The Director General, Voice of Nigeria, VON, Mr Osita Okechukwu has appealed to Nigerians to give President Bola Tinubu administration the benefit of doubt to reshape the socio-economic status of the country.
“President Tinubu may turn out to be the nullifier of our economic stagnation and the risorgimento of our Giant of Africa status, given his early signposts,” Okechukwu, foundation member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, said while interacting with journalists in Enugu on Sunday.
The D-G VON’s appeal followed the underrated views held by many Nigerians on President Tinubu’s controversial antecedents.
Okechukwu posited that journalists like most Nigerians are adamant and are wittingly or unwittingly underrating President Tinubu.
According to him, history has numerous records of Presidents who came to power with high expectations and ended up poorly in people’s assessment.
Okechukwu gave an example of “the rare courage President Tinubu demonstrated within a few days with the exit of fuel subsidy, a canker-worm; and the suspension of dual foreign exchange rate, a food-is-ready cesspool of corruption.”
He cited, in the course of the interaction, courtesy of THE NATIONAL INTEREST, the instance of Warren G. Harding, an underrated 29th American President who appreciated at the end of his tenure.
He said that Harding just did not seem to get any respect from historians or citizens and was viewed as a kind of political laughing stock,
“Yet, nothing bad happened to the country during his stewardship. He didn’t get the nation into any intractable wars. He quickly pulled the country out of the steep recession he inherited from his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson.
“He then presided over a robust economy- including real Gross Domestic Product growth in 1922 of nearly 14 per cent, one of the best years of economic expansion in the country’s history. Civic unrest, substantial during Wilson’s time, declined significantly during Harding’s tenure.”
