Like him or hate him,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,a former governor of Lagos state and top founder and financier of three notable political parties, has remained a factor in Nigeria’s politics.
Since he threw his hat into the politics of Lagos state in 1991 when he contested and won a Senate seat to represent Lagos West,he has remained as relevant as relevant could be like him or hate him.
With the annulment of the June 12,1993 presidential election and his roles in the struggles which culminated in the formation of the National Democratic Coalition,NADECO,he has remained in the centre stage of politics even when on exile.
However,the turning point of Tinubus famed political career came with his emergence as governor of Lagos state on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy,AD.
Although he also earned several names while in his first term due to his ‘doubtful’ credentials he navigated through the murky waters of Lagos politics and miraculously survived his first term and in the words of a former governor,he emerged as the last man standing having survived the political tsunami which swept through the South west region and won a re election while the other five governor’s in the AD states lost and went back home.
Among them,Tinubu became a rallying point.
However,his being a rallying point is not without reservations about his role in the surreptitious ‘killing’ of the Afenifere influence in the South West, the political platform which threw up the AD after the death of Chief Moshood Abiola in detention in 1998 prior to his release from detention.
What you may ask is the reason’detre for this article on Tinubu often regarded as the new grandmaster of politics who clubbed together three fringe political parties in 2014 to create a platform for defeating a ruling government which has then spent sixteen years in government?
A treatise on him and his political trajectory is needed now as the result of his political engineering .That it produced the leadership of the present government is now a serious subject of analysis for obvious reasons.
Ordinarily,with Buharis background as a military dictator who oust a civilian government in 1984 and introduced draconian but purely partisan decrees with bitting effects on the polity.
If indeed he was removed by his military compatriots led by former self styled military president, General Ibrahim Babangida for what the later described as the formers inability to appreciate the diversity of Nigeria In his leadership style,what change did Tinubu see in him to have thrown himself to making him President?.
Has Buhari in his six years not done much more to destroy the unity of the country in terms of his appointments,policies,attitudes,pronouncements and throwing up of purely sectional and tribalistic groups like Miyetti Allah?
That his emergence has thrown up Fulani apologists which has rode and continue to ride rough shod on Nigerians as if they own everybody?
With the throwing and parceling up of the Northern part of the country into a political,military and economic domineering group in the last six years, has Tinubus creation of the APC and the Buharis presidency not resulted into a clear departure, negation and betrayal of what Tinubu and his associates tried to build in the APC and by extension Nigeria’s fledgling politics.?
Since the emergence of party politics after the demise of the second republic,it is a statement of fact that nobody has been able to bring together a big party that reflected Nigeria’s diversity to wrestle power from the ruling party especially the south west into the mainstream of Nigeria’s politics.
It is more intriguing that for Tinubu who succeded in getting the whole of South West to pitch their tent with the conservative North was a feat that even late Ladoke Akintola,former premier of western region in the first republic,Chief Adisa Akinloye of the then National Party of Nigeria,NPN and even Olusegun Obasanjo whom the northern ruling establishment help put in power to the rejection of his kinsmen, could not attain. Has he not been rubbished?
The South West for years remain in it’s progressive opposition politics but Tinubu in 2015 drew them out!.
Tinubu crossed that bridge and effected a North West/South West political marriage.
But today where is the marriage ?
Of what effect has Buharis performance in office been in managing Nigeria’s diversity and unity forged by the APC emergence.?
With all the gnashing of teeth and agonising in the land occasioned by the economic downturn and insecurity, itself a baby of the Muhammadu Buharis policies;the name of Tinubu has continued to ring a bell negatively or positively, depending on where you stand.
What objective analysis and appraisal many have asked, did Tinubu and his colleagues who brought out Buhari from several defeats to crown him as Nigeria’s president did before they put men and material resources together to rebrand him as a symbol of Nigeria’s hope and unity.?
Could Tinubu and his associates still come out today and proudly support and display the Buhari brand they toiled in 2015 to offer and sell to Nigerians?.
With the progressive reduction of the APC into a party of a tiny cabal which represents ethnic and narrow personal and religious interests, would Tinubu and like minds still get the platform they created in its original form as Nigeria moved closer to next elections in 2023?.
With the scheming in the APC and ‘hijack’ by sectional interests,could the centre still hold for Tinubu?
Yet,to the ordinary citizens,the several visits to him in the last two months in his London home portend a show of love and concern for his health and him,but could he and his supporters beat their chest and say the visitors are not merely playing politics of belonging.
Conversely,were the august visitors in London to ‘size’ him up and plan their next move to finally take the party from him during the next national convention or in mutual solidarity for a leader rendered indisposed by nature?
The next couple of months will be decisive for Tinubus and his close political associates as it will either finally unmake them and throw into the dustbin of history there labour of the past.
…First published Sept 27, 2021
