Tinubu's Life Time Ambition and the Issues for 2023 Elections
Issue based campaigns may drive 2023 elections
Unlike in times past, when Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Jagaba of Borgu in Niger State and Asiwaju of Lagos, stepped out of his closed-door meeting with President Mohammed Buhari, he went straight to address the State House reporters. Bola Tinubu is a quintessential politician who keeps the unwritten rule of politicking to speak less with dexterity. He told the reporters he had met the president to inform him of his intention to run for president come 2023 and thereby succeed Muhammadu Buhari. It was his lifelong ambition to be president in Nigeria, he told the reporters. He had never seen a kingmaker's crown but he saw nothing in the rule that stops a kingmaker from seeking to become the king. He was still consulting and had yet to declare his intention to Nigerians; he had only told the president.
Tinubu does appear to have taken the battle straight to the lion's den. Tinubu may have gone to President Buhari as a matter of courtesy and respect for protocol because he is a leader in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). But observers see it more than that. Buhari had told a team of television interviewers recently that he had a candidate for the presidency which he will not reveal to the interviewers so that that candidate will not be eliminated. If Buhari had made this statement about six months ago, many Nigerians would have felt that that candidate can be no other than Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the sagacious and dazzling politician who helped install Buhari first in 2015 and again in 2019. Moreover, Tinubu is a politician with a heavy campaign war chest who financed Buhari's election. The bullion vans that drove out of Tinubu's Bourdillon, Ikoyi house on the morning of the presidential election of 2019 were evidence of this financing.
But things changed recently as evidence put together in various reports are unraveling previously held image of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. From the acrimonious controversy that trailed Chief Bisi Akande's autobiography, My Participations, Nigerians are learning that Bola Tinubu did not altruistically leave the number two position to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; that there was almost altercation between Buhari and Tinubu who wasn't comfortable with the latter because some nothernern governors who are Muslims did not like a Muslim/Muslim ticket for the APC presidency.
Nigerians heard that Tinubu had in fact been opposed to Osinbajo’s candidature because he could not be a beneficiary of a position for which he had been rejected. Osinbajo reportedly had been a member of a committee set up by Tinubu to look into the number two position to Buhari, where he(Osinbajo) had said he could not in good conscience convince his constituency of a Muslim/ Muslim ticket. Osinbajo is a Christian. According to records, it was Rauf Aregbesola, Minister of Interior that suggested Osinbajo for the vice president ticket.
Indeed, this punctures the ballon of praises that had been heaped on Tinubu who was said to have dropped his ambition for the good of the nation. Of course, the Buhari-Osinbajo ticket went on to win the 2015 presidential election. Back then, Nigerians wanted anything that could remove the PDP government which had ruled the nation for sixteen years.
Many analysts believe that it was not Tinubu's religion of Islam that was the real reason behind his rejection by fellow Muslim governors from the North. They said Tinubu was rejected to clip his wings because he was seen to be a political tactician who could not be controlled by the North. In a way, Tinubu has become the issue in upcoming 2023 elections. He became governor in Lagos State, the commercial capital of Nigeria, when the military government handed over power to civilians in 1999. He also won a second term in 2003.
Of all in the team that won elections in 1999, only Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, remain in the front burner of Nigeria's politics so far. Others are either dead or have become irrelevant in the nation's politics. Tinubu has consistently maintained a grip on Lagos politics to the extent that nobody can aspire to any position in Lagos without him. His admirers and they number among the many that have benefitted from his largesse, love him so much. For the same reason those that have been excluded from this largesse hate him with a passion and are doing everything to make his quest for the presidency impossible.
Love him or hate him, there are very few that will deny his brilliance. He is seen as a political tactician. He is the first politician in the South West that has risen with a clout close to that of late Obafemi Awolowo, the political legend of that region. Through deft manoeuvres, Tinubu has been able to influence political decisions in the region. The votes of the South West which Tinubu cornered for Buhari gave him the presidency at both 2015 and 2019 elections.
But there are accusations of corruption against him, accusations which he has denied. He said he has never stolen in his life and truly there is no court record that he has ever been convicted on corruption charges, though he had been taken to court a few times by the EFCC. Meanwhile, the EFCC has said his case is ongoing. According to the anti-graft agency Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, investigation does not end in a day.
Besides, Civil Society Organizations have urged the EFCC to investigate Tinubu for contravening the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act of 2011 for using bullion vans to ferry large sums of money on the eve of the 2019 presidential election.
That notwithstanding, there are many people who question the source of his humongous weath. So much has been said that the wealth could not be traced to his employment in Mobil Nigeria and that since he left Mobil to be governor in Lagos, the most financially buoyant state in Nigeria, the source could only be government.
In any case, Tinubu has installed many kings in Nigerian politics and that has garnered to him many loyalists. Tinubu's correct age and state of origin are also sources of raging dispute. Google records 69 as his age but many are saying he should be in the range of 80. While Tinubu claims Lagos as his city of origin and Abibat Mogaji, a late prominent leader of market women in Lagos as his mother, his adversaries are casting a question mark on his claims. The name Tinubu is of a prominent Lagos family . His adversaries deny all these, saying that he is Amoda Ogunlere or Amoda Sangodele from Iragbiji in Osun state where he was allegedly born. In short, Bola Tinubu suffers from a crisis of identity.
All said, Nigerian politics is hardly issue based. The current precarious situation of Nigeria in terms of insecurity may turn out a campaign issue. Similarly, the huge foreign debts, especially indebtedness to China, kidnapping, insurgency, nepotism, creeping Islamization and northern domination are also major campaign issues. Plus, secessionist threats, lopsided federal appointments, allegations of marginalization in the East and the West. Add to this, economic downturn, thuggery and cultism especially in the south, open- grazing by Fulani cattle rearers, over 10 million out-of-school pupils, many of them based in the north, as well as collapsed health system. All these including escalating cost of living and many other issues that are gnawing at Nigeria's core, and threatening to turn it to a failed state, may force Nigerians to demand issue based politics in 2023.
Without a doubt, Tinubu will be called upon to account for his statements in the past. For example, he once told a ThisDay interviewer that he did not believe in one Nigeria. Besides, his stand on restructuring will come under scrutiny. Being a Yoruba man, he should be aware that a sizeable number of Yoruba people are demanding to leave the federation. On the other hand, Igbos are also demanding that it will be just for Bola Tinubu to step down for an Igbo candidate. How that will hold out is yet to be seen since it is held that there has never been political camaraderie between the Igbo and Yoruba. For sure, a titanic battle is assured because as soon as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu declared his ambition to President Buhari and emphasised that it is life long, Dave Umahi, governor of Ebonyi, who said God told him to contest but did not tell him if he will win or not, also marched to Aso Rock to tell the president that he is running for president. Meanwhile, the seers are not helping the Tinubu burden, some of them have said Tinubu is not the will of God.
Guest Writer:
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and Pastor. He earned a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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