In a sane society, APC is not electable again going by their tragic and dismal performance. Yoruba Ronu!
By Taju Tijani
The only name that had grown into a demonic legend on everybody’s lips in Nigeria and on everyone of this generation is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If we could call Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu the Eze Ndigbo Gburu Gburu, then Tinubu is the Baba Wuruwuru of Yoruba land. The Jagaban of Borgu. The Asiwaju of Lagos. The Omo Solenu of Iragbiji. The Afobaje of Yoruba land. The Eleyi of Ogun State. The Gbajue of Lekki Peninsula. The Emi Lokan of Lagos. The Egbe Kini Yiwa of Ikoyi. The Ose Ikini Olule of Isale Eko. Yes, his name either evokes hatred or love. His name either evokes adoration or contempt. His name evokes life or death!
The anger against Tinubu is reflecting how youthful Nigerians are ready to take this nation into a warpath as a result of his presidential ambition. The Nigerian youth are tired of adapting to suffering and governmental neglect. They are calling out old oppressors like Tinubu who is flirting with power – democratic power that had been used and abused by APC since 2015 to the eternal shame of Buhari, his appointees and all APC members. They are saying, get off the presidential train!
A snobbish fatalism is being built around the ambition of Tinubu to lead Nigeria in 2023. Worse, Tinubu has been caught in the eternal dilemma of his own making by settling for a controversial Muslim-Muslim ticket that has polarised Nigerians and turned him into a hate figure. Yoruba Ronu!
With Tinubu, Nigerians have decided that they do not have sympathy for a man with too much skeletons in his cupboard and a determined desperado who may be their tomorrow’s tears and pain. Nigerians are filled with fear and foreboding. In fact, the fear of a tyrannical Tinubu’s presidency goes deeper across Nigeria. Some of his adversaries have threatened to embark on exile if he becomes Nigeria’s leader in 2023. Go and ask that cerebral young man called Dele Farotimi. He promised to renounce his Nigerian citizenship and take up residency in a desert island.
The villainous Tinubu who is in the centre of our political dilemma and stormy brouhaha is blinded and unable to grasp the awakening engulfing Nigerians. He is yet to see how the lofty distaste of his personal ambition has divided Nigerians on tribal bloodline. The Jagaban has remained a man of irresolvable moral dilemma and insoluble contradictions.
As Governor of Lagos State, he pulled a blindfold on Lagosians by exhibiting a primordial instinct founded on rent collection, politics of dictatorship, thuggery, greed, lawlessness, and corruption. His excesses have translated into turning Lagos into his private fiefdom where he wields power like an emperor. Yoruba Ronu!
Tinubu is ferocious, rapacious, and even depraved in his overweening desire to be President at all costs. He wants to rule Nigeria – a torn, conflicted and morally bankrupt country by any means necessary. He has deployed dollars and that bought him the presidential ticket. He has deployed fake, unknown, and sacrilegious bishops. That has earned him universal condemnations and curses. He has erased and rewritten his Wikipedia and lowered his age to become a Melchizedek – a gospel enigma without beginning or end. In a Nigeria of political hubris and class perfidy, he once used a bullion van to deliver money to his Ikoyi home.
He has built a deviant but formidable form of political dynasty on a foundation of deception, lies, intimidation and the use of area boys. He has appropriated, recalibrated, and made thuggery chic, acceptable and necessary political tool of coercion and state capture. To Tinubu, the idea of a restructured, fair, equitable, greater, and prosperous Nigeria must remain stymied, marginal, and frozen until he fulfils his jaded, misguided, demonic and greed-inspired lifelong ambition to rule Nigeria. His public statements are pointing to his readiness to be martyred rather than live not to fulfil his dream. His language is becoming martial, and he is ready to turn Nigeria into another Rwanda if the Presidential trophy is not delivered to Bourdillon. His zombie army of jobless area boys are on standby! Ha, Yoruba Ronu now!
His home-grown Baba Sope political doctrine is driven by brutal and merciless dictation from the Bourdillon headquarter in Ikoyi. There is no escaping from his punishment against any offender, naïve enough, to contradict the whim and caprices of Baba Sope.
Tinubu has been claiming the virtue of a democrat without fully living it. Within the South Western political architecture, Tinubu has introduced a full-blown democratic oligarchy where he knights anybody he wishes – be a banker, civil servant, housewife, journalist, pastor and common tout into places of social and political relevance in Lagos, his fiefdom!!! That monarchical power is causing massive inflammation within APC and leaving room for dissidents and rebels.
