Jagaban at 74

From its first-ever governor – albeit a military one – the late Brig-Gen. Mobolaji Johnson; to its first elected governor in 1979, the late Alhaji Lateef Jakande, popular traditional Awoist progressive; to even the 1999 exit of the disgraced political soldiers, Brig-Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd), Lagos never lacked quality governors.

Still, even the worst beefer of Tinubu would admit that, as Lagos governor, he left Lagos entirely another “river” than he met it!  You can’t step in the same river twice!  The open secret was greatly expanding the Lagos revenue stream; thus propelling the state to what California is to the United States – a Nigerian local economy bigger than many African national economies!  No wonder: post-1999 Lagos has remained a national reference.

But that didn’t come easy.  First, was the hoopla from the media that cried blue murder!  They hadn’t seen such piercing financial re-engineering before, so it must be suspect – or even bad!

If Governor Tinubu somewhat handled the media hysteria, how did he tackle the Awoist progressives? The implacable symbol of those old ideologues was the late Chief Ayo Adebanjo (God bless his combative soul!).  By the way, the Adebanjo-Tinubu tangle didn’t end until the feisty old man breathed his last!  But his heirs still prowl at the trenches!

The older Awoists couldn’t stick the young governor’s nimble mind and audacious acts.  They were Awo’s puritanical ambassadors on earth – either their holy ideological way or the highway!

That titanic tangle with these formidable Awoists would help Tinubu to build a national base, away from the Titans’ seeming opposition-or-nothing South West ethos.

Yet, it almost ended before it started, when Governor Tinubu became the “last man standing”, after President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2003 electoral “coup” in the South West!

That blitzkrieg swept away five of the six Alliance for Democracy (AD) South West governors!  How did Tinubu get out of that jam, to re-focus his gaze at federal power?

Here, the tactics of his peers, between 2007 and now, is apposite.

Since withdrawing from the March 1993 Jos SDP primaries to make the late MKO Abiola win the party’s presidential ticket, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has never hidden his ambition to be president.  Former Anambra Governor, Peter Obi and two-term Kano Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, have latterly joined the presidential wannabes.

The trio’s tactics have been different from Tinubu’s as night is different from day: election-season nomadism, against Tinubu’s long-suffering alliance-building, over a long period of time.

Ironically, Atiku started his eternal migration on Tinubu’s benevolence.  When Obasanjo badgered Atiku from the PDP, during their best-forgotten second presidential term (2003-2007), Tinubu offered Atiku the new and fledgling Action Congress (AC) as presidential platform.

To be sure, the deal was transactional.  The harried Atiku badly needed a platform to contest the presidency, to spite the baleful President Obasanjo.  Tinubu himself, in the full wrestle for the soul of the troubled AD, just launched the AC as a putative national progressives’ platform, sans AD’s thick Yoruba insularity -- which some capering Awoists nevertheless pushed as a badge of honour.

From AC (2007), Atiku returned to PDP (2009), detoured to APC at its merger to try his luck (2015), dived back into PDP (2019) against the late President Buhari, grabbed the PDP ticket again (2023) – and effectively crashed the party – knowing that ticket should have gone South after PMB’s eight years; and now, has hijacked ADC as his preferred platform for 2027!

Obi’s route:  APGA (on which he contested the Anambra governorship: 2003); to PDP (as Atiku’s running mate: 2019); to LP (where he and Atiku dissipated the PDP vote, on two separate platforms: 2023).  Now, it’s ADC: en route to 2027.

Kwankwaso?  PDP to APC, back to PDP, then to NNPP, where he was “national leader”, and his former protégé, Abba Yusuf, won the Kano governorship.  Now, the NNPC “national leader” has jumped, with both legs, into ADC; as his Kano governor-protégé has defected into APC, to cement his political future!

Match the trio against Tinubu’s trajectory: AD (1999), to AC (2006), to ACN (2010), and finally, the legacy ACN merger into APC (2013).

He is more a pragmatist, less a rigid ideologue.  Yet, Tinubu has stayed true to his natural social democratic temper; even as the names of his parties changed.  Besides, with each metamorphosis, he expanded his coast: either mopping up the stolen vote from PDP (between 2007 and 2010); or totally driving out PDP from the South West (2011), before the new APC drove him to federal power (2023).

Now, Tinubu, the “last man” standing of 2003, eagerly awaits a tough battle for his second term as President of the Federal Republic!

But Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso, all ex-PDP – the party whose electoral trickery nearly doomed Tinubu’s presidential dream before it ever took off – are now jammed into the ADC which, given its present legal trouble over ownership, may well still crash as a platform for 2027!

Now, who is the political issue of the age?  Hot power chancers that often crash?  Or a patient planner that builds for the long haul and now reaps from his sweat?

Still, while politics gives you power, policies earn you legacy.  With his painful reforms, with harsh neo-liberal tools, even the most doting lover of the president would admit he’s hardly now the traditional Awo progressive.  It’s early days yet, but even the most sceptical would admit the reforms are yielding hanging fruits – hanging fruits yet to be plucked and enjoyed by the pining masses!

As the President savours his 74th birthday, he must aim at a legacy of “market progressivism” – for want of a better appellation: deliver an economic dynamo that creates equal opportunities, empowers the diligent and spreads development and prosperity.

Many happy returns, Mr. President!