Tinubu and his political foes

But let those who are not only interested in being politically correct join me on a journey through history to see how our love for the game of self-sabotage has come to define our history.

The Igbo people and their Fulani rivals, who share identical world view on how Nigeria should be run, have always held our nation to ransom. The truth is that both seem to be interested only in what they can get out of Nigeria. And what they cannot get, no one else gets.  We have the experiences of January 1966, July 1966, the civil war, 1993 MKO Abiola’s annulled pan-Nigerian mandate and Tinubu’s 2003 unscripted victory as proof.

But the rain started beating us long before this. During the run up to our paper independence in 1960, the colonial masters told us that as a multicultural and heterogeneous society where different cultural groups are at different level of cultural development, what we needed was a federal arrangement, a social system that guarantees unity in diversity. The rival groups holding Nigeria by the jugular reluctantly embraced this only to derail it in January 1966.

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And precisely because we like playing the ostrich instead of confronting our own demon, 60 years after the military coup that changed the course of our nation’s history, there is still an attempt to bury the truth. A coup that wiped out all senior military offices from the north, some senior military officers and their wives from the west, all political leaders of the north while sparing all Igbo military and political  leaders, the masterminds of that tragedy have continued to deny it was an Igbo coup. Even with self-evident facts of attempt to consolidate power by holidaying President Nnamdi Azikiwe, acting President/Senate President Orizu Nwafor, Ozumba Mbadiwe, Aguiyi Ironsi , the Supreme Military Commander and his Igbo intellectual advisers, with the promulgation of Decree 34 of 1966, the denial has continued.  However, the admission by their Fulani rival who executed the July 1966 coup that it was a vengeance coup against Igbo military officers who were never tried for the mindless killings of their military superiors in the January 1966 coup, provided an additional insight.

After the war, the two rivals regrouped as NPN/NPP in 1979-1983. The motivation for the marriage of convenience was sharing of political offices just as it was in the first republic.

In 1993, MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe’s landslide victory left the rivals out of power.  Arthur Nzeribe, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and other Igbo leading lights threatened to go to war if MKO Abiola’s pan Nigeria’s annulled mandate was de-annulled. Abiola finally died in prison defending a mandate freely given by Nigerians but objected to by the rivals.

In 1999, the owners of Nigeria allowed only Yoruba to present a candidate as compensation for martyred MKO Abiola.  The two rival arrogantly imposed Obasanjo who went on to win the 1999 election despite his outright rejection by the Yoruba. In power, both rivals ate with their 10 fingers until Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 defeat due to PDP’s intra-party war of attrition over sharing of our resources.

Buhari in 2015 picked Yemi Osinbajo to displace the Igbo from their traditional spare tyre position. The rivalry took a new turn with IPOB, believed to have the backing of Igbo political leaders, declaring Nigeria a ‘zoo ruled by Fulani and ably supported by their Yoruba stooges’.

In 2023, PDP breached its party’s rotational constitutional provision by denying the Igbo that had faithfully supported it for over 20 years of its presidential ticket. Peter Obi, a seasonal migrant from APGA, through PDP moved to Labour to mobilise against PDP.

Yoruba’s errant elders including Olusegun Obasanjo and Pa Ayo Adebanjo wanted Bola Tinubu, victim of PDP years of “landslide and sea-slide victory in opposition strong holds” (Walter Ofonagoro), who at a time had his fellow southwest governors’ mandates stolen by PDP and endured PDP persecution for 16 years and that of the party he co-founded for eight years, to step down for Peter Obi.

At the end of the 2023 election, Peter Obi secured a landslide victory among his Igbo people scoring between 84 to 86% of the votes. Exploiting religion and ethnic sentiments of his Igbo urban immigrants, he defeated Tinubu in his Lagos stronghold. He also won some Christian dominated states of the north. Despite meeting the constitutional threshold of  25% of votes cast in 36 states only in 16 states as against 24, and coming third, his  rabid supporters, the unquestioning ‘Obidients’ and Igbo leading lights like Pat Utomi, Oby Ezekwesili and others have continued to speak of ‘Obi’s stolen mandate’.

We cannot underestimate the ruthlessness of those who destroyed the west, sent Awolowo to prison, for attempting to sell his party policy of “wanting what is good for us for others” to the north, for asking Zik to allow Yoruba manage their own affairs and return home to govern his people since all politics is local and of course those who ensured Abiola died for winning an election and those who imposed Obasanjo as Yoruba leader and ensured he climbed the tree from the top.

The dilemma of Tinubu’s political foes however is that he does not pretend to be imbued with Awo’s intellect, Abiola’s insight or Olu Falae’s depth. He won the 2023 election against all odds. As part of his drive towards elite consensus without which a nation progresses, he has quietly attracted 30 of the country’s 36 governors to his party. And what is more, no one, not even his closest allies know what Tinubu is thinking.