By Suyi Ayodele

How a government that claims to have made huge savings from oil subsidy removal still goes about acquiring foreign loans, as if borrowing is going out of fashion beats sane imagination.

By January 22, 1962, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was a 10-year-old lad. His 73-year-old age claim gives that statistics. A child strapped on the mother’s back, our elders say, does not know that the journey is far. Tinubu, at age 10 in 1962, would not have been able to appreciate what the elders of that era did to save Nigeria from a second form of slavery.

But a child, who did not witness history, it is equally said, should at least witness the retelling of history. A history retold, the elders further submit, is greater than the history itself (Bí omodé ò bá bá ìtàn, ó máa bá àróbá; àróbá ni baba ìtàn).

Whatever Tinubu missed out in 1962, when the young independent Nigeria severed the military enslavement pact known in history as the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact of 1960, is contained in all our history books. Does the President read? Or do those around him read history so as to guide the President properly in his choices of international relations?

Sixty-four years after the Nigerian Government fully detached itself from eternal open slavery to the United Kingdom (UK), after securing independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960, President Tinubu, willingly, last week, handed over Nigeria to its former colonial master.

From Wednesday through Friday, when he finally returned to Lagos, Tinubu, his wife and the close to 150 other entourage to the United Kingdom, were grinning from ear to ear in celebration of the “historic” moment. UK’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, while receiving Tinubu at the No 10 Downing Street, Westminster, London, said the visit was “historic” in that in the last 37 years, no Nigerian leader had paid such an official visit to the UK!

For a government that is desperate for a second term and needs every appearance of international recognition or endorsement, visiting the UK and dining with King Charles and Queen Camilla by President Tinubu, is a huge achievement. Tinubu’s Lagos lap boy, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, summed up the feelings of the camp, when he became so enthusiastic about the visit, and tweeted, to the embarrassment of his media handlers, that: “I received His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu on his arrival at the Fairmont Hotel in Windsor ahead of the state visit.”

Rather than the normal protocol of the host country receiving the visiting Head of State of another country, Tinubu’s boys were the same set of people who flew ahead of the President to receive him on the ‘official state visit’, and also flew back to line up like expectant primary school pupils to ‘receive’ the president when he returned to Lagos last Friday.

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While the Tinubu camp has been busy celebrating the “historic” visit, they have not bothered to tell us at whose instance the ‘visit’ was arranged. How much did it cost Nigeria for the hired lobbyists to pull through the ‘State visit’? How much did it cost our purse in terms of estacode, logistics and other allowances to cater for the close to 150 delegates that ‘accompanied’ the President on this ‘visit’?

While we are at that, there is one troubling revelation that came from the visit. By the stroke of the pen, President Tinubu has signed off Nigeria as a new official colony of the UK. This is the summary of the two major agreements he signed while his ‘State visit’ lasted.

The UK, no doubt, is a master of international diplomacy. From the era of colonialism to post-colonialism and neo-colonialism, the UK has never left anyone in doubt that it would only deal whenever it is sure that its economy and the wellbeing of the UK citizens are secured, protected and guaranteed with solid agreements.

That was exactly what the UK achieved with Tinubu. The former colonial master proved that it would do anything to preserve its stranglehold on desperate nations headed by equally desperate leaders like Tinubu. So, when the UK saw the opportunity in the much-desired ‘State visit’ by Tinubu, the country recognised that the Nigerian leader needed, very badly, the UK endorsement. And it was willing to give it, but at a huge cost to Nigeria and Nigerians.

That was why the agreement to ease migrant returns to Nigeria was proposed and Tinubu willingly signed. The British, I bet, must have looked into our President’s dilating eyeballs to read his desperation and concluded that under such a psychological composition, Tinubu would sign anything under the earth. And, true to type, our President did not disappoint!

By that deal, Nigeria has agreed that the UK can easily remove people, who have no right to stay in the UK, and ship them to Nigeria! All that is required is for the UK Government to issue the UK Letter, an identification document detailing people without valid documents, and without the protocol of procuring any further travel documents, have them loaded to an aircraft en route to Nigeria!

The UK Home Office explained that by the deal, people who overstay their visas, foreign criminals and others regarded as failed asylum seekers, would be easily transported to Nigeria. The only ‘beautiful’ aspect of the deal is the principle of ‘structured return pathway’ embedded in it and the promised ‘Reintegration Support’ by the Tinubu administration. However, the snags in the two border on how to marry a ‘structured return pathway’ clause with the provision of UK Letters as stated above, and how a government that has not been able to handle, successfully, the integration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria, will now give ‘integration support’ to the UK-based Nigerians with criminal records and others that will soon be shipped back to Nigeria! If the iconoclast, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, were to describe this, he would simply intone: government magic!

If Tinubu’s allies expect Nigerians to accept the claim that the UK ‘State visit’ was driven by altruistic motives, the £746M loan agreement he secured undermines that narrative. By the terms of the deal–reportedly aimed at revamping Tin Can and Apapa Ports-,it is easily evident that the primary objective of the arranged ‘visit’ was to obtain the loan, and in the process, secure recognition and endorsement the Tinubu administration desperately needed from the UK Government.