Tinubu’s grip on South West political levers is constantly at war with Yoruba unsleeping passion for liberty, and hence the clamour to reduce his political voltage. This defenestration of Tinubu political power became a persistent utopian dream for many homo modernus within the APC family who will later package their anger into Otoge and the Soro Soke wakeup call in late 2020. He represents the moral revulsion that has destroyed Nigeria.
As we rush towards the cliff edge of a Tinubu’s delusional presidency, what are the responses to his ambitious depravity? How do we tame a roaming lion out to kill and devour this nation to the bones? The capture of the Nigerian space by its internal colonizers has lasted 62 years if we go by the year of our independence. Since then, we have been wrestling and debating how could we continue to watch as corrupt people prosper while the governed wallow in abject misery, pain, poverty, and the death of compassion. Enough is enough!
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Jagaban’s entry into the 2023 presidential race is the final provocation in the pantomime nature of our democracy. The only way to imperil his maddening ambition is for Nigerians – both old and young – to make a conscious and rational regrooving behind a messiah like Peter Obi who is fast becoming the maypole around whom we are all hedging our hope and aspiration for a rebound Nigeria of confident prosperity, economic stability, and wealth creation.
In a sane society, APC is not electable again going by their tragic and dismal performance. Who will forget the APC/General Buhari’s 7 years of vision-bereft, transactional leadership that has taught Nigerians the art of resigned endurance for all his Buharification of the political space. Who will forget the tragedy of 2020 Endsars movement and its aftermath? In a confounding logic of internalized grudge and existential tension, our youth offloaded their apocalyptic mayhem on Tinubu’s business interests and set them ablaze. The mass hysterical anger of ordinary people against a man who holds no political office under the scheme of things showed that our youths are fed up with the cult of personality and godfatherism in Nigerian politics.
Tinubu’s obsession with Emi Lokan has brought its own clash of conviction. He has vowed to continue with Buhari’s disastrous statecraft rather than accede to the genuine desire of suffering Nigerians for a better nation. Tinubu will not be a benign actor on our broken democratic stage. Going by his autocratic temperament, he would be a monster with a constitutional hammer looking for things to smash. It would be dangerous and egocentric for anybody to get in his way. Go and ask all his follow-follow governors in the South West. Go and ask Akinwumi Ambode who crossed his dangerous fork. Go and ask the army of area boys who are ready to kill for Tinubu. Yoruba Ronu o!
Today, his blind supporters, the ‘Omo Wani’, the ‘Omo Eni O sedi Bebere Kafileke Si Tomo Elomi’ and other clannish merchants may dress up Tinubu in such a cloying and exaggerated gift of his bridge-building leadership ability, the man is a waiting steam roller that will drive Nigeria to a tragic end.
As things now stand, debates and conversations about Tinubu’s presidential ambition can no longer be socially neutral. We must fight for the soul of Nigeria. Tribal identifications have become malignant forces which harden people’s ambivalent feelings into voting certified rogues into power. I must confess that over the past few months I have been gravely disappointed with Yoruba tribal jingoists who hold to a regrettable conclusion that Tinubu is bankable just because he is a Yoruba man. This shocking reinforcement of muscular form of tribal solidarity present the greatest challenge to our liberty from old, discredited personalities like Tinubu and Atiku who promote themselves with money.
These people are trapped in tribal time warp not minding the fact that the present condition of Nigeria transcends emotional tribal sentiment. Except we want to transform our democracy from tragedy to farce, then Tinubu will be the right man to take us to that farcical destiny. We must borrow ourselves brain. We must give ourselves relief from the unending disasters of both APC and PDP and support a third force that has come our way through a God-sent chance. We must not blow this chance on primordial fear of Peter Obi and Ibo people. If Yoruba voters are afraid of supporting Obi, we will remain a nation of idiots ruled by idiots. The Yoruba must not fear. Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. Fear breeds mediocre leaders. Yoruba must not allow the fear of Ndigbo presidency denied them from doing the very thing that will be beneficial to all – yourself, children, and generations to come. Yoruba Ronu!
Thinking Nigerians who have head on their neck must reject Tinubu as the next President of Nigeria. The optic persona of Tinubu both locally and internationally is toxic. He is seen as a liar who has been falsifying his way throughout his political career. This time Yoruba people must speak with moral courage rather than clannish conformity and vote for the best candidate – Peter Obi. 2023 election should not be a marker for Yoruba tribal solidarity but rather a courageous leap to make rational and informed choice for a better Nigeria. That courage should be the inner strength that inspires us to embrace sound judgement rather than allow a catastrophic Jagabanisation of the political space. Yoruba Ronu!
Psychiatric Case of the Week: A High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) heard last Wednesday that suspended Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris and three others have reached out to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) with a plea-bargain proposal in relation to their trial for alleged N109billion fraud. Madness!