Tinubu and the Heroic Conquest of a Daring Kingmaker
By Mukhtar Ya’u Madobi
Finally, the Jagaban Borgu has achieved his life-long political ambition. He will, in a few months time, begin to preside over the affairs of Africa’s Giant, and our dear motherland.
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, surely, is one dogged, courageous, and fearless kingmaker of no mean repute, in Nigeria’s political Firmament. He has paid his dues as a political juggernaut, skilled in the art of kingmaking.
Having successfully ‘made’ several politicians, to become who they are today in Nigeria’s political circuit, Tinubu, early January 2022, declared his intention to run for the presidency, after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock Villa.
The ex-Lagos Governor, made it clear to State House correspondents that, becoming a president so as to lead the country one day, has been his age-long ambition.
“I have informed the President of my ambition but I have not informed Nigerians yet, I am still consulting. And I have no problem consulting. And I have not set a parameter of limitation to the extent of how many people I will consult,” Tinubu added.
Just a year after, the two-times Lagos State Governor, is set to become Nigerias 16th president on May 29, 2023, as he prepares to steer the affairs of the country for the next four years.
In the wee hours of Wednesday, March 01, Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared Tinubu as the undisputed winner of the presidential poll.
Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC Chairman, revealed that, Tinubu scored 8,794,729 and got the required 25 per cent in 30 states to defeat his major opponents, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, who came second with 6,984,520 votes and followed by Peter Obi of the Labour Party who scored 6,101,533 votes.
Meanwhile, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian People Party, NNPP, came distant fourth with 1,496,687 votes, which represented about 3.28% of the total votes casted.
The president-elect defeated his rivals in 12 states out of the 36 States of the Federation. The states won by the Jagaban Borgu are Niger, Benue, Kogi, Zamfara, Jigawa, Oyo, Rivers, Ogun, Ondo, Kwara, Ekiti and Borno.
However, one of the most memorable events in the election that the public cannot forget was that, prior to the declaration, the former Lagos State governor was handed a stunning defeat in his political home base of Lagos by the LP candidate, Peter Obi.
Tinubu suffered what amounted to his very first political loss since 1999 when he has been dominating the politics of the state.
The pathway through which this kingmaker rode in to the victory has never been easy and smooth sailing. The route was associated with a lot of bottlenecks and albatrosses that almost made some pundits write off the Jagaban from this frantic and keenly contested race.
Tinubu did not get his party’s presidential ticket on the platter of silver, he used his political stamina and slugged it out with other APC Presidential aspirants which he comfortably defeated in the polls.
Prior to the primaries and after, a lot of APC stalwarts worked seriously against Tinubu candidature on the ground that he is not healthy and some unsubstantiated corruption allegations being labelled against his personality.
Knowing about their evil plan, the Jagaban remains resolute and firm, by surrounding himself with a powerful team of experts from politics, media and public relations fields, just to mention but few.
Tinubu is a master of strategy and has keen foresight of selecting whoever is capable of performing the job.
In the run-up to the APC presidential primary election last year, Tinubu cried out over what he felt was an attempt to edge him out of the presidential race.
Speaking in Abeokuta, Ogun State, he revealed how he helped Buhari to become President, blurting out his now famous quote, ‘emilokan’ (Its my turn).
“It is my time. I am educated. I am experienced. I have been serving people for a long time. Bring me the presidency, it is my turn,” he insisted stridently.
After surviving this odd, then came another hurdle- the naira redesign policy implemented by the Chief of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele, with the full backing of President Muhammadu Buhari which also threatened Tinubu’s ambition to the core.
This is in addition to the lingering fuel scarcity that has been biting the nation very hard since beginning of the last year.While the older notes ceased to be recognized as legal tenders, on the other hand, the newly redesigned notes were never available in circulation for the public, a situation that led to collapse of many small business enterprises especially in the remote areas.
In reaction to the duo of new naira crunch and fuel shortage which provoked riots across the country, Tinubu accused unnamed powerful persons of masterminding the crisis to shoot down his aspirations. His ally, Governor Nasir El-Rufai, affirmed that some Presidency officials, including the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, were working against Tinubu.
Another powerful northern governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State also threw his weight behind Tinubu by blasting incumbent President Buhari, thereby accusing him for sabotaging the APC chances of winning the presidential election by implementing this policy at the very moment.
Although his dates of birth, ancestry and early education have been shrouded in mystery, available information from his affidavits stated that he was born on March 29, 1952. His mother, Abibatu Mogaji, was a trader who subsequently became the Iyaloja of Lagos State.
