A major talking point around the 2023 presidential election is the belief in some quarters that there is a well-oiled plot by certain political schemers to rotate power between the north west and south west to the exclusion of the other geopolitical zones of the country. This reading of the political map of Nigeria is copiously fallacious. It is not supported by rational analysis.
We need not overemphasize the fact that Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has produced two presidents from the north west. The same is true of the south west. But we cannot say that this was a programmed plan of action. We have not forgotten how Olusegun Obasanjo rode to the presidential seat. He was a creation of the military which was held hostage by the June 12 imbroglio. What was uppermost in the mind of the military at that time was not necessarily zoning but the overriding need to heal the wound of June 12. After eight years of Obasanjo, it was only fair that power should shift to the north. An Umar Yar’Adua emerged not because of his zone but because he was the choice of the outgoing president. Obasanjo would still have chosen Yar’Adua as his successor even if he was from the north east or north central.
Buhari’s race to the presidency has a different story behind it. He was, for whatever reason, consumed with the idea of becoming the president of Nigeria. And so, every election cycle, beginning from 2007, Buhari always stepped forward to be counted. He arrived his Damascus when a Goodluck Jonathan was in the saddle. Cowed by the war drums of Buhari and Nasir el-Rufai, Jonathan threw the presidency away. Buhari grabbed it with both hands. In other words, Buhari was a product of Jonathan’s lily-livered disposition to political contest. He could still have emerged president under the circumstance, in spite of his zone.
But how did the south west come around a second time to occupy the presidency even when popular calculations and permutations did not favour the zone? This is the issue before us. Bola Tinubu, the man who grabbed power on February 25, did not emerge president because he is from the south west. In fact, his geopolitical zone was supposed to constrain him. But he emerged all the same as a result of deft political manoeuvres, the type never seen before in the history of electioneering in Nigeria.
We must appreciate the fact that the ambition of Atiku Abubakar, a major contender in the election, was somewhat problematic. His emergence would have given the north sixteen uninterrupted years at the presidency. The option was anything but attractive. Atiku’s weak candidacy would have given the south east an edge in the election. But the prospect of a south east presidency was thwarted not by the electorate but by a rapacious disorder that has put Nigeria on the path of a destructive spiral. Even though the electoral commission pronounced Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election, the popular impression out there is that Peter Obi, a south easterner, won the election. But he was schemed out not because a south westerner was programmed to emerge but because Tinubu, who happens to come from the south west, put everything in place to ensure that popular votes will not count. How did Tinubu do this? He was buoyed into action by his proper understanding of the Nigerian psyche.
The Tinubu scheme worked not because of what he is but because of who we are. He set out to compromise Nigerians and their institutions knowing full well that the moral resolve of the Nigerian will collapse like a pack of cards once cash inducement is brought into the mix.
Whereas Peter’s Obi’s politics was straight and transparent, Tinubu employed and deployed the power of hard cash. He ensured that the hands of all those who had the power to railroad him to the presidency got grubby with filthy lucre. While those who want a stable and equitable Nigeria were looking in the direction of geopolitical balancing in the power equation, Tinubu and his cohorts went Machiavellian in their disposition and approach. Power grab was the defining characteristic. You must be unscrupulous to get to that crooked bend.
The Tinubu scheme worked not because of what he is but because of who we are. He set out to compromise Nigerians and their institutions knowing full well that the moral resolve of the Nigerian will collapse like a pack of cards once cash inducement is brought into the mix. There is therefore nothing about Tinubu’s emergence as president that suggests that there is any devious arrangement between the north west and south west to monopolize power in Nigeria. If Tinubu got any backing from a section of the north, the consideration had nothing to do with his zone. Instead, it had everything to do with what he had to offer. Tinubu did not buy into any zone, be it the north west or any other zone for that matter. He bought into individuals and institutions. In the end, he successfully thwarted the existing order to suit his scheme for power grab. With Tinubu, Nigeria has sauntered into a frightening phase in the corruption index. Nothing is sacrosanct anymore in Nigerian politics. Before now, zoning was a talking point in Nigerian politics. But not anymore. Tinubu has demonstrated that hard cash can take you to the promised land.
In fact, the power grab approach instituted by Tinubu is the latest stigma that Nigeria has to contend with in its search for survival. After emerging as president, Tinubu also ensured that the courts did not become a stumbling block to his scheme. He moved in. By the time he was done with them, our courts lost their halo. Those who waited to hear and see how the courts would resolve the load of electoral misdemeanors brought before them watched with dismay how the Justices shamelessly sold out.
Having proved to Nigerians that money can demolish strongholds, the spiral is sweeping through the length and breath of Nigeria. Election Petitions tribunals and the Court of Appeal have since cashed in on the situation. Verdicts freely given by the people through the ballot boxes are recklessly being thrown overboard. Elections are now won and lost in court rooms. That is how decadent the system has become.
As a people with neither outrage nor abiding standards, Nigerians are ambling along. They have imbibed the rot. It has become a standard. Anybody who frowns on it is a sojourner. He does not understand what it means to be a Nigerian. That is why the Nigerian dream has crashed. Nobody can afford to romanticize or fantasize about Nigeria. The country has become a lost case.
QUOTE:
“The Tinubu scheme worked not because of what he is but because of who we are. He set out to compromise Nigerians and their institutions knowing full well that the moral resolve of the Nigerian will collapse like a pack of cards once cash inducement is brought into the mix.”
