President Tinubu’s yacht as a metaphor for improved slum architecture at Makoko, by Ahmed Yahaya-Joe
“Nigerian politicians have the appetite of elephants but the memory of mice.” – Chidi Nnanna Amuta (2017)
Between widespread accusations of leadership insensitivity and obvious bureaucratic faux pas concerning certain details in the controversial 2023 Supplementary Appropriation Act,
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) perhaps had Nigeria in mind when he defined politics as, “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
This is because certain proposed government expenditure contained therein seem to not only validate the Machiavellian dictum of, “Politics have not relation to morals,” but Bonaparte’s, “In politics stupidity is not a handicap.”
Milton Friedman, laureate of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize in Economics actually sounded quintessentially Nigerian though actually referring to the US, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be shortage of sand.”
The balancing the perception of good governance with the prevailing economic reality in Nigeria must therefore be carried out with delicate care. Without blatant self-serving inputs.
This is because ours is such a diverse and complex nation as Dr. Amuta who authored the 1992 must-read, Prince of the Niger: The Babangida Years further reminds us in the foreword of Olusegun Adeniyi’s Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in Nigeria, “The Nigerian polity is fast emerging as Africa’s leading common-wealth of independent minded and very rowdy political animals.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Bayo Onanuga fancies himself a smart alec.
Hear him, “What was named as presidential yacht in the budget is an operational naval boat with specialized security gadgets suitable for high-profile operational inspection and not for the use of the President. It is called presidential yacht by way of nomenclature because of the high-level security features.”
While the half-truth of another Villa megaphone Temitope Ajayi offers some respite, “It is important to state clearly that President Tinubu did not ask for a yacht, and I doubt he needs one to perform the functions of his office. The Budget Office should explain to the public why such an expenditure should be accommodated now, considering the economic situation of the country,”: was it the Budget Office or his principal that submitted the item to the National Assembly?
Senior Bayo did not need to insult the sensibility of Nigerians by erroneously claiming that N5b piece of luxurious naval architecture his principal included in the 2023 Supplementary Bill is, “not for the use of the President.”
Lest we forget, the founder of TheNews magazine is arguably an accomplished practitioner of Yellow journalism whose antics in the Nigerian print media space merited an entire chapter entitled, “TheNews without news” in the book, Misrepresentation of Nigeria: The Facts and the Figures (2000) by Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman and Prof. Alkasum Abba.
Since constructive criticism is the oxygen of any democracy, Messrs Onanuga and Ajayi should be reminded that out of their exuberant loyalty they with reckless abandon ignored Benjamin Franklin’s admonition, “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
With due apologies to the esteemed Malam Mahmud Jega, the moral here is that those who purport to speak on behalf of the Villa must do so mindfully;
“If 5000 airplanes land safely, that is not news. Until one of them crashes.” – Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (1921-2014)
Five Cowrie Creek is the distributary that separates the highbrow Ikoyi from Victoria Island featuring a swanky waterfront that not only includes the Caverton helipad but the exclusive Aquamarine Boat Club where designer yachts are moored to the envy of passing motorists along the main artery of Ozumba Mbadiwe.
At the other end of the creek is a link road to a boulevard with high net worth properties including a well-known lair named after Sir Bernard Henry Bourdillon, Governor-General of Nigeria from 1935 to 1943.
Fast forward to 2023, it is not too difficult to speculatively situate an imperative for a presidential yacht as an added impetus to “Eko for Show” in the waterways of Nigeria’s current deputy capital.
“Ikoyi Blindness” is a 1975 track and album of the same name by Fela Kuti, “Wey dem dey for Ikoyi dem no dey see road at all.”
Tracy Chapman croons in “Subcity” of her “Crossroads” album dropped in 1989;
“People say it doesn’t exist
‘Cause no one would like to admit
That there is a city underground
People live every day,
Off the waste and decay,
Off the discards of their fellow man.
Here in subcity, life is hard,
We can’t receive any government relief.
Won’t you please, please give the President my honest regards
For disregarding me?”
