Follow Us on Google
- Says history will be kind to President
From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The Vice President, Kashim Shettima, has described President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a political phenomenon.
This was even as the Vice President told Nigerians to be rest assured that in the fullness of time, history will be kind to President Tinubu.
Shettima stated this during the unveiling of the book, ‘Beating All Odds: Diaries and Essays of How Bola Tinubu Became President’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of the Nation Newspaper, Mr Sam Omatseye.
Shettima said the build-up to the last presidential elections 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.
Shettima also said the authors, devoted to political fantasy and dedicated their lives to crafting false narratives and outright fabrications to sow chaos.
Shettima further said that while they might earn a place on the New York Times bestseller list for their fiction, they certainly will not find a spot on the shelves of the nation’s history.
“His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed 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 that in this book, you will find President Tinubu like you never have before: the man and the institution. Mr. 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.
Speaking further, Shettima said the last election, certainly, was the most divisive in the history of the country.
He stated that all the ethnoreligious frontlines that divided the nation were deliberately manipulated for political ends.
Shettima however said it was interesting to note that the most Christian Northern State is Benue State where the Nigerian candidate defeated the religious candidate; the most Northern of Northern States which is Sokoto had the Nigerian candidate lost to the regional candidate by mere 5,000 votes and the All Progressives Congress went on to win two Senate seats, the governorship slot and majority of the House of Representatives seats.
Shettima further said the most Christian of the South-South States is Rivers State and the Nigerian candidate defeated the religious candidate in Rivers State.
“Is that not a cause for celebration? One thing I believe is that what binds us together supersedes whatever that divides us,” Shettima stated.
Earlier Shettima said the man of the people around whose values and politics Mr. Omatseye has deployed superior logic and intellect to write the book is here because truth has prevailed over falsehoods.
Shettima added that Omatseye did so despite the pushbacks, despite the threats, and despite the calculated media campaigns attempting to bully him into silence.
“Therefore, the book we are here to celebrate is a product of uncommon courage and a testament to a beautiful demonstration of fidelity to the truth.
“In “Beating All Odds,” Mr. Omatseye didn’t only set out to share his personal diaries as a well-read political historian; he has given the world a three-dimensional view of the Nigeria His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited, with brick after brick of elegant words, one profound essay after another. Successfully, the author underlined both the delicate and the concrete, the private and public, and the kind and the mean turns of events that led to this electoral outcome.
“There must be a reason Mr. Omatseye chose to share his diary entries from August 2022. During this period, as he documented, there was the implosion of the main political opposition. The period also signalled a coordinated effort against the rising popularity of Asiwaju. Against all odds. Ending his diary entries in the month of the presidential election, after reflecting on the betrayals and mischief we had experienced, was a priceless memory for those who cared about how the election was won and those who had not been enslaved by sentiments,” Shettima also said.
Focusing on the second part of the book, Shettima said Omatseye took his audience to the beginning of the misadventures that preceded the formation of the All Progressives Congress.
“The year 2013 provides an interesting window to examine the chain of events that gave birth to the APC, leading to the emergence of former President Buhari and then President Tinubu. This context serves as a remedy for the oversimplification of those who have succumbed to nostalgia, those who have refused to accept that we aren’t where we are by accident.
“Our recourse to facts in this climate of propaganda and lies would disinfect the minds of the impressionable, and this book does justice to the subject of President Tinubu’s ascent up the ladder of glories as the recipient of the nation’s highest honour —the office of the President. I believe this book is an interaction with time, a record of the science and miracle of our journey to this height,” Shettima assured.
In his remarks, the Chairman of the Occasion and former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba, said the book is the story of the aspirant Bola Ahmed Tinubu contesting and going into the primary election 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,” Osoba said.
On his part, 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 Rivers State Governor and Atiku; 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, Mr Lious Odion, a veteran journalist, said without a doubt, the book is significant because it is the first attempt at documenting a momentous period in the nation’s recent history.
