BY IDUH ONAH
PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s invocation of Biblical Moses, parting of the Red Sea and a never-going-back-to-Egypt rhetoric in an attempt to politically appropriate the iconic scriptural narrative to justify his profound policy error of total removal of petrol subsidy is not only theatrical but also irresistibly hypocritical and comic.
Specifically, the President, on Monday at the Presidential Villa during an event titled: “Together Till 2027: An Evening with Original City Boy,” organized by the City Boy Movement and the “Relax-Tinubu-Is-Fixing-Nigeria” group, citing both the Bible and Quran, remarked that Nigeria will not return to petrol subsidies, comparing calls for a reversal of the policy to asking the Biblical Moses to go back to Egypt.
Beyond that, Tinubu must note that the biblical story offers an inconvenient lesson to those who wish to appropriate it for politics. When the Israelites left Egypt, the story did not end at crossing the Red Sea. After the crossing, the wilderness began. Though the wilderness was not easy, but a core narrative in the wilderness was that God made crucial interventions in ensuring survival provisioning.
Mr President declared that he had no regrets about removing the subsidy and insisted that Nigeria would never return to Egypt. “I could listen to my political opponents promising a return to subsidy. Most of all, sometimes I remember my scripture studies, both in the Bible and the Holy Quran. When Moses left Egypt, they faced a challenge, and the Red Sea parted and gave way. You cannot ask Moses to go back to Egypt. We wake up with ideas, original thoughts and deep thinking to move this country forward. With your energy and support, we will never go back to Egypt,” the President said.
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While the President’s Biblical and Quranic allusion may be rhetorically convenient, it inevitably raises rather two elementary but critical questions. If President Tinubu wishes to make the Biblical Exodus the metaphor for his economic reforms, then Nigerians are entitled to ask: Why were the Israelites being rescued from Egypt by Moses? Who, precisely, is the architect of the cruelty that the Israelites were being liberated from?
You see, the grand deception in Nigeria’s political conversation, repeated by successive governments, is that subsidy on petroleum products or subsidy generally meant for the common people (on health, education or agriculture, etc), is typified as Egypt, and that its removal constitutes the Exodus. But for the working class, as well as the middle class, the real Egypt is not a government policy; it is the political and economic order, the prebendal system, an order in which a tiny governing elite arranged for itself an extraordinary privilege while the overwhelming majority of Nigerians struggle beneath the weight of poverty, insecurity, unemployment, inflation and institutional decay.
In that regard, the Nigerian people are the Israelites and the Nigerian ruling class: presidents, ministers, governors, legislators, political contractors and the vast ecosystem of beneficiaries surrounding power; are the symbolic Pharaohs. They have not merely presided over Egypt, they are Egypt. The biblical Israelites were enslaved by Pharaoh, their labour enriched the Egyptian state while their own lives were defined by excruciating deprivation, coercion and exploitation. They cried out because the system under which they lived had become unbearable.
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Can we not see in our society the Nigerian equivalent of the savagery of the Egypt that Mr President is alluding to? What else does one call a society, so endowed with wealth but in which millions work without escaping poverty; where parents struggle to feed children despite working full-time; where young graduates roam from office to office looking for employment; where insecurity has made ordinary movement an act of calculation; where public services are chronically dysfunctional while those who govern live behind walls of privilege?
Tinubu and his City Boy or “Relax-Tinubu-Is-Fixing-Nigeria” movements may decide to call it whatever they like, but they should not tell the people that they have already left Egypt by the mere symbolism of petrol subsidy removal.
The President’s invocation of Moses is therefore something more than an unfortunate metaphor. In an atmosphere of political campaign of an incumbent, it could be euphoric and theatrical, where the president could present himself as a liberator. However, it could be delusional to invite Nigerians to interpret the prevailing economic distress as merely the discomfort of an otherwise successful Exodus. Tinubu should be reminded that the Israelites did not leave Egypt merely by changing the price of something essentail to their lives, they left because the structure of their bondage was broken.
Petrol subsidy was certainly problematic. It became a cesspool of opacity, arbitrage, corruption and fiscal distortion. But removing a subsidy is not, by itself, equivalent to liberating a people. A government that removes subsidy while leaving citizens exposed to crushing food prices, inadequate healthcare, poor public transportation, unemployment and insecurity cannot simply declare that an Exodus has occurred and demand applause for the journey. The Exodus must be measured by the condition of the people, not the rhetoric of the leader.