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The British Broadcasting Service (BBC), in its report on the loan deal, anchored by Becky Morton, Political reporter, says: “A separate deal, worth £746m, will see two major ports in Lagos refurbished with the help of UK-backed loans. UK Export Finance (UKEF), the UK government’s export credit agency, has provided a guarantee to the banks loaning the funds under the condition at least 20% of the contracts are sourced from the UK. At least £236m of supplier contracts will be redirected to British firms, including £70m for British steel – the company’s largest ever export backed by UKEF. It comes as the UK sets out a new strategy to boost the domestic steel industry.”

The implications here are grave! What Tinubu signed off in the £746m loan deal is the future of Nigeria’s steel industry. While the UK is doing everything to protect its own steel industry by imposing almost 50 percent tariffs on imported steel, Nigeria is taking a loan worth £746m, with almost half of the borrowed sum retained by the lending country while Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited remains comatose! Conceived as Nigeria’s largest steel plant, designed to produce 1.3 million metric tonnes of steel annually in its first phase, and in spite of having reached 98 per cent completion in 1994, the expansive project has suffered from decades of mismanagement, corruption, and inaction which have all conspired to render it moribund.

In another report by the BBC titled: “UK sets target to boost steelmaking and cut imports”, written by Jemma Crew, Business reporter, it is stated that: “The government has set a higher target for the UK to make half of the steel it uses and has announced higher taxes on buying steel from overseas. Imported steel quotas will be lowered and anything brought in above that level will be subject to a new 50% tariff, the business department said. The UK steel industry, which has been calling on the government to shield it from cheaper steel made abroad, welcomed the measures.”

UK Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, who announced the measures in Port Talbot, in Wales, where steel maker Tata is building an electric arc furnace which will make steel by melting scrap metal, was quoted by the BBC to have denied that “the new tariffs were a protectionist measure that would push up prices for manufacturers who use foreign steel and their customers”, but said: “I’m announcing really ambitious targets for use of British steel in the British economy, from 30% to 50%. But also, I need to defend the sector from anti-competitive behaviour from elsewhere in the world.”

That is a nation that protects its own. Here in Nigeria, we have the multi-billion-dollar Ajaokuta Steel Mill, the Itakpe Iron and other steel mills across the country that are in various states of coma. Rather than seek their revival; rather than take conscious efforts at revamping them, President Tinubu travelled with close to 150 delegates to the UK to obtain a loan of £746m, with provisions that make half the facility retained in the economy of the lending country.

By the spirit of the loan agreement, UK banks and the UK steel industry will manage the loan, sell the UK steel and still provide the ‘technical expertise’ for the running of the two ports to be ‘revamped’! This is a deal that the Aso Rock Villa orchestra asks us to hail; this is the deal that the Tinubu hangers-on said had made the President the man to beat in negotiation!

Going by the way President Tinubu acts daily with impunity, he, unarguably, is the luckiest President to have ever ruled Nigeria. If he wins his second term bid by January next year, he may as well become the luckiest President to have ever ruined the country. The beauty of his rulership and ruination is that he gets away with anything, even blue murder!

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I don’t know how superstitious the President is. But whatever is responsible for his stranglehold on Nigeria’s neck is worth his deification. When one’s deity stands by one through thick and thin, our elders say such should be venerated daily with generous libation. I recommend that the President holds on tightly to whoever pounds his yam for him and assures him that the soup needed to eat the delicacy will not be a problem.

Nigerians are not necessarily docile. But there is a peculiarity with the Tinubu Presidency. Everything Nigerians fought against while Tinubu was in the opposition, they have accommodated easily with the Lion of Lagos on the throne! What Nigerians defended with their blood 64 years ago (neo-colonialism), is what Tinubu signed last week in the UK without a whimper from any quarters!

From the removal of subsidy to the latest pain in the land, there are still a huge number of the citizenry who believe that Tinubu is God-sent. Even when the government lies and becomes even ashamed of its own tissue of lies, some Nigerians still go to the marketplace and the rooftops to defend the government!

On May 29, 2023, at his inauguration, Tinubu announced, extempore, that “subsidy is gone.” Many watchers of the nation’s economy argued that that was a reckless statement by the new President. They posited that such a thoughtless pronouncement would lead to economic crisis and the ripple effects on the masses would be unimaginable.

The government’s Hallelujah orchestra said otherwise. They argued, with every fibre of their being, that by removing the oil subsidy, the Tinubu government would make huge savings that would be deployed for use in other sectors of the nation’s economy. Almost three years after the projection of the ‘huge savings’ from subsidy removal, Nigeria still goes begging for loans from virtually all the countries of the world.

How much has the government saved from subsidy removal? Nobody knows because the government is not transparent enough to tell the people the ‘gains’ that have accrued from that policy. All we know is that at every opportunity, this administration goes cap in hand, soliciting loans and mortgaging the future of the country to the creditor countries.

How a government which inflicted pain on the people in the name of economic reforms would abandon its own steel industry in a state of coma but would take a loan from a foreign country to develop that country’s steel industry is unfathomable! What about the Foreign Reserves this government said it has increased? How do you have a rich Foreign Reserves and you still go about taking foreign loans? Is this country really a joke?