The contexts are sparsely the same. Drawing constructive comparison can be genuinely tough, if not impossible. Lest, it will be inaccurate.
Talk about the near-extinct opposition. It may be easy to infer that, “We’ve been here before.” After all, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was at some point “The last man standing” in Nigeria’s pseudo-pluralist democracy.
While the example may struggle to be cited for relevance, context will ultimately give way. The circumstances of then and now are clearly not the same, even though they look the same.
So, what’s the point of argument? The point is that the unfolding scenario is what ordinarily anyone should dismiss as a phase that will blow away with time.
But that position can’t be taken with eyes closed, knowing the man at the helm of affairs today. By that understanding, what the nation is currently experiencing politically may tarry for as long as he lives.
Asiwaju is a democrat with the mindset of a dictator – maybe the benevolent type – and he is total in his adventures. He takes no prisoners and can be lethal with the opposition.
Sadly, what you have today are not governors, but lily-livered ‘domestic staffers’ of political power houses who are pushed into offices to take care of interests, and therefore unable to advance any patriotic causes. The president sneezes, and they catch instant cold, even when they’re already bedridden.
In the ‘ailing’ days of Afenifere, when Asiwaju had started to cancel out the Yoruba leaders who helped him to get to power, from the political equation of Lagos, the old men at some point ate the humble pie and pleaded a 70/30 sharing equation. He dismissed their proposal as a joke and roared that he would not concede 99 to 1 ratio.
Gradually, one after the other, those men exited, not just the politics of Lagos, but also the planet earth – largely unhappy. Not even their alleged curses uprooted a strand of hair from the man. Instead, he continued to grow in influence, and today, he is Nigeria’s most powerful and influential politician. Think the God-factor. Maybe.
This is not in any way conceding a larger than life image to Asiwaju. It is acknowledging his capacity and the fact that he leaves nothing to chance when he desires something. He neither shares space nor the spotlight with anyone. Instead, he may “keep beating the defeated even when he’s down and out”.
Shrewd, calculated and unsparing, Tinubu is not the kind of person an “uncoordinated, timid, selfish, discombobulated, and seemingly broke” opposition – struck with the poverty of ambition – can take down easily. Facts only!
There are a few things the opposition has to learn from him.
Asiwaju does nothing for free, even if it means you’d pay back in 20 years. He always does his projection and calculation well. For someone who is never afraid to fail and yet doesn’t take failure for an answer, he is a ‘dangerous’ fellow to get into fisticuffs with, poorly prepared.
When the late former President Muhammadu Buhari was gunning for the presidency, Asiwaju had also wanted the seat at the time. But he knew time and chance were not with him during the period, and he retreated.
He hinted at it in 2015 during the Lagos campaign, when he boasted that he was qualified and could be president, but that the choice of Buhari was strategic to the cause of unseating a sitting president. In other words, he yielded his chance at the time, citing examples of generals around the world who came in time to save their countries during crises.
Soon, the slot for the vice-president opened, and he thought to use it as a launch pad. He was, again, shot down but unrelenting. Pained as he was, he kept thinking ahead. When his time finally came, no one gave him a chance. But for a man who knew power is never served a la carte, he resolved to grab it, snatch it, and run with it. And he did.
Despite the fact that he was visibly sick at the time, he still went all out. Say what you may. He did campaign hard and gave his best shot. It’s unlikely anyone came close to him if the campaign efforts of everyone were subjected to serious and objective analysis.
Now, with weak institutions, palpable state and elite capture but strong men strutting the turf – all shouting hosannah and hailing the king – does this opposition that is already in tatters long before the election think it can take on this man? Well, miracles do happen, but not in politics. In politics, you show working, either by hook or crook.
This is not to say sending Tinubu back to Lagos in 2027 is impossible, certainly not with the current state of the opposition. To achieve anything, the opposition would have to recalibrate, return to the strategy board, and be honest about the choices before them – very tough choices that could cost some of them their life-long ambition.
When this happens and even the ruling party as well as the president could see it, then the equation, leading to the next elections, can be said to be undergoing some radical changes and prospects.
But as it is now, with Tinubu’s inflexible grip on power and the sort of money believed to be at his disposal, measured against the ravaging hunger in the land, the opposition will only come across to an average voter as mere motivational speakers. He will gladly sell his vote, either directly or through calculated negotiations. “After all, you all are the same,” he’d mutter to himself as justification.
In the end, the opposition is its own problem, a situation compounded be largely unworthy governors. If Tinubu didn’t flinch as the last man standing, why are you fidgety? If Tinubu confronted a bully like former President Olusegun Obasanjo, why can’t you stand your ground.
Unfortunately, some of them do not even know they’re partners as subnational in the Nigerian project. They already consider themselves subservient, and the AGF has warned them never to dare the FG again. The Rivers case was a warning signal. Una see una life outside?
Instead, you now shamelessly quit the party that gave you the greatest opportunity in your life – the privileges to be governor, citing silly excuses without any sense of responsibility to bring the party back to life. And you call these ones governors?
Well, the fear that many people had nursed in the last few months may have finally come to reality: a one-party state. The opposition has no right to blame anyone but itself. The political space is a market place, where you buy and sell, depending on what is being offered and your purchasing power.
For now, the place of the opposition is completely eroded and may be non-existent soon if more opposition governors are truly coming onboard the APC.
Welcome to the Nigeria of a totalitarian president!