Sam Omatseye, the Chairman of the editorial board of The Nation Newspapers, has disclosed that former President Muhammadu Buhari and the “vampires and peacocks” around him never wanted Bola Tinubu to become president.

He disclosed that some stakeholders around Buhari were afraid of Tinubu, hence plotted against his emergence as president.

He disclosed this in his latest book titled: “Beating all odds: diaries and essays on how Bola Tinubu became president.”

“I knew the president – Muhammadu Buhari – did not want him. The peacocks and vampires around him did not want him. Some stakeholders in the country did not only resent him, they were afraid of him. The plot thickened quickly.

“Conspiracies festered in sewers and in the open. And it began with the party’s top brass. In cahoots with the presidential cabal, they edged out Adams Oshiomhole’s executive as the first major step to immobilise Tinubu’s ambition. They also broached a consensus candidate. Law crippled them as they fell foul of defining the phrase they coined, and they could not even manage the idea of open and closed primaries. At every turn, they stumbled into crosswinds. Their own weapon turned their own folly.

“Tinubu was never fazed about the task ahead. He peered a rose-scented garden when others saw for him a forest of a thousand demons. In 2021 December, he said he was preparing a speech towards the end of January, 2022, to announce his intention to run. He would wait for the yuletide and new year euphoria to ebb out before throwing himself in the ring.”

His is also a matter of destiny. He did not have a hand in all his victory. In some of them, he watched himself rise like a swimmer on the crest of a sudden tide, or a shorebird. For instance, he was not the one who coerced the northern governors of his party, some of them with ambition to be president, to coalesce to endorse a southern candidate. He did not rally some northern governors to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari and say they did not believe the party should field a southerner because Atiku was too formidable to tackle with a southerner. A northern gladiator called for a northern foil. They returned with a list of themselves when the president asked them to draw a list, and the president shunned them for advertising themselves. He wanted someone else, Ahmad Lawan. His candidate was not the choice of the northern governors, so they compelled then Governor Simon Lalong as chair of the northern governors to convene a meeting. When it held, it was more a chaos of finger pointing and colliding ambitions than a strategy for a northern point man. Less out of altruism than love of the south, they yielded.

Tinubu was not there when the party chairman was throwing tantrums over the choice at a party stakeholders’ meeting with President Buhari. Not a shadow of Tinubu was there when the northern governors were summoned to defend the idea of a southern candidacy to President Buhari. It was not he who was on Lalong’s lips when he defended the justice of having a southerner. As Richard Nixon wrote in his memoirs, “history affects us more than we affect history.” It was a case of an unflinching hand of fate working for him. Even in epic tales from Shaka to Odysseus to Sundiata, the hero enjoyed the mercy of the gods.

It was not Tinubu who set Peter Obi on a collision course with his PDP. He did not set the party on fire with five governors led by then Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike. Or Kwankwaso who turned the Kano tide against PDP.

It is still speculative if all those votes would have gone to the PDP, although it is generally believed that the southeast votes were Peter Obi’s gift to Tinubu. Negative became positive. Could there have been a renewing of strategy if it was a straight fight between Tinubu and Atiku? Would Atiku have succeeded in rallying Christians the way Obi did? What kind of bona fides would he have invoked from his logic or biography to impress pastors who saw an apocalypse in a so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket. Would southerners and those in the Middlebelt have picked a Fulani to take over from a Fulani? Would a Tinubu hatred have forgiven Atiku’s sins? We can only speculate. Maybe Obi came to quell all their anxieties. He was a “godsend” expiation. He gave them an excuse to make peace with their conscience who would not vote a Muslim or a Yoruba man.

proeast:
All the mugus surrounding Tinubu are now tactically Buhari and northerners. They’re already sensing northerners are cooking for Tinubu and they’re already crying.

Tinubu will be booted out disgracefully like Gbagbo and will happen. Useless bunch of bigots!

AyeMoJuba:


Since you are filled of hatred and blessed with an empty skull, this write up is expected to be called rubbish by you.

DeLaRue:
The story of Tinubu's ascension to the Presidency will probably never be matched in the history of this country.

I remember a highly connected friend telling me, there's no way out for the man. He is out, he said. He was 100% sure the man would not become president.

The intrigues, obstacles, trials, plots etc, and to top it all, the famous Abeokuta 'emilokan' speech, which I now believe to be one of the most impactful political speeches of the last 50 years.

That speech sent the country into a gripping non-physical pandemonium, and engulfed his enemies in confusion they never recovered from.

AyeMoJuba:


Those who are relevant in the society have done far more than this ur useless wailing but where are they today and where's Tinubu?

You are just wasting ur time...Tinubu will be there till 2031
Nothing you or your stupid leaders can do about it.

nairalandkachy1:


https://www.google.com/amp/s/thenationonlineng.net/beating-all-odds/amp/

DeLaRue:
The story of Tinubu's ascension to the Presidency will probably never be matched in the history of this country.

I remember a highly connected friend telling me, there's no way out for the man. He is out, he said. He was 100% sure the man would not become president.

The intrigues, obstacles, trials, plots etc, and to top it all, the famous Abeokuta 'emilokan' speech, which I now believe to be one of the most impactful political speeches of the last 50 years.

That speech sent the country into pandemonium, and engulfed his enemies in confusion they never recovered from.