President Bola Tinubu is only just spending his fifth week in office but despite strong reservations in certain sections of the Nigerian public, especially those yet to accept that he won the last presidential election, the growing consensus among Nigerians is that he has generally done well in his handling of the affairs of state in his first month in office.

The dominant belief also is that the apparently favourable view of the president’s performance could not be unconnected to the below mediocre performance of President Muhammadu Buhari who appeared to have spent his entire eight years in office marking time, waiting for when he would retire home having fulfilled his ambition of ruling the country for a second time. All of this following his unceremonious ouster as head of the military junta that ended Nigeria’s Second Republic on the last day of 1983. 

There are however faint but growing signs of sycophancy that the president and his handlers must be sensitive to and wary of in the loads of praises that are being heaped on the president in just one month in office. Those behind these praises are not only his supporters but some others that could be described as professional praise singers who have quickly seen an opportunity to find their way into or remain in the corridors of power through praise-singing. They would have chorused and danced for any of those presently disputing the presidential election, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, as they sang for Muhammadu Buhari and are now poised to sing for Tinubu. 

President Muhammadu Buhari was a victim of this type of praise-singing when he came into office in 2015. His reputation as an ascetic disciplinarian that had preceded him to office was all the praise singers had to seize upon. The honest one, Mai Gaskiya, he was called and that was and remained his only recommendation for the position he occupied in the eyes of these sycophants who used this alias of the former president to throw a cloth over his face and divert attention from their own criminal and corrupt enterprise, often perpetrated in plain sight of the president and his associates. Since the president was viewed as and reputed to be honest, then anyone around him was covered in the halo of integrity even if they sat atop an empire of corruption that stank to the heavens. Believe only in the President and believe in the All Progressives Congress and all your sins would be forgiven you. 

The situation was not helped by a somnambulistic National Assembly that pledged unhindered passage of any bill proposed by the executive provided it came from the president. That was the extent of Ahmad Lawan’s National Assembly’s capitulation to the executive and President Buhari. Everyone walked around the president as if on egg shells. They made a superman out of him and all but turned him into an idol to be offered daily veneration. So was Buhari lulled to sleep while virtually everyone around him stayed awake and helped themselves to whatever they were able to from our commonwealth. They stole, they plundered and carted away but nobody uttered a word, either of caution or reprimand. They were all around Mai Gaskiya and that was all that was needed. 

They isolated the president and ensured he was unaware (pun intended) of all that went on around him, including the impoverishment of Nigerians on a mass scale while mass murder for ethnic, sectarian and purely criminal reasons became the order of the day. Now Buhari has returned to Daura, the praise singers and palace chorus have changed course and turned their attention to the new captain of the ship. They are celebrating a President Tinubu whose name a number of them could not bear to mention only recently. They are hailing him for decisions the idol they venerated in Aso Villa until recently would not even have sniffed at. Just as the decision to remove oil subsidywas left dangling like the sword of Damocles over their successors but which a former presidential aide now claims was not executed in order not to ruin the chances of Bola Tinubu in the last election. A lot of baloney there! 

What else could the cabal working from within the Buhari presidency have done to ruin the chances of Tinubu that they didn’t do? Was it their naira confiscation policy, the contrived but persistent scarcity of fuel or the very lukewarm disposition of Buhari himself to the presidential ambition of Tinubu. Only the blind wouldn’t see that Tinubu’s only supporter around Buhari was Aisha Buhari, the president’s wife. But now the man has won against all odds, everyone is rolling out the drums to celebrate what they perceive as their contribution to and share in the praises being extended to him. All of this calls for circumspection, especially since Nigerians are yet to start enjoying the promised benefits of the series of economic decisions that have thrown hundreds of millions of Nigerians, certainly more than we’ve known in many years, below the poverty line.   

President Bola Tinubu and everyone around him need to keep their eyes on the ball and not get carried away by the fulsome praises. There is yet a lot of work to do as so much has been left undone. Nigerians can’t be satisfied with token steps whose immediate outcome is their impoverishment. The administration must be held to very high standards and not allowed to glow on the inept mediocrity of its predecessor. And this is where the media come in. Matters can’t be left just to politicians who even as opposition figures can acquiesce in misgovernance while the people are left to lick their wound. The press must be critical in the most constructive way. But they should not settle for just the minimum available. The administration has a duty to deliver on its promises and the media must remain ever watchful. 

Nigerians may have accepted to buy fuel at prices beyond their earnings but that’s not because there is anything bad in government subsidising fuel consumption. It is rather to acknowledge that government has accepted its own defeat in the fight against the thieving cabal in the oil sector and has chosen to offend us all rather than a few powerful but very corrupt people. Any perceptive observer can see that the oil marketers, for example, are determined to keep the prices of fuel high with the kite they are flying about a litre of fuel selling for N700. Yet they are among those heaping praises on the president. Nigerians owe it to themselves to keep a watchful eye on and maintain a critical but constructive distance from the hullabaloo around the president.