Tinubu’s lifelong ambition is to add the Nigerian state to his vassal state – Lagos, using the enormous powers of the Presidency.
By Sonny Ogulewe
Barbara Walter, an American scholar at the University of California, San Diego and Council of Foreign Relations, in her book, How Civil Wars Start demonstrated how nations and multicultural societies plunge themselves into monumental conflicts. The book is live and current with our present circumstances in Nigeria and has issued appropriate warnings applicable to Nigeria.
Nigerian ruling elite, particularly, politicians like, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT), Mallam Nasiru Elrufai and indeed the All Progressives Congress (APC), should pick a copy and read. In the book, Walter was both prophetic and incisive particularly in analyzing Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s first major decision since his nomination as APC’s presidential flag bearer. Quoting Volterie, she had warned the likes of BAT and his sympathizers that “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” and advised that “most people don’t realize they are on the path of civil war until violence is a feature of everyday life” and this she observed happens in a situation where “as ethnic group lose faith in the existing system, extremists’ step in to offer alternatives”. Nigerian has been through this path before and therefore unprepared to see someone’s lifelong ambition truncate the delicate peace in a plural, polarized and fractious country such as ours at this historical moment.
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Tinubu, without mincing has a hidden agenda that may not be far from politico-religious bigotry. A view that his unbridled thirst for power and greed remains a pointer, and a vivid testimony. Lagos state is his estate and he looms large while the real owners of the state could only squirm in pains and wait on the Lord.
Having conquered Lagos State, Tinubu’s lifelong ambition is to add the Nigerian state to his vassal state – Lagos; using the enormous powers of the Presidency. When therefore he declared his intention to seek the office of the President, he left no one in doubt by his actions since that declaration that that his ambition is a lifelong one. He comically declared Emi Lo Kan Yoruba word for ‘it’s my turn.’ Warp and all, his presidential ambition essentially does not indicate or connote the zeal to serve or to add value to the Nigerian state but to assuage his African big-man mentality and extend the frontiers of his economic empire.
The first sign of his bigotry and primitive delusion was his deliberate refusal to cultivate the support of the South-East and South-South during his campaign. The South-East and South -South do not matter so long as he had gotten the buy-in of the North. This he again reflected in the Strategy Team of Campaign where no person from the South-East was considered competent enough to be on the team. The second, is his choice of a Muslim-Muslim ticket. By these, Tinubu has unequivocally made it clear that national peace and unity could be sacrificed for his unbridled lifelong ambition and with this mindset he has declared a war on Nigerian peace and unity. He should heed the advice of Barbara Walter that “civil wars could be avoided in a plural and fragile country by doubling on democracy and quality of governance” not by satisfying someone lifelong ambition.
Tinubu’s choice of Muslim-Muslim ticket even with the contemptuous reason that ‘competence” was the reason for his choice has left no one in doubt that the peace and unity of this great country could be sacrificed for his life ambition. He has “rubbed shit” on the faces of more than hundred million Christians and other liberal minds in Nigeria.
Many scholars have copiously written to voice their concerns but none has been able to situate the Tinubu’s convictions that made him take such mischievous misstep that is capable of plunging the already fractured country into a fratricidal crisis. In every objective analysis, in a plural state like Nigeria, manifestly divided along ethnic and religious lines, it is an impossible task for this ticket to fly in a general election. So, what is the impetus for one whose life ambition is the presidency yet has taken an obvious step to subvert his own ambition?
The mostly probable impetus for this political hara-kiri is the conviction that the 2023 election will be rigged. Rigging has been a dominant feature of Nigerian elections since independence which was painfully elevated to a state craft in 2019 and has left the beneficiaries with the conviction that every election is business as usual. However, what is clear is that the ability to rig in an election is not evidence of intellectual or physical superiority but a shameless demonstration of both intellectual and physical weakness in a competitive process that has rules of which state apparatus and public institutions like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are compromised against public will.
In deconstructing the dangers of a rigged election, Walter warned that “if one side can manipulate the results of an election and democratic checks and balances are too weak to enforce a peaceful transfer of power, then hope in fair competition is lost… and makes resort to force attractive” According to her “election can strengthen a country, bringing citizens together in a meaningful act of civic duty. They can also renew the hope in institutions and reaffirm the power of the peoples vote”.
The 2023 election is expected to heal years of wounds inflicted on the Nigerian political space not to exacerbate them. But the desperation of Tinubu for political power has all the features of plunging the country into monumental crisis. His ambition is in collusion with the desperation of a privileged group to continue to hold on to the levers of power at all cost and there is this inert but unfounded fear that they are about to lose their privileges and the wealth that come with it.
Nigeria should therefore be very careful of a civil war or revolt engineered by the likely group of the corrupt politicians who may lose out from the new power structure that emerges after the loss of the APC. The APC has created in 7 years a band of very corrupt and obnoxiously rich privileged political class and a privileged ethnic group who will no longer enjoy the associated privileges of power after 2023.
What does Tinubu think he is that in a plural state like Nigeria he could flagrantly violate the spirit of the 1999 Constitution as amended that recognizes the plurality of the Nigerian state and even go further to clarify the secularity of Nigerian state? Why does he think he could widen the fault lines if not for the delusive self-assurance that the Nigerian political space is still mundane and weak? Perhaps, this was the confidence that propelled this heinous misadventure.
The dress rehearsal for “mother of all rigging” was demonstrated during the Osun governorship and the outcome is already history. Nigerians be wiser. Let’s save this country beyond the rhetoric of Emi Lo Kan, to a better nation-state of equity, social justice and economic growth.
Dr Ogulewe, a political analyst, writes from Abuja