On Babachir’s Angry Rejection Of Shettima As Presidential Running Mate— Maiwada Dammallam
POLITICS DIGEST- Babachir Lawal chaired the Bola Tinubu Planning and Strategy Committee. The committee supervised the sub-committee that picked from a very rich list of other recommended candidates Kashim Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate. After the announcement of Kashim Shettima as running mate by Tinubu, Babachir Lawal went public discrediting both the candidate and the process. Daily Trust reported Lawal thus:
“I chaired the Bola Tinubu planning and strategy committee, which was set up to implement strategies for Tinubu to pick the ticket. But I’m not aware of the sub-committee that recommended running mates. It is not our work. You know politicians can cook up anything.”
Questions begging for answers:
Is Babachir denying knowledge of the Sen. Grace Bent’s sub-committee that picked Shettima as running mate which the planning and strategy he chaired supervised when he said: “I’m not aware of the sub-committee that recommended running mates?”
If yes, what does he know about about Tinubu’s search for a running mate as the Chairman of the Planning and Strategy Committee? Babachir should clear the air on this given the criticality of the situation and the absurdity of a Chairman of as sensitive committee as Planning and Strategy not knowing about equally as sensitive matter as the selection of a presidential running mate for a ruling party.
Also, to remove from the conversation the “unreliability of politicians” as alluded by Babachir who, to borrow his “descriptive” words, “can cook up anything,” he need to elucidate further because he’s in the same ship of “unreliable politicians” and unless one politician is not as bad as another, Nigerians must have a reason to believe one “unreliable politician” against another without valid proof of one being from another planet; immune from the “unreliability virus.” Something must appear in the conversation to make Babachir uniquely deserving of being seen as a reliable politician who cannot cook up anything to promote his position. Of course, this is Babachir’s law of politician’s reliability as it applies across board.
To improve the validity of this argument, some members of the Sen. Grace Bent’s sub-committee who commented on the matter claimed Babachir was not only part of the decision but as is the norm, the report got to the presidential candidate through him. According to the Daily Trust report thus: “First, we sent the soft copy of our report to Asiwaju before Babachir Lawal took the hard copy to him in London last Wednesday.”
The burden is now on Babachir to deny knowing a soft copy report, whether clearly described as a running mate selection report or not, was sent to the presidential candidate while also explaining if he actually went to London to deliver a report to Asiwaju and if he did, what’s the content of the delivered message? I’m working with the assumption that it’s impossible for Babachir to travel to London to deliver a message to somebody he describes as his good friend without either knowing the message he’s carrying when he left Nigeria and or discussing the contents with his good friend at the point of delivery.
Ordinarily, one wouldn’t join this controversy but for the fact that it’s as unfortunate as it’s unnecessary and avoidable. Taking it to the media is a great disservice to the APC and Asiwaju. Babachir is a close associate of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. He has at his disposal numerous ways to express dissatisfaction with Shettima’s candidature without overheating the polity and enriching or validating the irrelevant and democratically unrealistic position of the opposition in the matter which is clearly woven by the opposition to attract cheap sympathy and public support.
One would think, reasonably visible and respectable Christians in the Tinubu team will rally around and support him to douse the overhyped and seasonal religious dichotomy always deployed by politicians when general elections are looming in the horizon — a dichotomy that always fizzle out not a minute longer after the declaration of the winner of the presidential race.
And Babachir is in the best position to confirm that religion is only a theoretical factor in Nigeria’s political permutations. He was neither appointed SGF by President Buhari on the basis of his Christian faith nor was he sacked for it. He was appointed on the basis of assumed capacity to fly the flag of APC’s tripodal agenda of security, economy and war against corruption. He was sacked because he woefully failed to see the threshold set by the administration to achieve its agendas. In saner climes, APC will have more problem explaining how Babachir was involved with such high level political decisions given his new “grass cutting” identity, than explaining the Muslim-Muslim ticket that sent him over the edge; insulting just about everybody in the APC for a decision that’s purely taken to observe basic principles of democracy.
Babachir failed woefully to disguise his hatred for Sen. Kashim Shettima. He wrote and quote:
“And why Kashim Shetima? He is an overambitious man who has a Machiavellian bent and has lots of money with which to procure a preferred-candidate status among Tinubu’s lapdogs. And as we are beginning to see, to also procure bogus supporters especially from among the Christian community to help launder his no-so-good image.” End of quote.
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Why is it that everything about Shettima is Machiavellian, bogus or procured in the eyes of Babachir? And which democratic rule prevents one from being overambitious? Given the red herrings contained in the scathing remarks made by Babachir, it’s easy to see anger is more for not being picked to “balance” the ticket than for the so called imbalance. Then, with the grass cutting scandal still trailing him, Babachir is the zenith of over ambition and Machiavelli reincarnate rolled in one for aspiring to be Tinubu’s running mate.
