Tinubu ruining Nigeria by installments

Tinubu transversed all corners of Nigeria begging for votes in 2023. How come now he is narrowing his choice of his cabinet and other appointments only to his Yoruba stock.

Eight years of former president Muhammadu Buhari's misrule in Nigeria was a deliberate stab at the heart of the unfortunate nation. I was not in any way surprised. Buhari acted according to type. He was a man who for all his life was holed up mentally in his North. Not just in the North but in a section of the very huge North; his own tiny Fulani who though a minority by inherent trick employed the Islamic religion to rule over the majority in the North, the Hausa. As a military ruler, his colleagues from the same North accused him of parochialism but in his campaign to be president of the nation, Bola Tinubu, now the president of the nation sold Buhari as a repentant democrat. Tinubu put together an amalgam of political parties that became a formidable opposition to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which had misruled the nation for 16 years and looked irreplaceable even though it was a ruin to the nation. Tinubu was praised by Tell magazine for his acclaimed political sagacity that was able to deliver the nation from the stranglehold of tribalists and kleptocrats in PDP and give the nation a widespread party that will represent all shades of diversity in Nigeria.

Yes, Buhari won and the sitting president, Goodluck Jonathan conceded. But Buhari from his first day in office declared openly by his actions that he was not the person Tinubu sold him to be. He was unrepentantly Fulani and will not mind if the whole nation went up in flames to satisfy his Fulani tribe. The nation did go up in flames many times. Buhari did not budge. During his reign criminal elements among Fulani herdsmen unleashed terror on Nigerians killing many and turning thousands into refugees in their own country. Despite all this, Buhari had a firm grip on the levers of power. I have a brother who is a diehard supporter of the North but as diehard as he is he was able to see the Fulanization of Nigeria by Buhari. He lives in Jos and has been there for almost all his adult life. "I can tell you for certain that Buahri empowered his Fulani people. I know where they live in Jos and I know their wealth which was bestowed on them by Buhari," he told me.

Honestly, I could understand with Buhari. If you call Buhari an illiterate in statecraft, you will be right on target. Even his formal education is mired in controversy. But the strangest thing is happening with Bola Ahmed Tinubu from the same APC who smuggled himself to power after Buhari. Tinubu is well-educated; he claims a bachelor's degree in Accounting from the Chicago State University in the United States of America and worked with Mobil Oil in Nigeria from where he resigned to join politics. He served as Lagos State governor for eight years, a state that you can call the melting pot for all Nigerians of different tribes. Tinubu is equally well-travelled. He knows what goes on in different developed parts of the world. He shouldn't be a stranger to how nations have been built. But his less than two years in office is a disaster that belies all his qualifications. Tinubu has friends from all over the country. He has spent all his years cultivating friendship from all over Nigeria. If Buhari is holed in the North, Tinubu knows all the corners of Nigeria.

Like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba leader who made several shots at the presidency before Tinubu, another Yoruba, Tinubu transversed all corners of Nigeria begging for votes in 2023. He worked tirelessly and sleeplessly to get Nigeria to put him in office as president over them. How come now he is narrowing his choice of his cabinet and and other appointments only to his Yoruba stock. Awolowo said it many times that those who equated his ambition with only the Yoruba made a mistake. At some point, he made the product of his studies available to other regions in the country. He was said to have told his followers not to think of his Action Group (AG) party as for only Yoruba. In fact a recent opinion said he placed a curse on any Yoruba who will think of the AG as a Yoruba party. How come Tinubu a man who wants to be seen as a successor to Awolowo's political legacy behave contrary to the polical philosophy of the late sage.

What is apparent is that Tinubu like many of the current Yoruba politicians has only used the name of the well-accepted Obafemi Awolowo to climb the ladder of power. He has not a jot of his spirit in him. The Afenifere, a socio-cultural political group that claim link to the Awolowo philosophy had to cry out recently against the parochial appointments of President Bola Tinubu. They distanced the group from Tinubu's misrule and one-sided appointments that only favour Yoruba people. They denied that Tinubu is appointing the Yorubas but that he is appointing his Lagos State lackeys who happen to bear Yoruba names. Tinubu has not changed from his time as the governor of Lagos State. The Yoruba leaders, because of his activities in NADECO, an organization formed to get the annulment of MKO Abiola's reversed, made Tinubu the gubernatorial candidate for Lagos. Funsho Williams who had been selected to the post while Tinubu and others fled the nation abroad was persuaded to step down. But hardly had Tinubu won that election than he began to undo the older Yoruba men and women who made him. Because his deputy, Kofoworola Akerele-Bucknor would not join in his move to seize the Alliance for Democracy (AD) from these elders, Tinubu moved against his deputy until the woman was pressured to resign. In a recent television interview, Kofoworola Akerele-Bucknor said Tinubu employed "juju" to get her out of office. Such was Tinubu’s unbridled ambition for power. After that, there was no stopping him. He formed his own party, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and began to collect acolytes and praise singers around himself. He did not leave out good journalists who formed a company of praise singers for him. These people are the ones that are operating with him in Abuja now.

But Abuja is not Lagos. Abuja is the capital of Nigeria, a nation so diverse with about 300 ethnicities, all of them competing among themselves. How then reasonable is it to have just one ethnicity take all the slots in appointments. It looks like Tinubu has a strategy to put Nigeria in his pocket. Tinubu is more a politician than a strategist working for the best interests of Nigeria. His slightly above one year in office has brought the economy of the nation to its knees and put the life of average Nigerians in tatters. All attempts to call him to order has fallen on deaf ears. His acolytes say continuously that he is courageous but discerning Nigerians are saying it is a courage that may end up in self-destruction.

The Yoruba pride themselves as very civilized and fair-minded. They are very hospitable. They live in cities and towns and embrace visitors. Unlike other parts of the nation, they sell land to other citizens from other parts of the country. They give away their daughters in marriage to other ethnicities and also marry from other tribes. They are well-educated. In the 2023 elections, the mainstream Afenifere supported Peter Obi, an Igbo candidate of the Labour Party. A manouvre by a tiny section of the Afenifere group split the group and compelled the leader of the group, Chief Reuben Fashoranti who had relinquished his position to another old but relatively younger person within the group, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, to endorse Tinubu. That tiny group of Afenifere is known to have done that for their percuniary interest. Most of them today are beneficiaries of the Tinubu presidency but the main group continue to denounce them. It is not the Yoruba way of life to be unfair to others. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo before Tinubu was not parochial in his appointments. He put more Igbo than Yoruba especially in his second term in office and they performed very well.

Tinubu's recent appointment of Bianca Ojukwu, wife of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who led the Igbos in a civil war against Nigeria is one indicative move of Tinubu to get acceptance for himself among the Igbo in 2027 and knock the bottom off Peter Obi, an Igbo in the 2027 election. If Tinubu is able to achieve this and win the Igbo votes he will become a full dictator post 2027. While he may not perpetuate himself in office, he can like he is doing in Lagos State become the kingmaker of those who will rule Nigeria for some time to come. But age is not on his side as he keeps running to hospitals in Britain and France to attend to his health. He hides this but it is common knowledge to observant Nigerians. The Yoruba and other Nigerians must rise to stop Tinubu in his evil track. What Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe and others did not do to build Nigeria and make the nation truly one, great and progressive can be done now. Nigeria can be one with a leadership that is pan-Nigeria and not parochial.

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