Tinubu: When a Kingmaker Finally Becomes the King By Ozumi Abdul
POLITICS DIGEST- The 2023 general elections might have come and gone, with winners emerging in the process. However, it is noteworthy to dissect how the battle was won,lost, and the characters that were involved in the stage play.
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), and now the president-elect emerged as winner of the 2023 presidential election conducted last weekend.
Jagaban, as Tinubu is fondly called by his teeming supporters, polled 8, 794, 726 (which is 36.61% of the casted votes) to defeat former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who came second, having polled 6,984, 520 (which is about 29.07% of the casted votes).
Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who scored 6,101,533 came third (having 25.40% of the votes casted) and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) got 1,496,687 (about 6.23% of the entire votes casted).
Tinubu was declared the winner by Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), early Wednesday, at the National Collation Centre.
The president-elect defeated his rivals in 12 states out of the 36 States of the Federation, but lost to Obi in his homestead and political fortress since 1999.
Also, Tinubu lost Katsina, the home State of President Muhammadu Buhari, who he will be taking over the baton of leadership from, on May, 29 this year, to Atiku of the PDP.
The states won by the Jagaban Borgu are as follows:
Niger, Benue, Kogi, Zamfara, Jigawa, Oyo, Rivers, Ogun, Ondo, Kwara, Ekiti and Borno.
*Tinubu’s Patchy Path To Presidency*
No doubt, the path to every successful journey is always littered with injurious thorns, and the former Lagos Governor’s ascendancy to the presidency, a position he had openly described as his lifetime dream, is not anything different.
From the primary of his APC party in June 2022, he was able to fend off all obstacles, remained resolute, dogged and rugged in the face of obvious power play and highly-wired conspiracies, that were threatening to stymie him from getting his party’s ticket to run as its flagbearer, in the just concluded presidential election, especially when the national chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, emerged from nowhere to announce that the party’s ‘consensus’ candidate was the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan.
However, reprieve came the way of Tinubu when APC governors and leaders from the north conceded the contest to the south and one of the aspirants, Governor Abubakar-Badaru of Jigawa withdrew from the race, with only Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state, Senate President Lawan and Sani Yerima, a former Zamfara governor from the north in the race.
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Here is the resolution they reached at the time, “After careful deliberation, we wish to state our firm conviction that after eight years in office of President Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC for the 2023 elections should be one of our teeming members from the southern states of Nigeria.
“It is a question of honour for the APC, an obligation that is not in anyway affected by the decisions taken by another political party. We affirm that upholding this principle is in the interest of building a stronger, more united and more progressive country.
“We therefore wish to strongly recommend to President Muhammadu Buhari that the search for a successor as the APC’s presidential candidate be limited to our compatriots from the southern states. We appeal to all aspirants from the northern states to withdraw in the national interest and allow only the aspirants from the south to proceed to the primaries.”
Also, the intervention by southern political leaders and traditional rulers from the south-west worked as aspirants from the zone except Osinbajo stepped down for Tinubu at the convention, in addition to those from other parts of the country.
Godswill Akpabio, former minister of Niger Delta state Affairs; Amosun, Fayemi and Bankole stepped down for the former Lagos governor.
Others were Mohammed Abubakar-Badaru, governor of Jigawa state, Ajayi Borofice, deputy senate leader and Uju Kennedy, the only female aspirant in the race.
With this development, it became an easy sail for the APC national leader who won the ticket .
This came after his then popular “Emilokan” declaration in Abeokuta, which loosely translates to mean “it’s my turn”, the word that has been unofficially etched in the Nigeria’s political dictionary, with derivatives such as” awalokan, eyinlokan”.
Though APC did not experience major implosion in the build up to general elections, but the composition of the presidential campaign council almost pitched the party’s NWC against the candidate.
The Adamu-led NWC of the APC had in a leaked letter disapproved of what it called ‘solo’ presidential campaign council constituted by Tinubu.
A few weeks to the first round of the 2023 elections, came another hurdle of the introduction of cashless policy and currency swap which some APC Governors and even ordinary citizens believed was a calculated and well-orchestrated attempt to weaken Tinubu’s war chest.
However, Tinubu still coasted home to victory and trounced his fellow presidential candidates.
Indeed, his lifetime dream has materialized, and come May 29, 2023, The Jagaban will be marching to the Aso Rock, to takeover the captaincy of the Nigerian ship and sail it to the Promise Land.
Ozumi Abdul is a staff writer at PRNIGERIA and can be reached via [email protected]
