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Don't Cry For Bola Tinubu by wisino1(m): 7:34am On Oct 20, 2015 |
Don’t cry for Bola Tinubu
October 20, 2015 at 6:32 am in Femi
Aribisala
APC leader, Bola Tinubu
MANY monuments have been built in honour
of the man Bola Tinubu. He is acclaimed as
the political genius of our times who not
only engineered the taming of the PDP
juggernaut, he caged it and confined it to the
backwaters of Otuoke. Since the APC defeat
of the PDP in the presidential election,
Tinubu the tactician has been feted,
celebrated and praised to high heavens. But
all these encomiums have proved to be
highly exaggerated.
The truth of the matter is that Tinubu, the
veritable Jagaban of Borgu, is a master of
political illusion. He is remarkable for the
distinction of characteristically pulling defeat
out of the jaws of putative victory. He mid-
wifed the birth of the APC, only to be shut
out of its vice-presidential sweepstakes. He
engineered APC”s victory at the centre, only
to see his arch-enemies take over the posts
of Speaker and Senate President in the
National Assembly. He piggy-backed Buhari
to the presidency, only to be shut out of a
say in the president’s cabinet nominees.
Tinubu is called the National Leader of the
APC when there is no such post in the
party’s Constitution. When a critical meeting
of APC bigwigs was called to address the
party’s imbroglio in the National Assembly,
the “National Leader” could not attend
because, in actual fact, he is not even a
member of the National Executive Committee
(NEC) of the party.
Sowing and reaping
In 2011, Tinubu was hailed for cutting his
nose to spite his face. The PDP nominated
his kinswoman, Mulikat Akande, as Speaker
of the National Assembly. However, Tinubu
conspired with recalcitrant PDP party-
members to frustrate the plans of their party
for his South-west homestead. Instead, he
engineered the election of Sokoto’s Aminu
Tambuwal, an APC wolf in PDP sheep’s
clothing, as Speaker.
In 2015, Tinubu received payback for these
shenanigans again to the detriment of his
native South-West. The same Aminu
Tambuwal of Sokoto he schemed into the
position of Speaker in 2011, repaid Tinubu by
frustrating his efforts to install his Lagos
acolyte, Femi Gbajabiamila, as Speaker in
2015. Taking a leaf straight out of Tinubu’s
2011 playbook, Tambuwal conspired with
opposition PDP members to install another
Northern PDP turncoat, Yakubu Dogara, as
Speaker.
Tinubu’s comeuppance here is particularly
savage because it was actually Gbajabiamila
who reportedly convinced Tinubu that
Tambuwal would readily act as traitor to his
PDP party in 2011. It is therefore veritable
poetic justice that the same Tambuwal
became an equally ready tool of the PDP in
the frustration of Gbajabiamila’s ambitions
and the interests of Tinubu and the APC in
2015.
Moreover, Tinubu was repaid for his 2011
manipulations with interest. The same
treachery employed to Tinubu’s political
disadvantage in the House was also
duplicated in the Senate. Bukola Saraki,
another PDP turncoat, refused to abide by
the dictates of APC Central, firmly controlled
by Tinubu’s ACN. He snatched the position
of Senate President without official APC
approval, but with the support of the
opposition PDP. So doing, he sidelined both
Tinubu’s first-choice of George Akume, as
well as his second-choice of Ahmed Lawan.
Crumbled cookie
Just as Tinubu was licking his wounds at the
denial of his “rightful inheritance” in the
National Assembly after the APC victory at
the polls, the news came that his political
cookie had equally crumbled at Aso Rock. It
had been popularly alleged that Tinubu’s
portion in Buhari’s presidency would not be
limited to the appointment of his political
godson as vice-president, but would also
include the allocation of no less than nine
choice ministerial nominees to the discretion
of the Jagaban of Borgu.
But by the time Buhari unfurled his
ministerial list two weeks ago, the alleged
dedicated slots had shrunk to zero. Many of
us had warned in the heady days of the
formation of the APC that those insistent
that power must return to the North would be
determined to checkmate Tinubu if and when
the election was won. We warned Tinubu
that even as he cannot conceivably be
accepted nationally to rule Nigeria as
president, even so can he not rule Nigeria by
proxy. We warned him that the North would
never allow Buhari to be his Man Friday in
Aso Rock.
However, Tinubu was too far gone to listen.
It would now appear that he even failed to
take out insurance policies against such
probable eventualities.
But once elected, Buhari started a romance
with Babatunde Fashola and Kayode Fayemi
designed clearly to sideline the Jagaban.
While these former governors were previously
members of Tinubu’s inner-circle, they had
since run out of patience with the heavy
handedness of their boss. Therefore, during
the election campaign, both of them
campaigned for Buhari above and beyond the
call of party duty.
Fashola, in particular, was clearly fed up
with being under Tinubu’s political shadow.
