I am compelled by our present circumstances in Nigeria to look back into aspects of American history. The United States of America, that country whose Deep South region gave us blues, that music genre that incorporated spirituals, chants and narrative ballads from the African-American culture, is happening to us.
The defining features of blues were despondency and melancholy. It spoke to depressed and sad spirits. Depression and sadness were the lot of peoples of African descent who were taken into slavery in America mainly in the plantation south in the 19th Century. Their state of mind gave rise to blues music. The genre afforded them the opportunity to relate emotionally with whatever troubles and sadness that they were going through.
It is worthy of note that slavery was abolished in the United States in the 1860s by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of America. Having ended slavery and created the possibility of civil and social freedom, Lincoln, in American history, embodied freedom. America remembers Lincoln as one of its greats because he was a quintessential American dreamer who rose from the patches of poverty to the power and influence of the American presidency.
As a country, Nigeria shares the American ideal of freedom and greatness. This has been the country’s preoccupation since independence in 1960. Nigerians have relentlessly been fighting and yearning for a country that will give them freedom, dignity, peace and progress. They came very close to getting this in 2023. That was the year of a presidential election like no other. Nigerians had hoped for a new day. But forces of darkness conspired to defer their dream.
But there is an ongoing struggle to get to the Promised Land.
Significantly, this struggle has ferreted us to the American city of Chicago, the land of Lincoln. It is sad, however, that Chicago, the city where Lincoln spent 31 out of his 56 short years on planet earth, is giving us the very opposite of what Lincoln stood for. One of its notable citadels of learning, Chicago State University (CSU), has not been the best of friends to Nigeria. As we noted earlier, Nigeria as a country aspires to be great like the United States. That is why it adopts and adapts most of the things that America does, including its presidential system of government.
But if America was expected to help Nigeria in its quest to become a truly democratic and democratized country, CSU played the spoilsport when it refused to release to concerned Nigerians the vital information they needed about their President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It took the intervention of the courts for Tinubu’s academic records in Chicago State University to be released to Atiku Abubakar, who had requested for information on this. Whereas America works hard to preserve the integrity of its presidency, what came out from CSU on Nigeria’s President was damaging. Should the CSU have attempted keeping these sleazy details secret to the detriment of the Nigerian presidency as it tried to do? It was un-American to have attempted doing so.
So, who is the man Tinubu? Who is this protean personality that defies understanding? Unraveling this mystique is the most urgent of tasks before Nigerians. As they try to make sense out of the head of the hydra, they see before them a Bola Tinubu who has become too much of a distraction to the Nigerian people. Since he stepped forward to bid for the presidency, Nigerians have spent the greater part of their time talking about the enigmatic politician. The people are struggling to pigeonhole him. They want to know who he is. But this has been a Herculean task. The more the people strive to put him in a straitjacket, the more intractable he becomes.
As things stand, Nigerians appear to be holed up in a Tinubu country. His preferences, sympathies and idiosyncrasies have become the standard of measurement. Having grabbed the presidency in a manner that was never done before by anybody in Nigeria, Tinubu is staking everything possible to ensure that he remains in the saddle. He started on a note of loathsomeness when he ignored the religious sensibilities of the people and gave Nigeria a Muslim-Muslim presidency. It was once unheard of in Nigeria. But Tinubu broke in, just to ensure that his scheme to grab power worked.
To underline the fact that Tinubu was single-minded in his pursuit of the presidency, he played only on his own turf. While other candidates met the people at town halls and village squares to sell their agenda, Tinubu went underground. He never participated in public debates. For him, that did not matter. He worked towards an outcome. He was Machiavellian, both in disposition and approach.
With the collusion and connivance of the Buhari presidency and a pliant electoral commission, Tinubu was declared President under very controversial circumstances. The controversy has landed all of us in court with two major candidates, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, working hard to overturn Tinubu’s questionable mandate. This is ongoing. But the records just released from CSU seem to have marked a significant turning point in the entire Tinubu saga.
However, the fact that we live in a Tinubu country is behind the people’s worries and skepticisms. We were all here when the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal ignored the load of evidence brought against Tinubu and affirmed instead that he was validly elected as President. Nigerians, as complacent as they are, went about their normal business. They treated it as a no-event.
Now, the Chicago papers are speaking to us afresh. Will the Nigerian media, which has been fighting shy stand up to be counted this time? Nigerians must find answers to the nagging issues of complacency and compromise that we face. When, for instance, religious leaders who should be the conscience of the nation play the ostrich, it is an indication that the country is sick. Today, our pastors are equivocating. They are speaking from both sides of their mouths. They are doing this at the time we expect them to stand on the path of truth. When the once acerbic and strident Nigerian media fights shy, it is an indication that the values have changed. What we hold dear depends on what is at offer. Can any country make progress in this unflattering situation? It is questions and more questions, all for Tinubu.