Babachir went berserk denigrating and downsizing people around Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in a very unbefitting and fallacious manner. I quote:
“The northern governors and some northern Muslim elite must have persuaded him (Tinubu) that they will never vote for a ticket that has a northern Christian on it. And he has agreed with them. But if he thinks a Muslim-Muslim ticket will win him the northern Muslim votes, he should have a rethink. They will massively vote for one of their sons because it is in their nature to do so.”
Shouldn’t Babachir, fully conscious of the unreliability of politicians, go an extra length to provide proof that northern governors and some Muslim elites “must have persuaded Tinubu they will never vote for a ticket that has a northern Christian on it?” And if it’s in the nature of northerners to only vote their sons, who were the northerner that voted for Obasanjo to victory twice (1999/2003) and voted for Jonathan to near victory in 2015? I’m assuming he’s aware Jonathan was defeated by Buhari with just 2.57 votes — scoring 12,853,162 (44.96 percent) to Buhari’s 15,424,921 votes (53.95 percent).
By the way, how will picking a Christian as a running mate by Asiwaju change the nature of northern Muslims and have them vote for Asiwaju, a “half-son” (being a southern-Muslim) when paired with Atiku, a “full-son” (being a northern-Muslim)? I mean, does it make sense for northerners to go for a half-loaf when they have the full loaf for an easy take? Perhaps, in the eyes of Babachir, it does.
And Babachir sounded more like a “Suya-joint” political analyst than a practicing politician. He asked:
“Now tell me which Christian will vote for APC with the following contraption: Muslim presidential candidate (Lagos), Muslim Vice Presidential candidate (Borno), Muslim National Chairman (Nasarawa), Muslim Deputy National Chairman (Borno), Muslim President (Katsina); Muslim Senate President (Yobe); Muslim Speaker (Lagos); Muslim Deputy Speaker (Plateau) e.t.c. APC the great! Wu na de try woh!
But for the desperation that beclouded his judgement he couldn’t have missed the fact that 4 key positions out of the 8 he mentioned in what he sees as contraption are expiring by May 29th 2023. The president, the senate president, the speaker and his deputy will all be out of their offices by noon on 29th May 2023. How sensible it is for them to feature in Babachir’s bizarre arithmetic of power balancing?
The blah blah blah continued. I quote:
“Buhari, their first son will not be on the ballot in 2023. Atiku their second son will be. Proof of a possible Islamic agenda was leaked when Governor Ganduje, the ‘Kadmul Islam’, gave advance notice that Tinubu had assured them he would be nominating a Muslim as his running mate.”
“For those who might not know, Governor Ganduje has a foundation called ‘Ganduje Foundation,’ which purpose, according to its website, is to ‘provide selfless service to humanity and Islam’ but whose primary purpose it appears is the conversion of Christians to Islam.”
So, it makes sense to Babachir that Governor Ganduje or any of the northern governors could be rooting for Atiku as an alternative to “Buhari, their son who will not be on the ballot in 2023? Possibly the trauma of the grass cutting brouhaha has taken its toll on Babachir otherwise, he couldn’t have forgotten so easily how many (if not all) out of these governors left other parties and regrouped in APC to chase PDP out of power when they were without the advantage of being sitting-governors. What’s stopping them decamping to the PDP now in obedience to their nature of giving massive support to only their sons, to support Atiku, a “full-son” against Tinubu, a “half-son?” Who are they afraid of, Babachir?
And now that we know Governor Ganduje has a foundation called ‘Ganduje Foundation,’ which purpose, according to its website, is to ‘provide selfless service to humanity and Islam’ but whose primary purpose it appears is the conversion of Christians to Islam” as “brilliantly” revealed by Babachir, are we to take it providing selfless service to humanity and Islam by Muslims is such a sin as to be a good reason to question their loyalties in political permutations? Possibly Ganduje has a foundation described so. Babachir should have mentioned one person he converted to Islam at gun or pen point. He should also say how Ganduje’s foundation stopped evangelical activities in Kano State by Christian missionaries. That’s a burden on Babachir only if what’s good for the goose is no longer good for the gander.
Now to the biggest clanger dropped by Babachir. He wrote:
“As part of my obligation to him, a close friend, I had on many occasions argued the merits and demerits of both ticket permutations to him. I have done so in both verbal and written form and I have likewise, done so with some of his close respectable associates and friends.”
Close friends don’t offer advises to their buddies publicly on the pages of the media. When they do, it’s either expression of bottled up frustrations or mere blackmail to achieve by means other than normal, opportunities and advantages other than normal. Certainly, it will help at this point to remind Babachir that there isn’t yet an official statement appointing him as the spokesperson hence, when next he feel like uploading his anger in public, he should keep within the field of his authority. It’s not for him to say what Muslims are comfortable with and what not as it relates to Nigerian politics. In any case, he can’t insult them in one sentence and speak for them in the next.
