I do not understand the Yoruba language by any stretch of the imagination, therefore any hidden meaning of the word ‘EMILOKAN’ apart from its literal meaning, is completely lost on me. I was told that it was the slogan of then-ordinary Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and it is still his slogan even as he is now the President and Commander in Chief of Nigeria. I also understand the meaning of the word to be, ‘It is my time’.
By Abdu Labaran
It should by now be obvious that what the President meant by the slogan ‘ Emilokan’ is a revenge mission which may only be achieved if the country is turned into a brutal Police State, in which survival is only for the very rich. The middle class is somehow faced with the hostile economic environment in the land. To have a few million in the bank account does not make you rich during the Tinubu administration. For one to be rich and be seen as rich, one has to be a President, Vice President, State Governor, minister or head of a government agency a top politician, a praise singer, a religious cleric or a very successful business person.
Relationships, siblings, acquaintances or friends hardly answer phone calls or reply to texts for fear that the person who made the contact might in the end ask for some kind of help, particularly financial, from the person contacted. Even where the call was answered, the recipient would claim that it was a wrongly made call the moment the caller’s voice was recognised.
If that is not true, and it is understood by all that the nation has finished with the Presidential election for now, then Mr President should tell the citizens of the country what he intends to do with ‘my time’, since it does not appear to be an articulated blueprint for taking the nation to the next level of development.
Anyway, the never-done-like-that lopsided appointments Mr. President has made since assuming the mantle of leadership in the country have given a glimpse of what he might have meant by the slogan; his continued rulership of the realm, and the total domination of the affairs of the land by one ethnic group. His own. Where members of another ethnic tribe were appointed as aides to the President, then such people were there to serve the President, not Nigeria. The appointment of Malam Nuhu Ribadu as the National Security Adviser (NSA) was not for him to add any value to the security architecture of the country, but to ridicule him and the region that he comes from.
It was the same Malam Nuhu who, as the pioneer Chairman of the Economic Financial and Crime Commission (EFCC) said that the Governor of Lagos, along with other governors had corruptly enriched himself from the state’s funds. That governor is the present President of Nigeria, and most of the other governors are in the Nigerian Senate as ‘elected’ members of the upper chamber of the National Assembly (NASS). That is ‘EMILOKAN’ for the uninformed.
Look at all the places referred to as the economic height of the country, where the money is made and their heads, and take a gander at all but two of the security agencies in the country and their heads, and the conclusion may be that someone is trying to impose himself and visit more hardship on the people at all cost, whether they like it or not.
The retention in the federal cabinet of the controversy-trailed Minister of State for Defence, Honourable Bello Muhammed Matawalle, who has been severally accused of financing and supporting the bandits that have been terrorising the Northern states Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina, because of the illegal mining activities carried out for the some powerful people in the country is for anything but merit. Ask the fiery Sokoto Islamic preacher, Shiekh Murtala Bello Asada, and he would readily agree with the assertion that the minister’s retention in the cabinet is part of the President’s hidden agenda against the North.
So is the retention of the overwhelmingly underperforming Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu. It clearly showed that the ‘power failure in many states in the North, is NOT by accident. Mr President once told Nigerians not to ‘elect’ him for a second term if he did not give them electricity in four years.
Even if the masts hosting the line that transmits power to those states ‘were’ blown by terrorists’, as claimed by the authorities, it would appear to discern Northerners that the terrorists were officially sent to destroy them. Ask people from most northern states, who have been without electric power for 12 days. The almighty Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) deemed it fit to return it to some parts of the region only at 8.30 pm on Thursday 29th, 2024.
The Northerners serving in the federal cabinet and other important federal agencies are to blame the most because they do not seem to bother about the plight of the region. They appear to care only about remaining in the government for their benefit, not for the gains of their region. Again, their attitude is also informed by the fact that they do not feel affected by the pervasive poverty and the lack of power supply to most parts of the North because they live comfortably in well-appointed houses and offices in the federal capital and in their various private houses in their respective home states.
It may be all part of Mr President’s slogan of ‘EMILOKAN’, which, according to this writer, will appear to be an overkill for any perceived offence done to him and or any group he is in support of and in sympathy with.
It is not an honest leadership that, not only preaches, but also demands everlasting sacrifice from the ordinary citizens, but practices stupendous and ostentatious living in a country said to have ‘no money to waste’ by its leaders. By that, they are telling the ordinary person to do what they were told not what the leaders do. That may also be the ‘EMILOKAN’ in Mr. President’s election mantra.
