Wages of injustice

If there ever was a Nigerian dream, Bola Tinubu, linchpin of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of Lagos State,  has lived it to the hilt. Literally out of nowhere, Tinubu weathered all storms of life, very serious storms indeed, and made good. Through hard work, guile, proficiency in the art of buying and retaining loyalty as well as a ready dose of ruthlessness, he succeeded in overthrowing even those with a far better headstart in life than him. Eventually, he attained the height of power and politics in Nigeria.

For good measure, he took Lagos as his trophy. He has proved resilient in keeping the trophy with the stupendous gravies therefrom. The impact of the dividend has been quite stupefacient. In the course of his leap of fate, propelled in the main by an uncompromising determination to permanently distance himself and his offspring from such precarious fate as his background would naturally ordain, Tinubu obviously did things that he probably may wish now that he never did. He did them anyway and they have brought him thus far, quite far. The APC chieftain recently informed the public that gaining Nigeria’s presidency has been his ultimate life ambition. You cannot begrudge a man his ambition.

In his moments of sobriety, however, the legendary landlord at Bourdillon Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, cannot but accept that he has actually overachieved. He has clearly exceeded the bar of such background as his often imposed on people like him. 

Tinubu has seen and tasted Nigeria. The Nigerian dream he has lived knows no limitations. He who dares goes home with booties that the restrained, the prudish and the moralist cannot even dream of. He is aware. His ascendancy in Nigerian society has been accompanied by tendencies and gains that cannot but imbue in him a robust sense of entitlement.

If Tinubu harbours the curious belief that Nigeria owes him and not the other way round, it is not difficult to understand why he so believes. What has he desired from the system that he has not taken? Whatever he covets is, therefore, due to him. Or so he thinks.

Is there any surprise then that such mindset and sense of entitlement will breed impunity and a whimsical disregard of other people’s interest and claims to fairness? For people like him, it is all about self. This is exactly what is playing itself out in the drama of Tinubu and his curious quest for, or rather insistence on, the presidency this time.

Although the zoning of the office of President was developed and implanted in Nigeria’s political system by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the wisdom in the policy easily lent itself to the whole country. The functional utility of the arrangement for a fractious country was not missed by the APC, which promptly adopted the policy. It remains an informal party arrangement though.

By the rotational schedule of the zoning arrangement, the South East is clearly the right claimant to the responsibility of presenting President of Nigeria in 2023. The implication of this is that presidential candidates in the major political parties with likely probability of winning the presidency ought to come from the Igbo stock.

The South East has, however, become every man’s punching bag in Nigeria, doubly so under the present government. The Tinubus of Nigeria surely cannot be restrained from pursuing their personal ambition simply because it is the turn of the Igbo. Thus it was that an orderly informal arrangement that offers a win-win scheme in power rotation among the constituent zones of the country came under siege, all because certain individuals have ego and personal ambition that must be indulged ahead of any other arrangement.

Instructively, the PDP whose founding fathers creatively designed the zoning policy had no qualms repudiating the policy, the only distinguishing profile it still has. The party’s leadership was pathetic to behold on its way to a dubious self-immolation. They dithered and dallied and finally did what they had to do. They repudiated zoning as the party’s guiding policy. It is now left to be seen how the party will overcome its contradictions.

Trust Tinubu and his kindred spirits to go the extra mile in the pursuit of self-interest. Last week, in the midst of a meltdown that was long in coming, the former Lagos State governor declared with characteristic straight face that indeed, “it is turn of the Yoruba” to produce the next President of Nigeria after Buhari.

People Like Tinubu hardly seek validation of an idea. Emperors do not do so. It is quite remarkable, therefore, that in the same breadth in which Tinubu said that it is the turn of the Yoruba to produce the next President after Buhari, he equally declared with uncompromising emphasis that it is his (personal) turn to be President. In other words, Bola Tinubu is Yoruba and Yoruba is Bola Tinubu. In the mindset of the man, the two entities are interchangeable in the context of his ambition. Any other Yoruba aspiring to the office of President at this point in time is certainly any other thing but Yoruba. That is how ridiculous it has become. As for the Igbo and their turn in the zoning scheme, that is a no-case. They better wait until Tinubu’s craving for power is quenched. And Atiku’s too. And possibly Wike’s.

Tinubu’s ballistic excursion last week, which, among other loads, carried the reminder to President Buhari that it was him, Tinubu, that made him President, makes sense when taken in the context of the mindset of someone who sees the country more or less as a seized enterprise in which he played key role in its acquisition. He cannot understand how and why he should be prevented from the spoils due to him. He may yet have his point.

The Tinubu saga is, of course, one among the many anomalies of the season.  , why all this upheaval in the political system ahead of the 2023 presidential election?

Because the party leaders repeatedly show contempt for their own rules. Secondly, because of audacious sense of entitlement by certain individuals, emboldened either by the connivance of compromised leadership in the parties or a crooked system that finds it difficult to be firm. In all these, Nigeria comes across as a society that is averse to order, equity and justice. 

Make no mistake about it, the mess the two major political parties have foisted on the country will not easily go away, even if the parties muddle across the line as they will do. Whoever enters Aso Rock under the prevailing chaos will do so a bruised and battered man. The wages of injustice is also death, a certain type of death, but death no less. Tinubu, Nyesom Wike, PDP and some others will come to terms with this reality.

After this time out, the parties may heed Senator Shehu Sani’s earlier counsel and ensure that zoning and rotation are clearly inserted in the constitution, if there is any sincerity to stem this tide of quadrennial chaos and dishonourable national gymnastics in the name of presidential primaries. Nigeria is not a place for a gentleman’s agreement.