Farooq Kperogi, a Nigerian scholar based in the United States, has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari and his cabals’ plot to stop the presidential bid of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress by punishing all Nigerians with naira scarcity was counter-productive.
Kperogi noted that the cabals overestimated Tinubu by inflicting naira scarcity on the poor masses because the Buhari caucus believed that Nigerian voters could not stop Tinubu through the ballot if they wanted.
The scholar stated these in his piece published on Saturday, adding that much as he disliked Tinubu, he disliked treachery more and sabotage being played out by the Buhari government.
Kperogi said, “To cut to the chase, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) is the single most important reason Buhari has chosen to recolor the naira as a pretext to consciously make it scarce and thereby prevent Tinubu from using it to win this month’s presidential election. That’s all there is to it.
“As I pointed out in my January 28, 2023, column, Buhari himself betrayed this during a November 2022 interview in which he was asked about his regime’s naira recoloring policy. Without prompting, and in a bewildering departure from the issue he was talking about, Buhari said, “Nigerians should vote for whoever they like from whichever party. Nobody will be allowed to mobilize resources and thugs to intimidate people in any constituency.”
“It was a significant Freudian slip that gave away the real motive force behind the disabling naira scarcity that has gripped the nation. Although Buhari now appears in campaign events along with Tinubu and even implores supporters to vote for Tinubu, it’s all theater. The battle line has already been drawn, and it seems, at least at this point, to be irreversible.
“Buhari and his cabal did everything within their power to prevent Tinubu from winning the nomination of the APC. But they failed precisely because Tinubu used his seemingly inexhaustible wealth to buy his way to the nomination. Because they tried to stop his nomination and failed, they know he will retaliate against them if he becomes president.
“Strewing deadly thorns in Tinubu’s path to the presidency is first of all a self-preservationist move by Buhari and his close associates before it is anything else. They have learned not to underestimate Tinubu. They now know that he is a shrewd, wily, calculating fox who has prepared for this moment years in advance and has enough money, tact, connections, and sophistication in wheeler-dealing to beat them again in the presidential election.
“The only way to stop him is to starve him of cash to stop him from buying his way to the presidency. Now, poor and middle-class folks have to pay the price for this.”
“I dislike Tinubu because he enabled Buhari not once but twice, but I dislike treachery more. I want Tinubu to lose the election because voters rejected him, not because Buhari and his narrow circle of influence-peddling associates sabotaged him. The idea that Tinubu can’t be stopped unless he is starved of cash to bribe voters unduly overestimates him and unfairly underestimates the intelligence of voters.
“More than that, though, it’s not only futile, it’s also counter-productive. For instance, it has now emerged that Tinubu and APC governors have found a way around the naira blockade against them. They are now using their connections and “big man” privilege to mop up recolored naira notes from several banks and are saving them for Election Day. That was probably what CBN governor Godwin Emefiele meant when he talked about “sabotage” from banks.
“The increasingly biting cash scarcity in the country will ensure that monetary incentives to voters would be even more valuable than they would have been in normal times because people are desperate and writhing in unspeakable existential torment,” Kperogi wrote.