The godfather of Lagos politics, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in
2015, led the Southwest into an alliance with the north to birth the All
Progressive Alliance (APC). His decision, evidently, was informed by the
expectation that the two geopolitical regions will share power, invariably to
the exclusion of the Eastern bloc. And ultimately that he, or the Southwest
will take power by the time the north completes two terms in 2023. But it has
proved to be a miscalculation.
Certainly, power play is about conspiracies and alliances.
Tinubu is well within his right to do what he thought would best advance his
political interest and that of his region. However, in backing President
Muhammadu Buhari, he cut his nose to spite his face.
It may not have seemed obvious to many, but once Buhari took
power in 2015, Tinubu’s political career was in jeopardy.
To navigate the president without bruises, the best Tinubu could
have done was retire from active politics and assume the role of an elder
statesman. He did not, he stayed on, wanting to be president and pushing hard
to remain at the centre of political discourse. But power is jealous and if
there is any holder of the highest office in the land who would tolerate a
co-president, it is not Buhari. Things are beginning to unravel, fast.
Without Tinubu and by extension, the Southwest, Buhari could not
have been president today. This is one fact that president’s men who now
dominate the political space and brook no opposition will hate to admit, but it
remains true, regardless.
But being essentially Buhari’s kingmaker, it was political
naivety to decide to hang around in the expectation that he would share power.
The old Machiavellian advice is that the prince must first destroy the one who
made him king. Reason? Because he could decide tomorrow to make another king.
Writing in ‘The Prince’, the legendary Niccolo Machiavelli noted
“… he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that
predominancy has been brought about by astuteness or else by force, and both
are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.”
Of course, it should have been obvious that, in helping to make
Buhari president, Tinubu wasjeopardizing his political career and plunging the
Southwest and by extension, southern Nigeria into political slavery whose only
parallel in the country’s political history, is the late Emeka Ojukwu leading
the Igbo to war in 1967.
With respect to the Biafra war, blaming Ojukwu for embarking on
it could earn one exile in the Igbo country. But if truth be told, the war was
avoidable and could have been avoided if Ojukwu had not been too stiff to
listen to the likes of Zik and other intellectuals who understood better,
international politics and diplomacy. This is not to say, nonetheless, that
Ojukwu was not sufficiently provoked by the killings of the Igbo in the north
in the aftermath of the July 1966 revenge coup that threw up Yakubu Gowon as
head of state, and indeed the actions – or lack of it – of the Gowon-led
federal side. Regardless, it was still in his hands to accept to fight or toe
the path of diplomacy which, given the circumstances, was the best option and
the only way to win international support for his secession quest. In the
event, he went to war and only succeeded in sacrificing more Igbo lives and
weakening the Igbo politically.
The consequence of that weakening is that it provided fertile
ground for the emergence of hegemonic northern power. The imbalance so created
is largely responsible for the crisis of Nigeria’s national identity. One
mistake many Nigerians, particularly in the south, make is the assumption that
the country is already formed and settled as a circular state. It’s not the
case. There is the ever present quest to define the country, right of course,
from the 1804 jihad.
Colonial rule put a stop to it, then in the post war years, the
middle belt soldiers who dominated the army acted as a wedge. Tinubu’s alliance
with Buhari has served to reenact that quest. Buhari is now, apparently, out to
define the country. The Jagaban’s political miscalculation could yet prove too
costly.
The old generals who I reckon, understand this are already
raising alarm. But of course, the horde of naive, ignorant online crowd of
crumb eaters are blurring the resistance line.
As it concerns the 2023 presidency, it should be clear to anyone
with a functioning brain that President Buhari’s north has no intention of
relinquishing power to the southwest or any zone for that matter. What many may
not have realised, however, is that for the next three decades at least, if
ever, and should Nigeria remain one, power will not leave the north. But in
projecting, one must always leave space for the law of unintended consequences
and the God factor.
But given Buhari’s antecedents, was there any grounds for the
southwest particularly to have given him benefit of the doubt in 2015?
Absolutely none in my reckoning. However, it would appear that emotion rather
than sound political calculation informed their support for Buhari in 2015. It
was, perhaps, more of spite for the East than love for Buhari. I had been
amazed when, in the heat of the moment in 2015, before the election, the news
editor of my then media platform branded a fellow reporter who didn’t buy into
the Buhari presidential project a “bloody b*stard who is following the Igbo
people to betray Yoruba by supporting Jonathan.”
In the lead up to the 2019 polls, I had on several occasions
engaged my landlord – a backer of Buhari’s second term project who loves to
discuss politics with me – on who between Atiku Abubakar and the president
would make a better leader. My insistence was, of course, that Atiku would.
After we exhausted all manner of issues he raised against the former vice
president, he said finally that he would still back Buhari because Atiku was an
“Omo Igbo project” and that “after Buhari, Yoruba will take power and after
Yoruba, Hausa will take power again.” According to him, “we will be rotating it
like that, Igbo people will never smell that place.” I had more of pity for his
ignorance.
When in 2003, Buhari joined presidential race, he did so,
apparently to stop the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo. Not because Obasanjo
had performed badly as president, having taken power with the return of
democracy in 1999, but because Buhari and the section of the north he
represented believed that power had to return to the region.
In settling for Obasanjo in 1998/99, the intention of the
northern military class was for him to do four years as compensation for MKO
Abiola – the Yoruba had become uncontrollably agitated – and hand power back to
the north. But not long after Obasanjo took power, it became clear that he was
never going to leave it for anybody. This realisation led to agitations,
criticisms of Obasanjo government was swift in the north, the climax of which
was the Sharia crisis of 2000.
To take power however, the anti-Obasanjo forces in the north
knew that ultimately, it was about going to challenge him at the polls. Buhari
emerged as the arrowhead of that challenge. And through speeches and actions
that appealed to regional sentiments, he built cult following that saw him win
elections convincingly in the north right from 2003.
Until 2014/15, Buhari was a regional hero who believed he could
become president by winning elections in the north and never thought seriously
about campaigning in the south. However, in 2014/15, the Tinubu led southwest
gave him an undeserved national platform, and through heavy media propaganda,
dressed him in the robe of a born again democrat. But old habits die hard.
Once in power, Buhari did not hesitate to take off the borrowed
garb of a nationalist and democrat to put on his original robe of sectionalism.
Right from his first set of appointments, he made clear his intentions. And as
it stands, he has completely consolidated power in the hands of the north.
Buhari is an idealogue, usually idealogues are very resolute and
persistent people. Say what you will, he is doubling down on nepotism. Shout
‘Fulanisation’ or ‘Islamisation’ all you will, he will only look for a hate
speech bill or social media bill to shut you up rather than re-examine his
‘hate’ policies.
Possibly, when Buhari is done with the country – if he has his
way – no southerner will, on the basis of election, ever become president
except at the behest of the north. By suppressing votes in the south and
inflating figures in the north, the administration is only trying to establish
a pattern, a dangerous pattern which supporters of his party in the south are
evidently too blind to see.
It is clear to the discerning where the president is headed. But
the question is whether he would succeed. I had pointed out elsewhere that the
project would fail, ultimately, because Nigerians are too many to be
subjugated.
It would seem, from the actions of those controlling the levers
of power, that there is an attempt to precipitate a national crisis with a view
to using force to take over the country. But of course, this is a country of
200 million people. The advantage those who have “legitimate” right to bear
arms are enjoying at the moment would be lost if there a total breakdown of law
and order. And the country would break into fractions controlled by warlords
such that it would take a miracle to have it again as one, stable country for
anyone to control.
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