By Yusuf Adua
When Professor Mahmud Yakubu announced in 2019 that the general elections had been postponed, we had the weirdest Saturday of all time in Nigeria. The ruling APC is however ready to repay us with the busiest week in the Nigerian political space one would not want to miss.
As articulated by Nigerian Tribune in a sponsored ad on Twitter, the triplets of the next working days will make us have “the most anticipated presidential primary of Africa’s largest political party”.
The ground is also set for erstwhile musketeers to throw their strong liking for and trust in one another into the basket.
Truly, this poll that will rock the Eagle Square between Monday and Wednesday is very historic, it will not only determine the party’s flag bearer in 2023 but will also bring to certain yet to be unravelled quarters in the party an excruciating injury that will take them long to heal from.
DESPERATION PLUS DESPAIR
According to Bayo Onanuga, the Director, Media & Communications Tinubu Campaign Organisation, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s frank but provocative statements in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital was simply a reminiscence of some out of many specific instances when he (BAT)had brought his political clout and strategic skills to assist individuals, groups and tendencies in the party to gain political power.
What shocker and despair will be greater than the political gladiator losing to his “godsons”?
In that statement of balance titled “Presidential Primaries: Erroneous interpretation of Asiwaju’s pleas for level playing field”, the Asiwaju’s camp explained that the leading presidential aspirant only made reference to an open secret that are already in the public realm.
But according to public affairs analysts and political commentators, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s statements were wrong truth at the right time spilled out of desperation and despair
Reverend Koye Ladele who spoke on a popular political program in Ibadan, “State Affairs With Edmund Obilo” on Saturday expunged media cleansing out of BAT’s bitter truth that “those statements and Asiwaju’s show of prodigy on the president, Muhammadu Buhari, and Ogun state governor, Dapo Abiodun were acts of denigration”.
Similarly, Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal poured out that the comments about Bola Tinubu’s Yoruba presidency and his support of Buhari without which Buhari would not have been president is bulshit.
But Senator Kashim Shetima, a former governor of Borno state saw things differently when he told Channels Television that the former governor of Lagos state only set the record straight.
ACTOR OR BOSS?
Monday to Wednesday is the duration for an action movie set to be filmed at the Eagle Square. This is why the coming week excites the majority of Nigerians.
Getting to see how a tug of war between a former governor and his commissioner for eight years will pan out is a make-or-break knockout semi-final for both camps politically.
Understandably, Professor Yemi Osinbajo did not grace this year’s Bola Tinubu Colloquium, an initiative he was part of the founding fathers peremptorily used to celebrate Chief Bola Tinubu on his birthday.
The Vice President had in previous editions enunciated pointedly BAT’s unquantifiable relevance to Nigerian history and scouted him for the biggest administrative position.
In 2018 at the 10th Bola Tinubu ColColloquium Lagos, the two-term commissioner for justice who can always be taken for his words given his unquestionable mastery of the importance of and the usage of words revealed that Bola Tinubu ran an unusual government in Lagos that was wrapped around different shades of progressive ideas.
The same Professor of law a year later in Abuja when it was time for him to address the teeming audience at the 11th edition of the programme informed the gathering that Asiwaju had spent the last 30 years of his life in creative and catalytic public service.
He did not stop there, he announced that “The Jagaban of Borgu Kingdom” had never ceased to Provide clarity of thoughts and pioneering vision in all aspects of governance.
That is not all, Professor Yemi Osinbajo in 2020 told his virtual audience in Kano that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is an institution.
He quoted Barrister Ismail Ahmed who once said that “there is perhaps no Nigerian leader that has been so instrumental in raising as many leaders as Bola Tinubu” and added that the APC chieftain’s leadership style, strategies, and development ideals depend on enabling a contest of ideas.
Is it fair to say that lip services cannot be repeated three times in a row? The ruling APC needs a competitor who can match the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar’s stronghold.
It is only an institution such as the one described by the VP that can contend with the former VP’s relentless surge and the declared support of the only president from the Southwest, President Olusegun Obasanjo who has announced his pitching his tent with the PDP candidate as at the time of compiling this report.
DRAGGING TO THE MUD
Consequently, the result of what comes out from Eagle Square during the crucial political week might invite mockery considering the best and worst-case scenarios.
Senator Kashim Shetima is one of those that has initiated the process when he said Prof Yemi Osibanjo was a good and nice man but nice men do not make good leaders.