NATIONAL CONFAB 2014: YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT TINUBU IS DOING UNTIL YOU PAY ATTENTION. If you really want to understand what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing, stop reacting only to headlines and go back to Nigeria’s long history of constitutional conferences. Many of you GENZs and others I call "emergency patriots" just woke up in 2023. And to you that's enough to understand and judge rightly what Nigeria's problems are. Many of you don't even know why Nigeria is where it is in. Go back to the history of constitutional conferences in Nigeria, you'll understand. Because the truth is simple—and uncomfortable: Nigeria has already diagnosed its problems many times. From the Ibadan Constitutional Conference of 1950 to the 2014 National Conference, the same issues have been raised over and over again: - Too much power concentrated in Abuja. - Weak, dependent states. - Resource control and revenue imbalance. - Lack of true federalism - Overloaded Exclusive List - Security architecture that is too centralized. - Political structure that discourages productivity. Different eras. Same diagnosis. Now here’s where it gets interesting… Leaders before today didn’t ignore these problems. Many of them actually set up conferences to discuss and document solutions: Under Olusegun Obasanjo — the National Political Reform Conference 2005. Under Goodluck Jonathan — the 2014 National Conference. Under Ibrahim Babangida — political bureaus and constitutional debates. Even under Sani Abacha — the Constitutional Conference 1994–1995. They all talked. They all debated. They all produced reports. Documents were written. Committees sat. Delegates argued. But implementation? That’s where Nigeria always stalled. Because vested interests sat on the recommendations and the leaders were afraid to go against them. Now look at today. Without calling a big national conference, reforms are happening that touch on the same core issues those confabs identified decades ago: * Fuel subsidy removal and correcting fiscal imbalance and freeing state finances. * Exchange rate unification and addressing structural distortions in the economy. * Tax and revenue reforms and pushing toward a more sustainable fiscal system. * Local government financial autonomy. * Focus on subnational viability and forcing states to think beyond federal allocation. You may not like the approach. You may disagree with the speed. But don’t pretend the direction is new. Here’s the blunt truth many people don’t want to hear: Many Nigerians don’t actually understand the country’s core structural problems—yet they argue the loudest. We shout “things are hard” (they are), but ignore why the system has been unsustainable for decades. We demand change, but resist the consequences of fixing what is broken. Go back and read the confab reports. You’ll see clearly: Nigeria’s problem has never been a lack of ideas. It has never been a lack of recommendations. It has always been a lack of political will to implement them. So before you dismiss everything happening today, ask yourself: Are these reforms addressing issues Nigeria has debated since the 1950s? Are these the same structural weaknesses identified repeatedly across conferences? And if yes… then what exactly are we arguing against? You don’t have to agree with president Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But at least understand this: Nigeria is not experimenting. Nigeria is finally confronting long-identified problems. History has been speaking for over 70 years. Maybe it’s time we listened. I support Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu with my full chest. ….the blueprint of Awolowo 👌 ORO…🙌 #yorubatiktok #nigeriatiktok🇳🇬🇳🇬🇳🇬 #lagos #tinubu - @yoruba.regionalis