The power of brainwashing......

This is very childish and too low of Davido. He has no rights of standing in the way of another individual like this.
The cousin is exercising his obligations as a Nigerian, to vote and be voted for. Provided he has no criminal antecedence, he is good to go.

2023: Osinbajo Is APC’s Best Candidate, No Room For Moneybags – Babangida Aliyu




Tue, 18 Jan 2022



A former governor of Niger state, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, has described Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo as the best candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 presidential election.

He said any “riff-raff or moneybags” will not get to the highest office in the land, even if they bring out money.


The former governor and Chairman Board of Trustees of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, made this remarks at the ongoing 2022 annual lecture of the foundation holding in Kano State.

“Mr Vice President, do you know you are the best candidate in your party?” he said, describing Osinbajo as the only candidate that knows the country and has the acceptance of everyone across the country regardless of tribe and religion.

He said they will not allow “riff raffs” to take over the power even if they bring all the money in this world.

“No matter how much money he has, let him bring the money and we will collect it,” he added.

The Emir of Lafia, Justice Sidi Bage (Rtd), also spoke glowingly of the Vice President, promising the support of Nasarawa state to him.

“Mr. Vice President, wherever you go, we will follow,” he added.

Source:DailyTrust

Party of terrorists.

You are a wise man. No idiot can intimidate us to vote for a criminal as president of Nigeria.

Principled Political Choices are not Betrayal

By Babafemi Ojudu

I have seen a statement made by me, many years ago, to celebrate the 60th birthday anniversary of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu making the rounds. Yes I did make that statement. And more of such will come in my autobiography. We, together, have seen good days and bad days.

I and Bola Tinubu have come a long way and we have been there for each other. So let no one use my acknowledgment of his good deeds and my refusal not to support him in his bid for Nigeria presidency to portray me as a betrayer.

Tinubu remains my leader and I will forever cherish him and the contributions he made to my Organisation during our fight against the military.

He however knows I don’t follow the herd. I make my choices based on very rigid parameters . He will tell you I am very Independent in my actions and ways.

As a third year university student my dad chose to be in NPN. I never considered the fact that he fed me and paid my school fees to join him in a party I despised. I went to UPN and became a youth leader.

Tinubu will tell you that whatever and whoever Ojudu is committed to is in for 100 percent commitment. Reasons I did rather faced torture and possible death in General Sani Abacha’s detention than reveal certain things they wanted me to reveal about him.

The idea that everyone who has related with Tinubu and disagrees with him on this Presidential bid is a traitor and a betrayal is puerile. Many of us, his associates, were not made by him as you also want the world to believe.

We were already made before meeting him and in the cause of relating we gave one another a helping hand. As far back as 1992 when I came to know him I was already one of the editors of a popular news magazine with a good standing too in the civil society. I walked out of my job when our billionaire publisher (Chief MKO Abiola) requested I and my colleagues to apologize to General Ibrahim Babangida over a story critical of the regime. That was 1992.

When I left that job, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, a man whom I was indebted to greatly (gave me a scholarship in my school days alongside King Sunny Ade) invested in my publishing platform (The News, publisher of PM news). The same one that was consequential in the battle to bring democracy back to Nigeria.

At the conclusion of that struggle, Chief Fawehinmi insisted we seat out politics. Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu disagreed with this notion, and I did as well. Against an obvious choice to blind loyalty, I went along with Senator Tinubu even serving severally in critical roles as he assumed the Governorship position. My actions angered Chief Gani so much he asked that I repay his investments. Guess what? I gladly did.

So if my principled stance against NPN, against IBB and against “siddon look” was not betrayal of my father, Chief MKO Abiola and Chief Gani Fawehinmi respectively, why would my principled stance against our leader present ambition be.?
So, on this matter of 2023 I wish him well but I cannot in good conscience give him my support or cast my vote for him in the coming primary. It is my right. I am above 60 years of age for God sake. I almost died seeking this inalienable democratic rights, held up in detention and severally tortured. Your god is not my god.

Let no one think he can browbeat or blackmail me to do what does not go with my conscience or my ideals. Enough of your phone threats and embarrassment of my family members.

I know Tinubu. I respect and adore him. Many of his latter day supporters do not even know him. If they do, they won’t resort to emotional and physical blackmail. When Tinubu decided to go against Afenifere and the Yoruba elders in 2003 by not supporting President Olusegun Obasanjo, he wasn’t betraying the Yoruba nation or a traitor to Afenifere. He made a choice and history has been his judge. Let history be my own judge too. When he supported Chief Olu Falae against Chief Bola Ige , our respected leader, who fought for him to emerge candidate of Alliance for Democracy in Lagos, no one shouted betrayal.

For the irritants who have been sending threat messages to me and members of my family or calling to abuse me for not supporting Tinubu, do know that is not democracy. It is something else. I spent my youth years fighting autocracy and intolerance of the military and I am still willing and ready, even now, to stand up for what I believe , even if it will cost me my life. Enough said.

_Senator Babafemi Ojudu writes from Abuja _

It will be easier for dead Shekau of Boko Haram to become Nigeria's president than Tinubu. Keep deceiving yourselves.

Mad and myopic group.

Tinubu is just wasting his time and money deceiving his political loyalists and his myopic online E-Rats.

Those sitting at home are either jobless or hopeless. IPOB order is the height of madness.

Danjikanbauchi:
cf is more valuable than Naira, manage yourself and give yourself target

CFA is not more valuable than Naira please. Stop misleading the public.

DrGoodman:
The federal government are just grasping at straws

What a shame.

If they had any strong evidence, they should have brought it all along, but this panicky, dodgy attitude shows that Kanu has them by the balls.

Long live Nnamdi Kanu.

Keep deceiving yourself here. Kanu won't get out except through a presidential pardon.

Only a presidential pardon can rescue this man from prison. Buhari won't allow him out till after his tenure. The next govt. may pardon him after 2023 elections. Kanu have entered one chance. The power of brainwashing.

Family matters.

Thief Tinubu

This is how Messi, Ronaldo and Lewandowski voted for The Best FIFA Men's Player award �

mrvitalis:
Shots fired ...

Bullion Van

Weapons of mass destruction

Dave Umahi said, “In this country, I find it very funny for people at certain age in this country that are still fighting so hard for money. I thought that at certain age, we should be making efforts to reconcile with God and be grateful to him for the opportunity given to us.


Shots fired to Tinubu �

AsabaPropertyAg:
Atiku/Wike will fly, sure combination.

Atiku kill you there. Another Fulani is no no for Nigerians.

Nigerians lost #11trillion over the satanic twitter ban by Evil Buhari.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Tinubu can't be Nigeria's president.... Never ever.

LegendHero:
Atikulation Atikulation.

He is the only hope of Tinubu antagonists. So it’s good that he started his own movement too, next will be Dubai & Cameroon.

Atiku and Tinubu are expired products.

If they like they should meet in Mercury... