the man in whose name these policies are being implemented. The man, of course, is the President. Understating the man to understand his policy will mean knowing the man, politician, and state administrator, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The second crucial key is the understanding that one man who knows President Bola Ahmed Tinubu very well on a personal and professional level and can articulate his thoughts and vision very well is Sam Omatseye, chairman of the editorial board of the Nation newspaper. Sam Omatseye certainly did not disappoint on these two accounts.
The unavoidable absence of Dr. Cristiano D’orsi meant that yours truly had to step into the shoes of the matinee moderator. Knowing who the audience was, my first act was full disclosure: I declared to all that I had known the guest speaker for a long time and that we had met more than once on TV. Also, a bit for showoff, a bit for fuller disclosure, I told who cared to listen that we both belong to the prestigious League of Nigerian Columnists.
As expected, the event was intense, informative, and entertaining in one breath. Following a brief and sober introduction in the Cambridge style, Sam Omatseye took the stage and started his intervention by acknowledging the role of the press in democracy generally and in Nigeria in particular. He reminded the audience that this October 2024 CARt event about Nigeria was taking place on the anniversary of Dele Giwa’s death. Or, to use the words of Sam Omatseye, “Exactly 38 years today, Dele Giwa, a great editor, columnist and avatar for free speech, was bombed out of this world by a conspiratorial military elite.
At a breakfast with a colleague of his in his own home, he received a letter. Gleeful about who might have sent it, he uttered his last words, “This must be from the president.” He opened the letter and extinguished in a cloud of smoke”.
This introduction was undoubtedly a tribute to the great journalist and columnist Dele Giwa; it, however, was also a gambit that allowed the speaker to bring in the story of his “ordeal” at the hands of the Obedient mob for writing a piece titled “Obituary”. Sam Omatseye is not a rookie. He knew his audience was challenging and possibly hostile. Like a diplomat or minister for President Bola Tinubu, Sam Omatseye used his personal story to humanise the encounter, ensuring he won some of the audience to his side.
The journalist and analyst Sam Omatseye came to the fore when his presentation delved into how Bola Tinubu became president, “Beating All Odds”, as he titled his book. Clinching the party ticket and then going on to win the election against the opposition and his party members has forged Tinubu to be a tough and independent President, and his policies are signs that he fears no one. In a very detailed and fluent way, Sam Omatseye painted a picture of how the Bola Tinubu administration has dared to implement tough reforms that past administrations had not dared to do.
I pointed out to him that the policies were more than rough on people, and he retorted by saying, “Yes, it is true, but if we do not go through this pain process now, things will be worse soon”.
The disaster the previous administration left behind is the root cause of our current situation for Sam Omatseye. When I pointed out to him that I did not feel sorry for President Tinubu because he looked for the job and was not forced to take it, he was quick to retort that the president did not need my sympathy. “He will shock you with results soon”, he added for effect, and he got the laughter of the normally sober public. Whilst he acknowledges that things are tough now, Sam Omatseye points out that those who bet on countries see a better future and are betting on Nigeria. His evidence is the oversubscribed bonds that Nigerian bonds become once issued.
For Sam Omatseye, the accusation that the Tinubu administration is taking orders from the IMF and the World Bank misreads and misunderstands the country’s current situation. Bola Tinubu is a man who expresses his ideas and experiences confidently and authoritatively. Sam Omatseye argues that what we see is a coincidence of thoughts and solutions to the country’s problems. He termed it “a coincidence or necessity.”
He was also quick to point out that none of the candidates who ran against Bola Tinubu in 2023 has come up with a different or better idea than what we currently have. He even reminded the audience that all the major candidates agreed and promised to remove the fuel subsidy during their elections.
To understand Tinubu, Sam Omatseye argues that one must remember that he grew up in the middle of the market and the middle of grassroots politics and later grew to become an accountant and a senior manager of a multinational. Making him, therefore, a welfarist and a capitalist at the same time.
Hear Sam Omatseye. “It will help me understand his biography. He grew up with his mother, who was a well-known market leader, and a grassroots woman, Chief Abibatu Mogaji, who was known as Iyaloja, that is, the market leader. This gave Tinubu early exposure to how grassroots mobilisers worked with the common folk. He, therefore, grew up with the common folk. But she was not poor, if not a money bag. She worked for progressive causes as a habitue with the masses.
On the other hand, Tinubu travelled to the United States, studied accounting in Chicago, and worked with big-name corporations, eventually ending up with Mobil Nigeria, where he rose to the position of treasurer. So, President Tinubu inhabits two contradictory worlds: the mass mobiliser and laissez-faire ideologist. The poet Whitman once asked, “Do I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
”Tinubu’s political career has been a navigation of both worlds. He has both Marx and Adams Smith coddling under his skin.”
Like him or loathe him, agree or disagree with Sam Omatseye, you cannot take away from his ability to make his case in defence of the Tinubu administration; I think he is indeed the best voice for the Tinubu Administration.
Anthony Kila is a Jean Monnet professor of Strategy and Development. He is a political economist, strategist, and public intellectual and the Institute Director General at CIAPS.
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