By Michael BUSH bhnboss@gmail.com
In all ramifications, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is Nigeria’s greatest politician alive. In fact, in terms of political and social engineering, our incumbent president is the number one visionary of all those to have occupied our presidency. Apart perhaps from Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (retd), who in his years as military president played politics more than politicians, President Tinubu would have no good second the way he manoeuvred his way from the very bottom of Nigeria’s political trajectory (first fighting the military to a standstill and later as last man standing in the opposition). Hate him or love him, the man has an enviable track record that will take another century to equal or break.
An alarming majority of Nigerian politicians have stood for nothing, in their entire political life. Well, perhaps apart from self. They are here today and there tomorrow. Very many have crosstituted, recrosstituted and cross-crosstituted.
Not President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He was not only in the front lines opposing the military, he also when things got too hot retreated to the trenches even extraneously. Emerging later back in the country and on the political divide, he sought electoral glory from the harder side: opposition. In 1999, Alliance for Democracy (AD), his political party, swept his region, southwest.
Sadly, by 2007, when another southwesterner, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of People’s Democratic Party, was rounding off his second term as president, AD only had one state left in the region: Tinubu’s Lagos. Most, if not all, of the five other governors at the time, carried away by their perceived closeness to the then president, had forgotten that in politics Nigeriana there’s no permanent friend nor permanent enemy; just permanent interest. The exact same deficient strategy which is tantamount to playing with fire is what some new testament governors are rehashing.
Someone who loves them had better forewarn them; before it is too late. Plus, if their predecessors were consumed by a President Obasanjo who was not a politician, just a strong leader, what fate do they think awaits them in the age of a President Tinubu who is both a strong politician as well as a strong leader? And, this is where you can situate my problem number one with this president.
The opposition either do not still understand this president or do not still know how to fight (or how to stop underestimating) the man. Surely, a politician who from outside took office against all odds (even plus including opposition from own party-led central government) is no mean man. People’s Democratic Party, Labour Party and New Nigeria People’s Party, All Progressives Grand Alliance as currently constituted, either severally or jointly, cannot -as we say in Nigeria- do the president or indeed All Progressives Congress anything. Judging by the deft way he won in 2023, President Tinubu is not the kind of politician you can stampede out of office and through an election.
For crying out loud, have our three or four leading opposition parties forgotten that the serial political strategist and sponsor has to-date won an alarming majority of ballots, he partook in, directly and indirectly? They should try going up north, and try coming back down south through the north central. They shall hear or see firsthand the humongous political or electoral investment, architecture and goodwill that this one man has to his name. Even when he held no political office, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu sat quietly in Lagos and built a vast political empire nationwide.While his colleagues were (or are) busy building monuments, Asiwaju has -then and now) been big (very, very, very big) on human capital development. Up north, in central and down south, in history and at present, you find people Asiwaju sponsored singlehanded into one high office or the other: governors, deputy governors, senators, representatives, house members, local government chairmen, councillors, supervisors, etc. He produced a president, too. He performed the above magic especially between 2008 and 2022, a period when he held no paid political position; he got his people high profile political appointments everywhere in this country.Who else has that kind of deep sociopolitical bank vault to draw from? That’s my problem number two with the man from Lagos. How do we beat him clean and clear, beyond by mouth and in the media? How do you even beat a man who had beaten the establishment and is now in charge of the entire political institutions and processes that no Nigerian who is a politician in the real sense of the word can be in charge of but lose election.That is my problem number three with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as my party grapples for sense and strength enough to find ideas and ways to upstage him in 2027. I confess that this particular problem gives me a headache every time I ruminate on it. I hardly can see any hope, any light let alone any way out of the 2027 Tinubu cul-de-sac; what with topshots of the main opposition party(ies) openly endorsing the president. Who has seen this type of thing before?Which brings me to my problem number four with this president vis-a-vis the next general elections. In addition to possessing the highest number of apparatchiks on our continent and one of in the world (falling behind only to China, Trump’s US, Putin’s Russia, etc.) and so many political strong men and women and boys and girls all over this country, the man also has most of the power brokers who made my political party tick. Take president of the Senate, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, GCON; take former Majority Whip of the senate, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, MON, the Abia North cat with nine lives; take the mercurial honourable minister of Federal Capital Territory, Chief Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, CON; take the noiseless performer, honourable minister of works, Senator Nweze David Umahi, CON. All four used to be PDP state governors, today on whose side are they?No matter what PDP or the opposition say to the contrary, the absence of these men and many others from our side and their presence on the president’s are a huge minus to our 2027 plans. Add this to the too many self-destruct buttons pressed daily by so-called members of the Tinubu opposition and you understand quite easily how and why the next president of Nigeria after Tinubu shall be Tinubu. What are leaders of the opposition doing on the eve of the next general elections other than pursuing their selfish agenda of meeting with themselves over who shall be what? How exactly does that better the lot of the masses, how exactly does that mobilise and sensitise the electorate for the all-important assignment that 2027 is?
Show me that strategist who belongs in the opposition and has been given the chance and the support to present us a Tinubu-beating roadmap. Rather, what we have are opposition leaders who are busy dividing the opposition the more as if they all work for the same man they tell us they want to remove from Aso Rock. Of all the problems I think I have with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, concerning 2027, this is the most frustratingly troubling. The fact that those we hired because we trusted that they could rein in the lion of Bourdillon away from Aso Rock are instead working so hard to keep the man there up until 2031.To be sure, we live in a free country. We are all free to do as we wish. Even in the United States, the capital of the democracy that I suspect is our model, deomocrats and republicans and even independents occasionally support or vote beyond party lines. So, it is neither an abomination nor an anathema for Nigerian politicians in the opposition to break ranks sometimes, but they must do so without thinking their followers are dunces because we are not.The opposition leaders that Nigeria seeks are people of integrity and patriotism who must evince tremendous consistency. PDP, Labour, NNPP, APGA et al, if they are serious about shoving aside APC in 2031, since 2027 seems out of our reach, must immediately begin the process of creating and empowering their own Tinubu. I hate to patronise the president, but which one Nigerian politician has for decades stayed one place (as we say in Nigeria)? Which one of our politicians in the opposition defied the odds and stayed true through harsh electoral weather? I say it again, the Nigerian opposition need our own Tinubu.From his NADECO heyday, through his time at Alausa and indeed the long, lonely road between 2007 and 2015, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been faithfully consistent, strategically hardworking and incredibly visionary. Even attempts, such as the Obasanjo presidency holding back billions of Lagos state local government funds, meant to weaken the resolve of the then state chief exec. and force him over, drew blank outright. The political tactician, a man of few words, has gone on to sit every single governor of Lagos since he left office in 2007. Truly, BAT has no good second. See, the opposition should not envy the president as he enjoys the current harvest. He worked hard and sacrificed long for everything he now is. And, except we change our puerile approach even 2031 shall elude us. My problem with Tinubu, therefore, is not with Tinubu.My problem with Tinubu over 2027 is really with the opposition. We are divided. We are liars or, to put it in a politically correct way, we are pretenders to the throne. And, unfortunately, the way this writer sees it, it is fast becoming too late for us for Nigerians to take the opposition serious even for 2031.
This piece was first published in the Sun of (today) Monday December 22
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