In the struggle for who would be the APC
governorship candidate in Lagos State,
Tinubu did not allow Fashola to choose his
successor, in the ignoble tradition of
Nigerian governors. While Fashola favoured
Dapo Sasore, the former Attorney General of
Lagos State, Tinubu railroaded in Akinwunmi
Ambode as the APC candidate.
While again, in the ignoble tradition of
Nigerian politics, governors promptly
transform themselves into Senators when
their term as governor ends, this option was
closed off to Fashola because Tinubu had
already installed his wife as the Senator from
Fashola’s constitutency. The only option left
for Fashola politically was presidential
ministerial appointment and, even there,
Tinubu had put up a road block against him.
Tinubu prefers to nominate political
nonentities for higher office in the South-
West, so that he would be the only Iroko tree
in the forests of the region. Therefore his
candidates for ministerial appointment from
Lagos were his little nationally-known former
commissioners, Wale Edun and Yemi
Cadosso, who could pose no threats
whatsoever to his ascribed South-West
political supremacy.
Alarm bells:But when Fashola and Fayemi
accompanied Buhari to the G7 meeting in
Germany in June 2015, alarm bells started
ringing in Tinubu’s Bourdillon Road mansion
in Lagos. This was clearly a signial that
these former governors were intent on by-
passing the official godfather of the South-
West by applying to be members of Buhari’s
kitchen cabinet on their own recognisance.
The Tinubu brigade would have none of this.
Therefore, a campaign of calumny was
launched to cut Fashola in particular to
dimunitive size. Suddenly, the “memo” was
sent out implying the former governor had
developed political leprosy. When two books
were launched simultaneously celebrating his
achievements as governor, none of his APC
colleagues from Lagos dared to attend for
fear of entering the bad books of the dreaded
Jagaban.
In order to nail the coffin on Fashola’s
ministerial aspirations, it was leaked to the
press that a whopping 78 million naira of
public money was spent on the construction
of his personal website. 139 million naira
was also alleged to have been spent on two
boreholes constructed in Government House,
Lagos during his tenure. The intention here
was to ensure that Fashola becomes
ineligible for ministerial consideration on
grounds that he would not pass Buhari’s
anti-corruption integrity test.
However, Buhari was apparently unimpressed
by these political shenanigans. When his list
of ministerial nominees were unfurled,
Fashola and Fayemi featured prominently
among Buhari’s “first eleven.” None of
Tinubu’s nominees made the list. Other
nominees from the South-West were precisely
the kind of people Tinubu did not want in
Buhari’s team; people who would not be
indebted to Tinubu but to Buhari.
While Buhari completely ignored Tinubu’s
candidates, he included that of another
South-West bigwig. Obasanjo’s favourite-
son, Prince Olagusoye Oyinlola, former
governor of Osun State, was included in
Buhari’s list. Thereby, the president asserted
the saliency of Obasanjo’s South-West
influence in Aso Rock over that of the
Jagaban. He even pointedly appointed
Obasanjo as his special envoy to Guinea-
Bissau.
This is certainly not what Tinubu bargained
for when he decided to pitch his tent with
Buhari and the APC. If he were to be
furthermore overlooked in the appointment of
BOT chairman of the APC, the
marginalisation of the Jagaban in the post-
election APC would be complete.
Comeuppance: Some of us saw this coming.
In the heady early days of the APC coalition,
we warned that Tinubu would be used and
dumped. But we were labelled as PDP
lapdogs and charlatans. That is why I say
today: let no one cry for Bola Tinubu.
Anyone who hears Tinubu’s recent vicious
attack on Saraki would realise these are the
tokens of a frustrated man. Tinubu could
not attack the President, therefore he poured
all his venom on the Senate President. He
accused him of indiscipline and disloyalty;
the very things he celebrated in the PDP
rebels who joined forces with him against
their party in 2011.
Face saving device
The recent declaration that Buhari appointed
Babachir Lawal as Secretary to the
Government of the Federation at the instance
of Tinubu is a face-saving device. The
Tinubu camp forgot to tell us this until now.
At the time of new SGF’s appointment, all the
uproar was about the Northern lopsidedness
in Buhari’s choices.
Observing the sidelining of Tinubu by Buhari,
Senator Femi Okunroumu said: “I am having
a good laugh. This is what I expected. In any
case, Tinubu is stretching his luck too far as
he wants to dictate who will rule Nigeria.
Tinubu’s wings need to be clipped. With the
ministerial list, Tinubu has been dumped. He
should not just be dumped, he should be
disgraced.”
On his part, Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo
Adebanjo, said: “APC is not a party; it is a
gang of people whose sole aim was to
remove Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as president.
In a real party, you share the spoils of office
before elections not after elections. This is
what is happening in APC. We warned our
people, but they failed to listen.”
In the new politics of today’s APC, it is better
to be the enemy of Bola Tinubu than to be
his friend. The enemies of Tinubu become
Senate presidents; they become Speakers of
the House of Representatives; they become
ministers of the Federal government. But the
friends of Tinubu are sent to Siberia.
The Jagaban of Borgu himself has been slain
politically upon his high places. How are
the mighty fallen! 1 Like |
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