Following Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s last week speechmaking trip to Kano State, two significant matters could have dominated social media space at the weekend. The content of the lecture he delivered is one. The significance of an invitation to do a lecture in the North is another. Unsurprisingly, social media became fixated with a third, fringe discussion, namely, news that the 69-year-old All Progressives Congress (APC) strongman stumbled and nearly fell before reaching the podium for his much-hyped speech.
Why were the invitation and the content of his speech played down by the media in place of a stumble? It could well have been the fault of United States President Joe Biden who recently stumbled thrice while climbing up the steps of Air Force One. Perhaps we needed to show that our strongmen are also frail – and such news sells. Or it could be something else more portentous, a metaphor for the progress that Senator BAT is making on his ambition to succeed Muhammadu Buhari as Nigerian President in 2023. This will speak to the fact that the prize is within reach, but he keeps stumbling each time he stretches out to claim it.
Take this Kano case. In the period when almost everyone has written off the chances of success for Mr. Tinubu to become President Buhari’s successor in 2023, hope suddenly rises from Kano State. Governor Abdullahi Ganduje invites Tinubu to make a speech, while on the eve of his departure, Malam Garba Shehu, the other presidential spokesperson (who is from Kano as well), gushes about the tight friendship that endures between his principal and the APC strongman.
Do we then conclude that the Kano invitation significantly advances the Tinubu presidential agenda? Or should we characterize the visit as part of efforts to contain restiveness in the South West over allegations of destructive behaviour by Fulani herdsmen? The answer may be somewhere in-between. This is to say that the invitation is significant as far as it goes but only just. Sen. Tinubu (Lagos) happens to be the third southwesterner to be serenaded through a red-carpet reception by northern political playmakers in recent times. The other two to savor the sweet nothings of political hype before him were Gov. Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti) and Chief Femi Fani-Kayode (Osun). The next candidate could well come from Ondo, before figuring out what to do with the PDP-controlled Oyo State.
It’s called political gamesmanship.
We will, therefore, pardon BAT’s followers if they see this event as an opportunity to advance the ambition of their principal by re-introducing him to the northern elite rather than what it truly is: a thank-you gesture for not joining the outrage in the South West over the menace of Fulani cattle herders. Say whatever you will, the North has not hidden its resolve to attempt to balance the years of access to power from 1999 when this current democratic experiment took off, before it would agree to negotiate with the South over who should take over. By May 2023, the Fourth Republic would have completed a 24-year uninterrupted run. The South, through the South West (8 years) and the South-South (6 years) has had a 14-year access to power. Core northern power players say in private conversations that it makes sense to give them an extra six years to rule in order to balance out the power-sharing equation and before the presidency travels south again. Talks or agitations for an Igbo or Tinubu presidency at this time may, therefore, be likened to the female goat that danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to start.
Which leads to the question: If today it is declared that the time is ripe for the presidency to go South, what pathways can the Jagaban travel in order to arrive at his goal to become President? Are there lessons to learn from the politics of four other of his influential ethnic compatriots who either unsuccessfully ran for the position or have occupied the power seat? I refer to Awo, MKO, OBJ, and Shonekan. While Chief Obafemi Awolowo and MKO Abiola tried but failed, the duo of Olusegun Obasanjo and Ernest Shonekan both occupied the coveted seat. What pathways did each follow to a loss or to success?
Chief Awolowo intensely disliked feudal power and fearlessly fought to dismantle its hegemonic hold over northern Nigeria – and Nigeria. He saw a strategic pathway that led from an alliance with the East to exploitation of the fears of the Middle Belt and the revolt of the talakawa in Kano. However, his strategic vehicle could not negotiate through an embittered East whose NCNC power-mongers refused to forget the carpet-crossing episode of 1951. In the North, the Sardauna of Sokoto, an old warhorse, blocked every route for him to arrive and fully acclimatize to the Middle Belt, and to dine with Malam Aminu Kano’s talakawas.
Gen. Obasanjo, on the other hand, got the job only because his principal was assassinated. A common perception was that he initially not only dreaded his luck but did everything to drop the power he had as fast as he could. Then he got a second chance, thanks to the agitations over MKO’s victory denial. He used this second coming to show that he not only understood but could also deftly deal with power. He dealt with it, using it to cruise to a second term and getting so intoxicated that he stealthily launched a third term bid. Although the third term bid turned out to be a misadventure, his residual influence still saw to the emergence of another southerner as President, barely two years after he left office.