The sprawling Makoko marine ghetto exists not underground nor even in the lyrical imagination of Miss Chapman’s old school music but in sad reality on stilts accessed by canals with neither government presence nor democracy dividends to show for.
No doubt, an embarrassing blight and a worst-case scenario advertisement for the political hero worshippers of Mr. President.
You can’t miss Nigeria’s most famous slum on the Yaba water front travelling on the Third Mainland Bridge. The abysmal quality of life in Makoko remains a paradoxical blight for the acclaimed “builder of modern Lagos.”
Please give the President their honest regards for thus far disregarding them.
Interestingly, the world’s largest floating slum with no access to the national arid that paradoxically runs through it has been in existence for nearly 200 years now.
Its ever-increasing growth exemplifies galloping income disparity in Africa’s largest urban conglomerate ahead of Kinshasa and Cairo. A certified irony in Nigeria’s, “center of excellence.”
If Lagos had been a nation it would be the fifth largest economy in Africa behind Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, South Africa, and Algeria but ahead of Kenya, Angola, Tanzania and Ghana respectively in 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th positions respectively.
So, Makoko, an antithesis of the swanky Eko Atlantic City but reminiscent of the Maroko slum of yore is another case study in not only ruling class betrayal but deliberate government neglect.
According to United Nations-Habitat, “a slum is a run-down area of a city characterized by sub-standard housing squalor, and lacking in tenure security.”
Agreed, the provision of basic education for the canoe children of Makoko does not fall under the purview of the current chief tenant at the Aso Rock Villa that notwithstanding where do Makoko’s children attend school?
The erstwhile “Makoko Floating School” was a private initiative a practicing architect, urbanist, visiting critic at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and guest lecturer at London’s Architectural Association, Kunle Adeyemi based in Amsterdam in The Netherlands;
“Prior to the commencement of the project, the children of Makoko only had access to one primary school which was inadequate, built on reclaimed land, and frequently threatened by recurrent flooding.”
In 2013, Mr. Adeyemi of NLÉ proposed to transform the water slum status of the Makoko waterfront community to a floating island by creating a functional building prototype;
“He collaborated with Non-Governmental Organizations including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Federal Ministry of Environment, Yaba Local Council Development Area (LCDA) and Makoko waterfront community to execute the project.”
The architect born and raised in Kaduna who since 2020 has been a visiting professor at his alma mater, University of Lagos (Class of 1999) conceptualized and built an A-framed hardwood timber structure atop 250 plastic barrels for flotation.
What the dickens has Nigeria’s presidential yacht got to do with Makoko’s now collapsed floating school?
The question is pertinent against the background of the crucial distinction between a risk and a gamble.
Despite all political grandstanding to the contrary, President Tinubu is by virtue of his office a 5-star Admiral of the Nigerian Navy who knowingly signed off on an already delivered vessel for his exclusive use.
Come 2024 it remains to be seen if he would preside over the annual Fleet Review of the Nigerian Navy traditionally held in the Lagos lagoon.
Knowing fully well the state of the Nigerian economy, outgone President Buhari who as then Commander in Chief signed off on his navy’s request but refused to pay for such a luxurious perfidy. The Daura warrior reneged to gamble with public opinion despite taking the risk of not alienating his sailors as he barely he week before he left office adorned in his sparkling Admiral whites to review their vessels;
“A risk is a chance you take; if it fails you can recover. A gamble is a chance taken; if it fails, recovery is impossible.” – Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
With all due respect, Bayo Onanuga as a onetime NADECO stalwart ought to know Rommel’s maxim better by acting more presciently.
He was after all part of the editorial crew at the now rested National Concord stables integral to the manipulation of public anger in Chief MKO Abiola’s newspaper group against the Shagari administration, 1979-1983 as IBB confirms;
“We found the coup easier when there was frustration in the land because there was media frenzy about the economy gone bad……
We couldn’t have done it without collaborators in the civil society, collaborators in the media,”
See details in ThisDay newspaper edition of February 12, 2009 and This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria (2000) by Karl Maier pp. 58-60
Back then, brick by brick, the “Lagos-Ibadan axis of the Nigerian media” gradually built a massive array of public sentiments against the Shagari administration, 1979-1983.