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Beyond that, Tinubu must note that the biblical story offers an inconvenient lesson to those who wish to appropriate it for politics. When the Israelites left Egypt, the story did not end at crossing the Red Sea. After the crossing, the wilderness began. Though the wilderness was not easy, but a core narrative in the wilderness was that God made crucial interventions in ensuring survival provisioning.
So, Mr President; Nigerians are not asking to return to Egypt; they are still waiting for Moses; the leader who will confront the Pharaohs, take them out of Egypt, part the Red Sea of corruption, impunity, poverty, insecurity and political privilege. They are waiting for the Moses who will walk into the wilderness with them, rather than watch from the comfort of a presidential palace, who will travel with them on roads and not on presidential jets, who will be treated in our hospitals and not jet out to be treated in foreign hospitals; whose children will attend our schools instead of schoold overseas.
When the Israelites were hungry, there was manna; when they demanded meat, there were quails; when they were thirsty, there was water. At Meribah, Moses struck the rock and water came forth. When poisonous serpents threatened them, Moses was instructed to raise the bronze serpent so that those who looked upon it could live. These are political symbolisms that can be equated to subsidy or other welfarist policies in contemporary political economy.
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In other words, a people supposedly emerging from bondage must be sustained during transition simply because liberation without protection is merely another form of abandonment. Can anyone identify Nigeria’s supposed Exodus in the lived experience of ordinary citizens?
Where is the Nigerian manna, symbolised in a comprehensive welfare system or a food security programme that puts affordable food within the reach of the poor? Where is a robust public transportation that makes the removal of fuel subsidy less punishing or a healthcare safety net, mass employment programme, institutional protection for the millions whose purchasing power has been shredded by inflation? Where, in short, is the evidence that the Nigerian State understands that reform creates casualties who must not simply be told to endure?
The Israelites were not told that hunger was proof of Moses’ genius but were fed. So in essence, while Moses provided leadership, our own ruling elites are busy politically impersonating him. If Tinubu is suggesting, even symbolically, that he is Moses, then Nigerians have another legitimate question: Where is our Pharaoh? The answer may be staring back at us from the mirror of the Nigerian ruling class.
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Unlike the biblical Pharaoh, the Nigerian version does not even build pyramids. He builds luxury estates, business empires, private universities, fleets of presidential jets, yatchts, and luxury vehicles and networks of patronage while asking Nigerians to be patient, to tighten their belts. This is why it would be premature, perhaps even presumptuous, for any contemporary politician to announce himself as Moses.
The Nigerian Moses will not be the politician who merely tells Nigerians that hardship is the unavoidable price of salvation. He will be the leader who understands that the people are the purpose and essence of not just reform but governance.
The Nigerian Moses will not ask citizens to admire his courage while their children go hungry; demand that the poor demonstrate patriotism by suffering quietly while the governing class lives in a parallel republic of privilege; and most importantly, he will not stand outside the wilderness pointing at the Promised Land while refusing to walk through the wilderness with his people. Biblical Moses was not a Pharaoh who changed his title to Liberator, he was a leader who endured the journey with the Israelites.
Our ruling class are remarkably adeft at asking the citizens to make sacrifices which they scarcely appear prepared to make themelves. Citizens are told to endure inflation, fuel prices, electricity costs, transport costs and food prices while ruling class are ensconced in a solid architecture of official privileges. This is why the President’s declaration that Nigeria cannot return to Egypt is ultimately unpersuasive but instead annoying.
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Here we are with a government that claims to have, in the name of corruption, ended petrol subsidy, but nobody is seeing the savings from that reform translate into hospitals, schools, transport systems, decent jobs, food security and genuine social protection. The same government, rather than behave as a responsible, caring father turns to be a vicious tax collector.
So, Mr President; Nigerians are not asking to return to Egypt; they are still waiting for Moses; the leader who will confront the Pharaohs, take them out of Egypt, part the Red Sea of corruption, impunity, poverty, insecurity and political privilege. They are waiting for the Moses who will walk into the wilderness with them, rather than watch from the comfort of a presidential palace, who will travel with them on roads and not on presidential jets, who will be treated in our hospitals and not jet out to be treated in foreign hospitals; whose children will attend our schools instead of schoold overseas.
When that Moses comes, Nigerians will know him not because he will announce himself as Moses, but because the Pharaohs will begin to tremble, and the Israelites will begin to breathe.
Onah is the Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL RECORD and writes this column every Wednesday. Send reactions via email to: nationalrecordng@gmail.com, onahiduh@yahoo.co.uk. WhatsApp: +234 8033209749
