(Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr. Tope Fasua. Photo by nigerian eye)
Tope Fasua, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Advisor on Economic Affairs, has maintained that phone snatching is no longer a major issue in Nigeria, drawing positive comparisons between the nation and Cameroon and the United Kingdom.
Fasua made the assertion at a members-only coffee hangout hosted by the Kay Hikers Club in Abuja, and it was immediately ridiculed online after a video of the conversation was uploaded on Instagram on Thursday.
In the video, a woman questioned Fasua about the high cost of ride-hailing services and widespread phone robberies, informing him that basic necessities had become unaffordable.
She inquired more about the state of safety for regular Nigerians.
“Are you aware of the current situation regarding the safety and pricing errors in that system?” she inquired. Are you aware that getting into these cars is unsafe for you as an individual?
She also made a clear connection between street criminality and financial distress.
“Your security guards and gatekeepers are underpaid,” she remarked. As a woman or a human being, this is equivalent to being robbed or sexually assaulted. They want your phone so they can sell it, so you can no longer stroll these streets without being robbed. Because the average person comes from a place of survival.
She asked how a Fasua might convey to Tinubu the seriousness of the situation, technocrat could grasp ground realities.
“You have to be number conscious with economists and statistics people,” she said. Nigerians are not just numbers. We are actual folks experiencing actual hell. What plans does the government have to address the problems at the grassroots level? We are in pain. We are in pain.
In response to the phone-snatching allegations, Fasua attempted to minimize them by citing comparable occurrences overseas.
Go to the UK and you’ll see people smashing phones on the streets of London. There was one Cameroonian woman present. Victorine is her name. She is a vlogger. She was in Nigeria. He said, “And she tells you that you can’t hold your phone like this in Cameroon.”
He maintained that things had gotten better in Nigeria.
“After all of this phone stealing, Nigerians have progressed. Nigeria is not experiencing a serious problem. In the morning, I go for walks. I work anywhere. It’s not a problem. Let’s not search for every reason to denigrate the nation. It’s not all of our security problems.
Fasua’s framing was also contested by a male participant who claimed that by emphasizing “mindset” as a remedy, he was spiritualizing structural issues.
The man remarked, “I feel like you are starting to spiritualize the problems in Nigeria when you say mindset, because it’s actually supposed to be a reality, not a mindset.”
Fasua insisted that regardless of the performance of the government, Nigerians could still improve their own circumstances.
“There are things that each and every one of us can still work on to be able to survive better than we were surviving,” he stated. No matter how much money we have, we can always donate a bit of it.