Mr. President’s cost-cutting measures are nothing but deceitful, in that he, his family, the Vice President and other top politicians in the country all live handsomely on the fat of the land, while the rest of the poor citizens are left to pay for that ostentatious lifestyle. Where do the billions of naira spent in the ‘renovation and maintenance’ of the Villa come from, and from where do the millions ‘donated’ by many of the leaders at both federal and state levels? Yet, the man who goes to great lengths to put food on the table for his family, and the many who can hardly afford to eat most of the time, are constantly told to make sacrifices for the nation.
One of the official cars of the President had all four tyres replaced at a staggering cost of $200,000 (US). And not long ago, the country purchased for him a brand new plane, a brand new yacht and a brand new American car and sponsored the many globe-trotting he and his Vice regularly undertake. Still, Nigeria is said to be in a penury state which requires never-ending sacrifice from the citizens.
And matters are made even worse when the Inspector General of Police recently announced some draconian measures that the Force was allegedly adopting, which would automatically transform Nigeria into a police state. YES, a police state, where no citizen is not supposed to breathe without the permission of the government, or so it would appear.
The bumbling by the Tinubu-led administration to rule Nigeria by all means and at all costs, has led to turning the country into a Police State, in which some fundamental constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are forcibly denied to the citizens.
Nigeria is becoming a Police State under Emperor Tinubu, ably assisted by all the apparatuses of coercion at the disposal of the government, because of the persistent complaints by the majority of the population and most of the local media, about the serious corruption-caused poverty in most of the nooks and crannies of the country.
But then the question is what happened to the so-called Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Association, and Freedom of, in the country? Or is it against the law to tell the truth on social media? WhatsApp, Facebook, X, Instagram, etc, of Nigerians or their groups, will henceforth be monitored by the Nigerian Police to prevent complaints of pervading poverty, hard, harsh and severe times in all parts of the country under the present regime of the President Tinubu, during which corruption has become the in-thing in the conduct of governance at both federal and state levels.
The dysfunction created by the present clueless administration in Nigeria has led to the feeling of self-importance and self-greatness in some people, to the extent that a mare mortal member of the House of Representatives would tell ‘a hardworking driver’ to his face that he would make him ‘disappear and nothing will be done about it’.
Mr. President has forgotten or chosen to forget his position in 2014, where he accused the rulers at that time of not caring about the bad situation in the country. At that time, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu said “Those who could improve this situation for the good of all of us do not allow the opportunity to make things better for us. They make it better for themselves, for their comfort their families. Cronyism is prevailing today.
“Our rulers in Abuja and across some of their states. You know what they said to us when they REMOVED SUBSIDY and we said NO. Hunger is increasing and they say ‘So what? Unemployment is a curse, they say yes we know. Why are the people hungry, and they say ‘Let them face death’. That is what is in Abuja today.
“The current wave of DARKNESS, let the nation do the impossible. What it does is make poverty and the erosion of justice inevitable. We have gathered at this hour, in this place to put an end to the national CORRUPTION and CORRUPTION. We have assembled here today to bring a new day, a new Nigeria. Today, the Nigerians are decent and hardworking people. They are equally long-suffering, they tolerate for too long. Just because they are long-suffering does not mean that they are forced to suffer until death comes.
“We are people who have had enough of excuses. Our people have had enough of nothing. The current government’s trademark is to throw empty words at our problems as if doing nothing will cause our problems to leave for sheer boredom. Unemployment increases, industrialisation we have nothing, refineries nothing is working, electricity they lie.
“If this is the government’s idea of transformation, we will have none of it, we should have none of it because before we say ‘the government of slow motion’, now it is the government of no motion at all. If they want to stand still at the bus stop or train station and stagnate without property, they have their right to do so, and we have our right to kick them out. They know they are stealing from our children
tomorrow for lack of inspectors in education, they are still embezzling the benefits of hardworking Nigerians, including our grandfathers. They are stealing the funds, and the treasury, not even leaving some coins for us to work with. Let them be out, out NOW”. Mr. President should tell his fellow countrymen whether now is better or worse than then.
His fellow co-travellers at the time, who were very vocal in the condemnation of the country’s rulers, were very loud and poetic in their deepening silence at this time of suffering never experienced in the country. There is another manifestation of ‘EMILOKAN’ in Nigeria.
In any case, whatever it is that they have in mind, they will sooner or later die, and Nigeria will continue without them. They should remember that the day will come when they will be history whether they like it or not, because retirement, aging or the grave are just but a step away.
Only the feeding assistance offered by some philanthropists keeps a lot of the poor citizens go to bed with something in their stomachs. Such kind-hearted people should keep on FEEDING the needy from whatever they may come.
May God make us among those who will enjoy His limitless mercy and magnanimity in the hereafter.
Labaran wrote from Katsina.
