For Nigerians who are familiar with the Greek mythology in which the Trojan horse was mentioned, the wooden horse that was used by the invading Greek army in the conquest of Troy during the Trojan War was a game changer.
According to the tales told about the war, the Greeks had besieged Troy for 10 years and made no headway against the stubborn inhabitants of the fortified city. And to compound this problem, the war had also reached a stalemate.
However, in a flash of brilliance, a Greek hero renowned for his craftiness, Odysseus, came up with a plan to present a huge wooden horse to the people of Troy as a symbol of the Greek’s surrender and retreat.
But unbeknownst to the people of Troy, the giant horse had a handful of Greek warriors secretly tucked away in its interiors.
After the Greek army beat a bogus retreat and pretended to sail off on their ships, the men of Troy triumphantly came out and took with them the wooden horse into their city.
That night, the Greek came out of the wooden horse and unlatched the gate of the city, making it possible for those Greeks who had already made a U-turn on the sea to invade Troy and burn it to the ground.
Nowadays, the term “Trojan Horse” is used metaphorically to mean, according to the Cambridge dictionary, a person or thing that joins and deceives a group or organization in order to attack it from the inside.
Concerned Nigerians are claiming that individuals who do not mean well for the president, Bola Tinubu, have ingratiated themselves with his government and are following the Troy playbook.
Thus, this has led to further claims, though unsubstantiated, that there are “enemies” within Tinubu’s Aso Rock who intend to defeat or undermine his government by “blindfolding” him to the reality on the ground in Nigeria.
And quite understandably, the harsh reality of Nigerians struggling to make ends meet has made to come to the fore the accusations against the president about the “uninspiring” manner he has been responding to the economic hardship ordinary citizens are facing as well as the security situation in the country.
The whole situation has made some Tinubu loyalists look flustered because they understand that by giving unsolicited advice to the president, the fifth columnists who may have found their way into the presidential villa will try to undermine the former Lagos State governor’s popularity.
And because of the deep concerns which resonated through the polity due to the aforementioned, Nigerians, generally, have said that the president must look critically around him for ne’er-do-well politicians and other individuals who are parochially minded and then kicking them out by exposing them.
A legal practitioner, Clement Iloh, said the president’s accommodating nature could be why “something like a Trojan Horse” got so close to him.
Iloh urged the president not to feel “too relaxed” with those around him as some of them don’t mean well for him.
He said those who should be avoided are “in the negligible few” and are fighting to keep the president away from feeling the pulse of the nation thereby putting his reelection bid in jeopardy.
“Personally, I think the president is an accommodating person and this could be why something like a Trojan horse got so close to him, crawled in and will try to destroy his reputation if he allows it.
“If he listens to the advice this negligible few give him, the president will likely be in trouble with Nigerians. They want to destroy his government from within.
“I don’t want to mention names but I will mention this: they want to blindfold Tinubu and make him think that all is going on well in the country and that things are not as bad as they sounded.
“Personally, I think the president is an accommodating person and this could be why something like a Trojan horse got so close to him, crawled in and will try to destroy his reputation if he allows it”
“Nigerians are suffering and they can’t make ends meet.
“If they prevent Tinubu from fully seeing the true extent of this suffering, they will erode his popularity and put his 2027 reelection bid in jeopardy.
“They don’t mean well for him and he should not be too relaxed with them. The president must act now and expose every unfriendly friend,” Iloh said.
Nigerians have also said that the Trojan horse has “well-connected” individuals in the president’s inner circle who are responsible for shielding him from seeing the plight of the people and the overwhelming distress in the land.
Interestingly, after he assumed office, the man in the eye of the storm, Tinubu, had repeatedly said that he sees the hardship pervading the land. But Nigerians have insisted that the president is only “playing with words” and is not really seeing their anguish and sufferings.
For a recap on what Tinubu said to Nigerians about their condition, it will be recalled that about two weeks after he was sworn-in as president on May 29 when subsidy was removed and Nigerians had begun to feel its biting effects, Tinubu told a distraught people during his maiden Democracy Day address on June 12, 2023, “I feel your pain. This is one decision we must bear to save our country from going under and take our resources away from the stranglehold of a few unpatriotic elements.
“I admit that the (subsidy removal) will impose an extra burden on the masses of our people. Painfully, I have asked you, my compatriots, to sacrifice a little more for the survival of our country.”
Again, during the commemoration of the country’s 63rd Independence Day anniversary on October 1, 2023, Tinubu also said, “There is no joy in seeing the people of this nation shoulder burdens that should have been shed years ago. I wish today’s difficulties did not exist. But we must endure if we are to reach the good side of our future.
“My government is doing all that it can to ease the load.”
Though the president had backed up his words with actions by rolling out palliatives to ameliorate the stress of families and households, Nigerians have continued to cry out against those who epitomise the Trojan horse in the corridors of power and who have prevented the president from knowing that such palliatives did not go round.
More frustrating, too, according to Nigerians, is the fear that the Trojan Horse is working to ensure that Tinubu, who arrived in the country last week after a two-week private visit to Paris, does not give heed to protests like the ones which erupted in Niger and Kano states last week.
Other Nigerians have also highlighted the actions taken by the Police and the culpability of the force in the matter.
For instance, the National Coordinator of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, Emmanuel Onwubiko, stated that the Police who arrested protesters in Minna were helping to transform Tinubu’s government into a dictatorial regime.
Onwubiko said, “We (HURIWA) condemn the recent evil trend by the Nigeria Police all across Nigeria to curtail and deny Nigerians of their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights. This is the clearest sign that the current administration under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may be preparing to transform into a dictatorial regime.
“HURIWA is urging Nigerians to speak out loud and clear in denunciation of these brazen plots by the police to help the civilian politicians in government establish a totalitarian government whereby the rights of the people to refuse to accept evil policies of government would be established.”
A political analyst, Ben Njoku, told The Point that the “civilian politicians in government” mentioned by HURIWA in their statement were the Trojan horse in Tinubu’s government.
According to Njoku, the president is a democrat and must do all to uproot anyone in his government who wants to silence the masses.
Njoku said, “I agree with HURIWA. The civilian politicians HURIWA called out are the Trojan horse we are talking about. They are just there (in Aso Rock) to mischievously show the president in a bad light.
“If you remember, when the president was in the opposition, he criticised the (Goodluck) Jonathan administration but he was never arrested.
“And I understand that those in Minna were arrested for violent protests, but such arrests should have been done with wisdom, in my opinion.
“I think the only ones who should be arrested are those who protested violently….not making the leaders of the protests a scapegoat.
“But all in all, Tinubu is a democrat. He must uproot those in his government who may want to silence the masses.”