So how did Mr. President grossly underestimate his immediate predecessor’s military wisdom by subscribing to an utterly unnecessary political gamble?
“Being a president is like riding a tiger, keep riding or be swallowed. A president is either constantly on top of events or events will soon be on top of him.”
– Harry S. Truman, 33rd US President in office 1945-1953
What then is the most politically convinient way out of the yacht fiasco?
Since crisis and opportunity are two sides of the same political coin, public relations redemption might come through a comprehensive slum upgrade of Makoko.
Fela retrospectively adds concerning his lyrical Ikoyi variant of mental blindness, “Dem miss road, dem find road again o.”
Every narrative requires an equal and opposite narrative. President Tinubu’s intervention at Makoko should therefore be the polar opposite of unleashing bulldozers on the hapless slum dwellers at Maroko in the name of urban renewal by then “Acksion” Lagos governor, Colonel (later Brig. General) Raji Rasaki of “Who bild dis gada?” fame.
The political message for the present dispensation here is, “Win through actions, never through argument. Demonstrate do not explicate.” – 48 Laws of Power p.69
Second Republic super-minister and head of the presidential task force on the distribution of imported rice, Alhaji Umaru Abdulrahman Dikko (1936-2014) was unfortunately as clueless as the present-day double whammy of Messrs Onanuga and Ajayi.
Ahead of the August 26 presidential polls shortly after he was appointed as director-general of then the president’s re-election campaign council, inquisitive journalists at the ruling NPN national secretariat at Keffi Street, Obalande wanted his take on his principal’s chances vis-a-vis the battered Nigerian economy.
The rest is still “eating from the garbage heap” history in Nigeria’s political lexicon decades down the line.
No doubt, an urban design and architectural proposal for the comprehensive upgrade of Makoko based on Arc. Adeyemi’s A-frame conceptual prototype would be an unprecedented initiative capable of altering the entire dynamics for President Tinubu in his primary constituency on a global stage – a monumental game changer.
As already conceded albeit grudgingly, the provision of basic education to distressed Nigerian communities like Makoko does not strictly fall under the schedule of presidential duties. However, the buck on a trailblazing slum redevelopment initiative can stop on Mr. President’s table in his first budget presentation self describing in his own retrospective words, “While I have a thick skin, I do not have a thick mind.”
See details in Against the Run Of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in Nigeria p.120
Many of the items of “presidential sybaritism and elite indulgence” included in the 2023 Supplementary Appropriation Act are therefore politically unnecessary at this particular stage since the 2024 budget proposal is still in the works scheduled for presentation to the National Assembly before the end of 2023.
The payment for the presidential yacht should have best been included in the 2024 Appropriation Bill when and where the Navy would have defended their luxurious acquisition at the National Assembly receiving any backlash arising themselves instead.
Just a few weeks of a little more circumspection would have saved the Tinubu administration the kind of screaming headlines like The Guardian newspaper edition of Friday, November 10 2023 carried, “Political class at profligate best as citizens anguish” – imagine how the ace columnist Prof. Farooq Kperogi describes the controversial N2.176 trillion Act as funding, “decadent presidential pleasures,” in his Saturday, November 11 2023 intervention – one of most widely syndicated columns in our nation, Notes From Atlanta.
IBB has implied for us: never underestimate the power of negative profiling.
Already, a fake video of a white-themed shindig featuring Owambe-like voluptuous ladies complete with sailor hats purportedly on board the “presidential yacht” is currently circulating in the nation. A cruel joke that would blindside many hapless Nigerians.
Yet, the much maligned Supplementary Act includes the labour-friendly gesture for the payment of 4-month arrears owed university lecturers arising from the 8-month ASUU strike of 2022 among other crucial national items including take-off provision for the welcome Students’ Loan scheme.
As I rest my case on behalf of the “Subcity” denizens at Makoko since the foregoing is unsolicited advisory, rebuttals are welcome from aggrieved apparatchik.