Chief Ernest Shonekan was handed power on a silver platter and, like Obasanjo, was a beneficiary of MKO’s loss, the first as a matter of fact. He didn’t fully understand how to deal with the power he had. Or maybe he did but felt intimidated by it, like OBJ in his first coming. If this was the case, it would explain why he slyly latched on the negative politics of his ethnic kinsmen to abandon the power that fortuitously landed on his laps.
From his social and business interactions with the high and mighty of his era, Abiola understood power and hungered for it. He chose the pathways of religion and excessive philanthropy to worm himself to power players and common people alike, and then made a surprising success of grabbing it. Unfortunately, he was denied after posting an emphatic victory that the military-political complex thought he would have lost. Why did Abiola lose in the end? The desire of northern power players, jealousy from his ethnic kinsmen of the West and anger from the Eastern front combined to enable him snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. No one talks about his loss today without reference to the role of Arthur Nzeribe (from the East) and jealousy of MKO’s ethnic kinsmen from the West. His kinsmen reportedly asked that Abiola’s mandate be annulled and, thereafter, drafted their First-Eleven politicians to shore up the rogue regime of Lt. Gen. Sani Abacha that succeeded Shonekan. From the East, Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) mounted social and legal challenges that saw to the emergence of the Shonekan regime. Unlike Awo, whose strategic pathway led from the East to the Middle Belt, MKO had reportedly angered Nzeribe by declaring that he could make it without the support of the Igbo.
Tinubu is evidently not following any of these pathways. I admit that only one is a practical road to travel, the Awo pathway. However, unlike Awo who saw a strategic pathway through the East and the Middle Belt, the Jagaban, like Abiola, also appears to disdain politicians of those zones. To date, he has not lent a sympathetic voice to agonizing cries of marginalization, injustice and herdsmen’s menace from the eastern front. He pays deaf ears both to herdsmen-induced violence of the Middle Belt (the Benue-Plateau-Taraba axis), and to Boko Haram devastations in the North East (Yobe-Borno axis). To compound matters, even recent moans from his South West region have not roused him to make anything but politically correct statements.
Tinubu’s pathway appears to be to serve as a power apprentice to core northern power players. I have encountered and been amused by this pathway to power since my coming home in 2017 to encounter the politics of the South East. In my region, a power apprentice finds an influential “political boss” and offers to become his faithful servant. He obeys in all things, including going off to assault anyone who provokes the ire of the boss man. Apprentices recruit experts and thugs to constantly write excellent proposals that are used to retire funds, to blow the vuvuzela at party meetings, arrange to snatch ballot boxes or to kidnap and detain political opponents until votes are cast and manipulated, and to generally crack the whip for the boss man.
“You have to carry briefcase for an oga first,” I was told of the only pathway to become a successful politician in the South East.
Carrying oga’s briefcase could extend from washing his cars, running errands for the family to mobilizing voters when the time comes to renew oga’s mandate. From carrying the boss man’s briefcase, the lucky apprentice hopes to be drafted to become a ward councillor, a supervisory councillor, a local government chairman, a state commissioner, or nominated to become a minister or member of the legislature.
I also found out that carrying oga’s briefcase is no guarantee that the apprentice could become somebody in life through the boss man. He is not trusted and could be made to swear an oath with a cadaver rented from a nearby mortuary or taken to a forest grove to dance naked before the gods. This should serve as a lesson to both BAT and Igbo politicians hoping to get the 2023 ticket, in the highly unlikely event that APC wants the slot to go West or East.
I had argued elsewhere that the Igbo cannot automatically claim that it is their turn to rule because the region is only one of six geopolitical zones and that only three of these zones have so far been awarded the prize since 1999. Thus, the Igbo of the South East would have to contend with politicians from the North Central (the reason why the incompetent Governor from Kogi says he is “running”) and the North East (where my northern preference for the job, Atiku Abubakar, comes from). The Igbo ambition for the presidency should, therefore, be made of sterner stuff.
Tinubu, on the other hand, appears to be in a much stronger position than the Igbo to be courted by power players of the core North, not to become President in 2023 but whenever they agree that it is the turn of the South to rule. If Tinubu is made to understand this, through the current overtures beginning with his red carpet reception in Kano, he could become instrumental to ensuring that Nigeria’s 2015 and 2019 electoral miracles for President Buhari are repeated for the choice of the power players in 2023 and thereafter. Until whenever they are ready to say thank you.