The battle line is drawn in Nigeria

Bola Tinubu Atiku Abubakar

Yes, the battle line is drawn in Nigeria. Who is fighting who? First, it is Atiku Abubakar the restless Fulani man from Adamawa state who like Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the sitting president of Nigeria want to be president at all costs. Atiku has been fighting for the covetous office in Nigeria for many years, covetous because of the huge monetary advantage it offers. The last 2023 elections were between him and Tinubu. Though Peter Obi and his “obidient” group tried hard to be important, the battle was between Atiku and Tinubu two friends who became enemies because of political office. Atiku's loss at the polls and the courts did not deter and disengage him from the fight, he went straight to the Senate, the upper legislative chamber to ensure that Tinubu did not have his man planted in the presidency seat at the Senate. He worked hard that Godswill Akpabio, a two-time governor of Akwa Ibom state did not become the president of the Senate. Atiku got many senators even from Bola Tinubu's APC on his side to work against APC's Akpabio but tried he did but he failed. Atiku got Abdul Ningi from Bauchi central district to come back to the Senate and give teeth to Atiku's war. Abdul Ningi after he was suspended by his colleagues for three months for allegedly bringing them into disrepute when he told a Hausa language BBC Radio that they padded the 2024 budget with 3 trillion naira told the press that the suspension meant nothing to him because he was begged to return to Senate after about nine years of absence. Who begged him? Atiku Abubakar most likely because he knew his war capabilities. So when Ningi made his allegation, he was the invisible hand of Atiku Abubakar.

The suspension of Ningi has not mellowed the war. From his suspension, Ningi is still fighting. And Tinubu is not resting also. After the rowdy session of the Senate where Ningi was suspended, a news hound reported a meeting between Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Godswill Akpabio at the Aso Rock base of the president. The news hound did not know what was discussed but what else could it be after a major war against Tinubu's interest was averted and temporarily put on hold. Ningi has alarmed the nation that Tinubu was running two parallel budgets aided by Akpabio. After their meeting, and on the next day, news came again that the Southern Senators Forum had been reactivated and that Senator Tokunbo Abiru would be leading. While the North has always kept a united front, it has been very difficult for their southern counterparts to forge unity. The Yoruba and Igbo especially have been at each other's throats since before and after the independence. If these two tribes will forge a united front they will form a bulwark against Hausa Falani who always want to dominate the nation, at least the north will have a group to fear.

No political figure has been able to accomplish that. Not even the Yoruba political icon, the late Obafemi Awolowo, despite his having accepted to serve under the late Dr, Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo and national leader, twice so that the two of them could present a united front to rescue the nation. But Awolowo failed on the two occasions. The last presidential election in 2023 further divided the Yoruba and the Igbo because of the entrance of Peter Obi who entered on the platform of the Labour Party. The Igbo having been out of the national power loop for so long put all they had into the Obi candidacy and unwittingly made Peter Obi an Ndigbo candidate who was not able to reach out to other tribes despite many trials. Obi's candidacy accentuated the war between the Yoruba and Igbo. A friend told me that Twitter now called X became a battlefield between the two tribes in abuses to one another.

Would Bola Ahmed Tinubu achieve what Awolowo, his tribes’ man was not able to achieve? Many friends of Tinubu relying on his political sagacity say he would. A few others who adore the moral leadership of Awolowo and his high mental astuteness are saying they will not accept a personality like Tinubu as a successor to their highly esteemed leader, Obafemi Awolowo. Tinubu is shrewd and cunny and does not blink at using anything to get his way across in politics. In the 2023 contest, knowing he would face Atiku, another old war horse of Nigerian politics, Tinubu announced to the whole world that he would fight dirty. He said he had read in a book he did not name that there is no way you would fight a pig without getting your body soiled one way or the other. That contest was indeed dirty and divisive. While Tinubu announced publicly that it was the turn of his tribe, the Yoruba to be president, in his popular 'Awalokan' dictum ( it is our turn), Atiku told a gathering of all emirs in the north that he was the only candidate that can represent the interest of the north. He did not tell the nation what that interest is although many know it is no more than the maintenance of oligarchical reign on the nation, a position that the Hausa Fulani has enjoyed since the British fostered the north of Nigeria in 1960 at its departure.

When Atiku Abubakar began to work openly against Bola Tinubu in the choice of Senate president, Tinubu did not make his war so open, but now he seems to have come out in the open. Senator Opeyemi Bamidele who is the Senate leader and from Tinubu's APC said he could not play his role very well as the leader of Southern Senators Forum because he's also the Senate leader and pointed out that the war is about the plan to remove Godswill Akpabio who is a known Tinubu supporter in the senate. When Opeyemi Bamidele's position as leader of the Southern Senators Forum was yielded the following day, many saw an open declaration of war by Tinubu and his group. Tokunbo Abiru who was chosen to lead the Forum unanimously was commissioner for Finance under the Fashola-led government of Lagos State, a position that emphasized his closeness to Tinubu. In order words, Abiru is a Lagos man and Lagos men and women run Tinubu's government. He is a graduate of economics from the University of Lagos and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Accountants. He will bring the politics he learnt from his job as Executive Director of First Bank and the CEO of Polaris Bank to bear on his job as the leader of the Southern Senators Forum, especially in the current atmosphere of intense brickbats.

Tokunbo Abiru said the reactivated Southern Senators Forum will liaise with its northern counterpart to move Nigeria forward. They will be concerned with the issues of the south and Nigeria. There is no doubt that as it was in the 2023 presidential elections, Nigeria has again been sharply divided into two. The hands of Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu are seen in this bold declaration of war. Atiku will be 81 in 2027 when the next presidential election will be held. Atiku has told the nation that he will still contest. Atiku is ruled by unbridled ambition so also is Tinubu who will stubbornly stick to his office. Like between Biden and Trump who will slug it out again in the next presidential election in America, it is most likely that Nigeria’s election will also be between Atiku and Tinubu as it was in February 2023, an election that was fought with much acrimony and personal and tribal insults. But what about providence? What about if in the war of these two ambitious men who have nothing to show except their ambition which is for themselves and not for the hapless people, Nigeria is dragged down. This is the question Nigerians must attend to so that these two elephants are not allowed to drag down the nation with their unbridled ambitions.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos