Only an undiscerning mind would dismiss the angry flood of condemnation currently peeling off public trust from the flaking body of the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he, for the second time openly threw his party and the President, Muhammadu Buhari, under the bus. Tinubu’s unguarded outburst, and actions, clearly point to a huge crack within the ranks of the ruling party.
It also confirms that the policies of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, since 2015, have not been friendly to the people. Those outbursts are now seen as missiles fired by Tinubu as self-inflicted albatross to the party’s chances of winning the 2023 presidency. Tinubu’s campaign rhetoric at the MKO Abiola Stadium, Abeokuta, on Wednesday, January 25, 2023 showed that the APC standard bearer has lost control of his emotions. Making reference to the unending fuel crisis in the country as well as the redesigning of naira notes as plots to sabotage his February 25 presidential ambition are indications that he has no confidence in President Buhari’s capacity to help him through with the elections. Accusing Buhari’s government of plotting to scuttle his ambition is not just an ordinary gaffe but a comment that came from deep introspection.
It was voiced out of frustration. He knew much more than he voiced. Tinubu’s comments aptly reminded Nigerians of his previous statement while campaigning as an APC presidential aspirant in Ogun State in 2022. Recall that was where Tinubu came up with the denigrating phrase “O lule” and “emilokan”. They were overtly inflammatory and derogatory statements to the office of a sitting President, Muhammadu Buhari. Meanwhile, the recent tirade further threw members of the opposition parties and Nigerians into serious confusion, when they saw a leader of a ruling political party and presidential candidate not only criticizing his own party but rebuking the party to fail.
This action has also prompted a number of those in opposition to call Tinubu out. For example, the presidential candidate of the little-known African Democratic Congress (ADC), Dumebi Kachikwu, say Tinubu ought to excuse himself from the 2023 presidential race because he has become “a candidate with significant cognitive disabilities embarrassing my nation and making a mockery of the entire political process.” Certainly, no nation deserves a man with “cognitive disabilities” as president. Many who had been sympathetic at first towards the Tinubu presidential ambition witnessed the precipitous collapse of their endorsement of him before their ballots were cast.
They had supported Tinubu in the persuasion that a strong showing by him will force his party to reorganise along “constructive, progressive” lines or, in the alternative, suffer a waiting or inevitable defeat at the polls. That Abeokuta flop has a special but grave implication because of the probable huge swing of ethnic-irredentist votes to candidates who have been deliberately suave, restrained or cultured in their public pronouncements. A measured closing statement by Tinubu has illuminated his real grievance. He has been carrying the burden of everybody including President Muhammadu Buhari’s on his shoulders.
He is tired and weary now. It is time now for others to help him off-load the burden and crown him “lord of all”. The Abeokuta incidents have exposed the underbelly of the Tinubu political philosophy. Some ultra conservatives have chided him for his rude readiness to ascribe all achievements regarding Buhari’s success at the polls in 2015 and 2019 to himself alone.
This has pittted him against other progressive elements in the party who now argue that Tinubu has yet to prove, by book evidence, that he had served the cause of progressive politics rather than a personal predilection or a private penchant for power. As February 25 fast approaches, Tinubu is yet to wean himself of the mentality that he alone is entitled to the highest office in the land in an election where Nigerians seek a departure from the failure of an APC government he had publicly claimed to have worked very hard to install, and which successes he is clearly he has clearly avoided to campaign with. • Alimi writes in from Abuja.
