As “the only game in town”, politics has refused to give way to governance without distractions. The former allies of President Tinubu are overtly disenchanted. Some of them are crying of exclusion, neglect, and marginalization. They are ‘hungry’. And because they are baiting for political power, the polity is heated up again. The shouting match echoes strongly from northern Nigeria with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State, as the linchpin of Tinubu-must-go plot. Like the ‘Lord of Manor’, El-Rufai has audaciously served a red card to Tinubu with a boast of giving him the Jonathan-like treatment of 2015. But for Tinubu’s handlers, it is only a tree that would stand unmoved when faced with a chopping axe of a veteran saw miller.
In a move seen as an anti-climax of joyful essence of clocking 60 years on earth, Rotimi Amaechi, the former minister of transportation, disappointedly chose the auspicious event to play up the anti-Tinubu rhetoric. Ordinarily, the fragrance of the occasion should largely be about thanksgiving to God, the author of life, and for Amaechi’s rare record of almost 24-year straight and front-row public service career. It should have been used to unite friends and foes, inspire hope among millions of young Nigerians struggling to find their first job, and perhaps, glean lessons from his footprints in the corridors of power to reshape public policy. But instead, he deployed it to lambast Tinubu’s government, the way he started gallivanting around with forces that brought Buhari presidency and moved the country from frying pan to fire.
Amaechi’s birthday lecture titled, “Weaponization of Poverty as a Means of Underdevelopment: A Case Study of Nigeria” was intended to make political capital out of general hardship occasioned by Tinubu’s reforms. His comment said it all: “Let me tell you, no Nigerian leader cares for the poor, because they know that Nigerians can do nothing to them once they are in power…We all hungry. All of us are hungry. If you are not hungry, I am.” After him, other chief proponents of Tinubu-must-go coalition took turns to lampoon the government. But when Senator Seriake Dickson, a virulent voice of the opposition, mounted the rostrum, he shook the table with ‘inconvenient truth’ that left the guests barefacedly embarrassed. The microphone would have been taken away from him if not for his social standing. Dickson stylishly called the coalition a conspiracy. He likened it to the pre-2015 gang-up against Jonathan and taunted them for embarking on endless search for a flawless president of Nigeria even after 11 years. He therefore cautioned them to ”shine their eyes” in their new coalition.
Indeed, the country is into interesting times. Both the pro-government and coalition-builders’ camps are not lacking old horses that would lock horns in the shark-infested waters of Nigerian politics. Already, Asiwaju’s men are not leaving anything to chances. They have activated survivalist strategies kept in abeyance, including those in hibernation. And as co-travelers in the 2015 presidential downing that defied the run of play, Tinubu would not want to be outwitted with the strategies they used together. He has bared his fangs even before his second-year anniversary. On the day of his formal endorsement for a second term by the APC apparatchiks, Tinubu scorned the major opposition political parties for being enmeshed in unresolved crises and wished that they remain so.
But it appears that the coalition is not finding it easy to settle down. 2027 may not be like 2015. The plan to decimate Tinubu was announced too early in the day and that gives him much time to outflank his antagonists and redeem lost grounds. The tricky political calculus is rendering the once monolithic north and its demographic power disoriented and balkanized by the permanency of self-interests. The man they want to topple is seemingly beating them at their game. El-Rufai overreached himself. He opened his mouth naively. You cannot cross the red line and serve notice of war to an old soldier and expect the conventional battle playbook.
The reverse is becoming the case. While some PDP governors defected to APC in 2014 to undermine Jonathan, today almost all the governors in southern Nigeria are precipitating towards APC, as part of the grand strategy to contain the momentum of coalition building. Some governors going for second tenure who are afraid of falling out with the powers-that-be have reportedly negotiated to support Tinubu, albeit perfunctorily. After all, the end justifies the means. In the power chess game, survival is the first law. The mix of highwire persuasion and intimidation has made coalescing of anti-Tinubu coalition typically self-effacing and rather unassertive. As the democratic hara-kiri going on in Rivers State would need political and constitutional experts to give it an appropriate nomenclature, it is not in doubt that it is part of 2027 strategic calculations.
Our concern as a nation is that the resurgence of rough days of insecurity with kidnapping and herder-farmer clashes on full swing across the country should not be about 2027 permutations. Nigerians would not accept going that low just to oust Tinubu. Opposition is a welcome development in democracy but it has to begin with contest of ideas. Nigerians are tired of an amalgam of aggrieved politicians who are desperate to capture power. The nation cannot give in to the subterfuge of mealy-mouthed opportunists again.
I align with Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s view that a coalition against Tinubu should parade new faces and not the likes of El-Rufai whose democratic credential is questionable, and who talked down on Nigerians that disagreed with his high-handed and punitive style of governance in Kaduna State. Campaigns should therefore, be issue-based. The nation can no longer dwell on rehash of what is not working. A paradigm shift of practical solutions should be the way to go. But one striking thing is that if Tinubu fails to consolidate power either by fair or foul means, most Nigerians would still blame him for being an unintelligent weakling who does not know how to use power. Is that not hypocrisy?