From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The Vice President, Kashim Shettima, has told Nigerians to be rest assured that in the fullness of time, history will be kind to President Bola Tinubu, who he described as a political phenomenon.
Shettima stated this during the unveiling of a book: ‘Beating All Odds: Diaries and Essays of How Bola Tinubu Became President’, written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of the Nation Newspaper, Sam Omatseye.
Shettima said the build-up to the last presidential election in Nigeria revealed a peculiar type of writers and bloggers, those who could have hijacked the robust journalism of the great country, Nigeria, if men and women of objective standing had not stood up to defend the Fourth Estate.
He also said the authors, devoted to political fantasy, dedicated their lives to crafting false narratives and outright fabrications to sow chaos.
He said while they might earn a place on the New York Times bestseller list for their fiction, they certainly would not find a spot on the shelves of the nation’s history.
“President Tinubu is a political phenomenon; even those who attempted to undermine him live to confess to this fact. The president’s years of building people and relationships played out during the elections, and this book provides sufficient material for curious minds.
“I assure you in this book, you will find President Tinubu like you never have before: the man and the institution. Omatseye writes with a mathematician’s precision to remind us of the variables with which the equations of our political choices were solved in 2023. What this book teaches is that history is a comparison of points of view, and it is also an overriding narrative in a library of propagandas that pervaded our election period and continues to influence the present.
“Nigerians need more men of courage, and our author today is an enduring symbol of that. I hope that this marks the beginning of our commitment to truth, our dedication to integrity, and our resolve to push for a nation that comes together to choose the truth over a lie.”
Shettima said the last election was the most divisive in the history of the country.
He said all the ethno-religious frontlines that divided the nation were deliberately manipulated for political ends.
In his remarks, Chairman on the occasion and former governor of Ogun State, Olusegun Osoba, said the book is the story of the aspirant Tinubu contesting and going into the primary which he won.
Osoba also said after the initial challenge, Tinubu, while climbing the hill to the Presidential Villa, met creeping plants and Tinubu again, turned them to cobwebs until he got to the villa.
“So, that is the story of the book that we are launching today.”
Omatseye said he started writing the book, which is in two parts, when the 2023 election campaigns started.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do with the diaries, but I was taking them week after week, following everything whether it was the tempest over the Muslim-Muslim ticket, and then the battle between the former Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike and former vice president, Atiku Abubakar; from all the language you see there when he called him prodigal father, to when he came with his song – ‘As e dey pain them, e dey sweet us,” Omatseye said.
In his review, Louis Odion said the book is significant because it is the first attempt at documenting a momentous period in the nation’s recent history.