Tinubu 2023: Time for payback?

Recent developments in and around the political empire of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Recent developments in and around the political empire of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) point to the reality that his rumoured aspiration to bid for the presidency of Nigeria, has moved beyond the realm of conjecture and into actual jostling. For over a decade, and even soon after his two term run as the Governor of Lagos State, the man Tinubu had been associated with the prospects of his possible emergence as Nigeria’s president. In the context of the foregoing, he had also been involved in one scheme or the other, either to network contacts across the length and breadth of the country, as well as positioning his acolytes in strategic positions in the nation’s political firmament, ostensibly to build a formidable base to shore up support for him in any future contest. Some recent developments however suggest that Tinubu’s days of reaping dividends from his enterprise may have commenced.

Last week featured perhaps the most elaborate showcasing of BAT by his loyalists as their anointed President-in-waiting, with at least one rally at Ibadan to press home their agenda. Last Monday it was when a group of prominent Yoruba politicians that goes by the name South West Agenda (SWAGA) met in Ibadan to launch perhaps the most audacious rally for a Tinubu presidency come 2023.

Of note was a picture trending on social media of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, as he jointly hoisted at the rally, a pro-Tinubu banner with Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo State. That picture alone spoke volumes on how far and deep the ‘Tinubu for President’ agenda has progressed, even two years before the actual race will start.

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It is also significant that SWAGA cited as the core features of Tinubu’s credentials for bidding for the presidency, his superlative performance as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007. Also cited by SWAGA as the basis for his eligibility his ‘messianic’ role in the birthing of the APC as well as the enthronement of the current Muhamadu Buhari administration. How far these two purely parochial achievements will sell him across a mult-cultural Nigerian society when the chips are down, is a matter of interest to political pundits. For except a more nationalistic agenda is projected for him, the touted bid for presidency stands on the shaky ground of a mere sense of entitlement and compensation for him. Put succinctly, it amounts to pedestrian political consideration to sell to the country the argument  that Tinubu should be compensated with the Presidency just for the role he played in development of Lagos and the advent of both APC and the Buhari administration.

Meanwhile, beyond Obasanjo’s reported dramatic outing at the Ibadan rally, fiery Lagos cleric and politician Tunde Bakare had deployed the course of a sermon in his church to rain pro-Tinubu invectives on Yoruba leaders who excoriated the latter by stoking a misguided campaign of calumny that he was not a biological son of the woman – the iconic Hajia Abibatu Mogaji, whom he claimed as his mother. Bakare had rightly told such traducers of Tinubu to focus more on matching his record of contributions to the development of Lagos, than bordering unhelpfully on the man’s family tree. Hence as far as Bakare and a majority of right thinking Nigerians are concerned, anybody who feels piqued from wiewing the Tinubu persona by simplistically fixating on his family tree, has the option of jumping into the vast expanse of the lagoon that surrounds Lagos. After all there are countless celebrities and world beaters who were raised by adopted parents and guardians, and perhaps would have been worse off, if their stories were otherwise.

Just as well, with the backdrop of the SWAGA initiative the stage for 2023 Presidential race seems set with Tinubu projected as a constant fixture against whom shall stand any other aspirant from his party the APC, as well as whichever candidate emerges from other political parties. Nevertheless, this foretaste of the 2023 presidential race, still remains ephemeral and susceptible to the possible impact of several factors; a situation which SWAGA and the rest of the Tinubu lobby need to watch out for before clinking glasses. These factors include how the Nigerian public reads whatever special relationship exists between the man Tinubu and the present administration of Muhamadu Buhari, future developments in the crisis-riddled APC and the general turn of events in the highly effervescent Nigerian political space.

In the context of the foregoing lies the question of what a Tinubu presidency will bring to Nigeria given the matrix of issues that will determine who becomes President of Nigeria in 2023. As things stand, it is undeniable that the Tinubu lobby is yet to project his credentials for bidding for President of Nigeria beyond a sense of entitlement or payback for past performance, and showcase concrete and clear dividends for the wider cross-sections of Nigeria beyond Yorubaland and perhaps the APC. This situation cuts out the job for the Tinubu lobby in the days and months ahead before the 2023 target year as promoting him beyond an ethnic champion to a nationalist.  For even as they may judge the formidable political base of the man as unassailable, and see his victory as a fait accompli, they still need to do significant homework.

Without doubt, the issue of who becomes President of Nigeria in 2023, goes beyond installing any individual just on the basis of entitlement or compensation for good behavior in the past, but lies more on the capacity to move the country genuinely to the next level. Even before the advent of the Buhari administration in 2015, Nigeria had been grappling with debilitating developmental challenges in political, economic and other social spaces. The advent of the administration of President Buhari ushered in a new dispensation which not many Nigerians will hail as progressive, with the consequence of a cacaphony of voices calling for a regime change, even before the 2023 terminal date for the administration. Among the burning issues in the country are the syndrome of a run-away, bloody insurgency as well as banditry in the North, restiveness in the Middle Belt and the South with secession passion at boiling point in the South East. The oil and gas rich Niger Delta zone is also not spared in this cauldron of crisis as agitation against its serial neglect by successive federal administrations is yet to be adequately addressed.

Another specific challenge associated with the Tinubu bid for presidency is the distortion it has introduced with respect to the traditional zoning of critical national offices with the Presidency as the choicest of such. Already his bid for the Presidency has thrown a spanner in the works for the aspiration of the South East geopolitical zone especially, comprising the home of Ndigbo whose advocacy for the office is expected to intensify in the days ahead. This is not to discount the fact that since the return of the country to civil rule in 1999, the zone had clamoured unsuccessfully for a slot at the Presidency, due mostly to in-house centrifugal factors which deny them a common front to bid for the office. Many from the zone however now see 2023 as their due to produce the President. Along with the foregoing is the widespread rise in general criminality, all of which make the country a largely ungoverned territory. The question still remains whether Tinubu – with all he stands for, can deliver Nigeria from the raging crises.

For one given that the ‘Tinubu for President’ dispensation is flying on solid ground with the very powerful political empire which he had meticulously built, he is really the man to beat in any political contest for the highest office in the land.  Also given the traction already established for his bid for the presidency, every other aspirant emerging on the scene now compares with Tinubu as a mushroom standing by the side of an iroko tree.

Even at that, there is a consensus that a Tinubu presidency still remains a pie in the sky which offers to Nigeria, yet to be revealed responses to the aforementioned challenges.

Meanwhile as expected there are other aspirants for the office of the President like the Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi and Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi whose bids for now equate in shyness with the misfortune of a handsome young man winking at a beautiful girl in the dark. Only him knows what he is doing. So far they offer little competition to Tinubu who like a moving train needs will require a political tsunami to stop.

In the final analysis, he Tinubu could be President in 2023, but will Nigeria be better under him? That answer is blowing in the wind.