The journey for the Tinubu presidency is long in coming but controversial on arrival.
By Emeka Alex Duru
It is hardly surprising that indifference and cautious optimism underline the attitude of many Nigerians as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 25 election, Senator Bola Tinubu, takes the oath of office as the country’s 16th President, today. The journey for the Tinubu presidency is long in coming but controversial on arrival.
Tinubu, who was declared the winner of the controversial election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), will be sworn in by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, at Eagle Square, Abuja.
Though his victory is being challenged at the Presidential Election Petition Court, by his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opponent in the poll, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), he would nevertheless take over from President, Muhammadu Buhari in a ceremony estimated to be witnessed by over 300 guests.
Tinubu’s presidency is long in coming. He has never for once, hidden his ambition to rule the country. His foray into politics began in 1991 as a member of the Peoples Democratic Movement, the political group of the late Major General Shehu Yar’Adua (retd.).
READ ALSO:
My family is blessed, we don’t need Nigeria’s wealth to survive, says Oluremi Tinubu
Though disliked by many on account of his Machiavellian styles, his years of experience and persistence have always come to his gains on major political contests.
In 1992, he was elected as the Senator representing Lagos West constituency in the ill-fated General Ibrahim Babangida political transition programme. The contraption lasted for about 22 months.
During his brief stint in the Senate, he led the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance, Appropriations and Currency.
In 1993, when Babangida annulled the June 12 Presidential election won by the late MKO Abiola, Tinubu was among prominent Nigerians who kicked against the injustice and the move by the military dictator to perpetuate himself in office. Tinubu did not only physically participate in various peaceful protests against the annulment, he took many platforms to condemn Babangida and made the office too hot for him.
His role in the pro-democracy movement earned him strong voice in the return to the current democratic order in 1999, when he was elected Lagos State governor, on the platform of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD). Subsequent internal crisis in the AD, saw the party losing five out of the six states in its column in the South West – Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Oyo – to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s PDP in 2003 elections. Only Tinubu’s Lagos survived the onslaught.
AD later metamorphosed to Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and by 201, had fused with the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), fragments of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to form the APC. A splinter group from the PDP, led by Atiku and then governors Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), later joined the party.
With the galvanised force, the APC was able to dislodge the PDP in the 2015 general elections. Tinubu did not hide his interest for the highest office in the land, while the move progressed.
It was therefore not surprising that that the June 2022 national convention of the APC, he blazed through other aspirants to pick the presidential ticket of the party, deploying his immense wealth and network of contacts. Same bohemian tendencies were unleashed at the February 25 presidential election when he was declared winner by the INEC.
For the former Lagos governor, scruples and principles have no room in politics and power contestation. In one of the videos that made the rounds while he was campaigning, he was caught lecturing his audience that power is not served in the kitchen; it is rather to be snatched and disappeared with.
Tinubu has lived with that conviction all through. Some of his personal details are breezy. There are suspicions in some quarters that Bola Ahmed Tinubu he bears, are not even his real names. Allegations are also that the primary school he claimed to have attended, never existed. The secondary school he mentioned as his alma mater does not hold records of his admission nor his studentship. An accounting firm he posted as his former employer, Deloitte in the United States, has also disowned him. His year of birth, which he put at 1952, is a subject of controversy, among his critics. But all are agreed that he is a political strategist and has eyes for recruitment of capable lieutenants.
How he is going to confront the mounting challenges of debts, bludgeoning youth unemployment, galloping inflation, falling standard of the naira and national values as well as the unceasing tide of insecurity in many parts of the country, are matters Tinubu will have to convince Nigerians of. His predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, did not do well in rebuilding the confidence of Nigerians in the system. He was parochial and pandered more to his Muslim Fulani kinsmen in his major policies and programmes.
Tinubu has a lot in his hands – rebuilding the psyche of Nigerians and convincing them that he is the president of all, not merely an arrowhead of a Yoruba irredentist agenda. But he has his court cases to contend with. And even if he manages to win – one way or another -, he has much work to do to gain acceptance in the court of public opinion.