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He is an accountant by profession, a politician who served as the Governor of Lagos state from 1999 to 2007, and a Senator representing Lagos West during the third republic.Tinubu spent his early life in the southwestern part of the country.
He attended St. Johns primary school, Aroloya Lagos, Childrens home School Ibadan.In 1975, he travelled to the United States to study at Richard J. Daley College in Chicago before proceeding to Chicago State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Accounting in 1979.
In the US, Tinubu joined American companies Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, Haskins, &Sells, and GTE Services Corporation. He was employed by the oil giant, Mobil, when he returned to Nigeria in 1980.
Tinubu began building what would later become a school of thought modelled after the ideology of the late sage and leader of the old Western region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He began his political career in 1992 when he joined the Social Democratic Party as a member of the Peoples Front faction led by Shehu Musa YarAdua.
Other members of the faction included prominent politicians such as Umaru YarAdua, Atiku Abubakar, Baba Gana Kingibe, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Abdullahi Aliyu Sumaila, Magaji Abdullahi, Dapo Sarumi and Yomi Edu.Tinubu would go on to form the Action Congress which later metamorphosed into the Action Congress of Nigeria- a merger of a faction of AD, Advance Congress of Democrats, and several other minor political parties in September 2006.
In February 2013, the party merged with the Congress for Progressive Change, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, and the All Progressives Grand Alliance to form the APC as a strong opposition to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and All Nigeria Peoples Party.
In 2014, Tinubu supported former military Head-of-State, General Muhammadu Buhari, leader of the CPC faction of the APC – who commanded widespread following in Northern Nigeria, and had previously contested in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential elections as the CPC presidential candidate.
In 2015, Buhari rode the APC to victory, ending the sixteen year rule of the PDP, and marking the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent president lost to an opposition candidate.
In the preparation to that historic election in 2015, recall that Tinubu lost the Vice presidential ticket to Professor Yemi Osinbajo on the account that, Muslim -Muslim ticket cannot fly at that very time.
An authorized biography of President Buhari revealed how he chose Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as his running mate for the 2015 presidential election despite Tinubus opposition.
The book, Muhammadu Buhari: The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria,was written by Prof. John Paden.Paden wrote, With Buhari coming from the North-West geopolitical zone, the vice presidency had been ceded to the South-West geopolitical zone.
Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State and political godfatherof the South-West geopolitical zone, felt he should be the vice presidential candidate.His protégée and the then popular Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, was also a possible candidate. Both Tinubu and Fashola were Muslims, which complicated the national balance.
A third candidate, Yemi Osinbajo, had been Attorney General of Lagos State and a senior law professor and a pastor. When the three names were forwarded to Buhari, he chose Osinbajo despite enormous pressure from Tinubu.
But recalling how the Buhari Presidency emerged during the public presentation of the book in October 2016, Tinubu said Osinbajo was named Buharis running mate because of the need for a religiously-balanced ticket given the sensitiveness of the moment.
Nonetheless, Tinubu has gone on to play an important role in the Buhari administration, supporting government policies and holding onto the internal party reins, in lieu of his long-held rumored presidential aspiration.
Also in 2019, he supported Buhari’s re-election campaign, defeating the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
Tinubu has never hidden his ambition to lead the country. Despite the political hurdles on his way, the cloud of controversies surrounding his birth and education, his rumoured wealth believed to be steeped in corruption, his alleged stranglehold on Lagos politics and finance, public worries over his health and doubts about his fitness for the most demanding job in the land, the ex-Lagos governor has instead used the bricks and stones thrown at him to build a ladder to his dream job.
Those who knew Tinubu, who was Lagos State governor between 1999 and 2007 on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy, said he prepared for the arduous walk to the Presidency long ago. While his contemporaries were content to retire to the Senate or to a mansion in the United States or a luxury villa in a Caribbean paradise after leaving office, the Jagaban Borgu was building political alliances across the country.
Tinubu forged his political dynasty during the tough Olusegun Obasanjo Presidency when the Federal Government seized the allocation meant for the Lagos local government areas over the states right to create local council development areas.
Pushed to the wall by the FGs hostility, Tinubu was compelled to evolve ingenious ways to keep the local governments afloat by devising policies to shore up the states revenue. His successor, Babatunde Fashola, would go further to expand the tax net and strengthen the state fiscally.
At last, the end has finally justified the means. Because, Asiwaju will be dancing joyfully to the Villa on the 29th of May 2023 as the newly-branded groom of Nigeria.
A country of great wealth where many citizens are eagerly anticipating to reach the promised land – the El Dorado.
Congratulations, the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu- the Jagaban Borgu.
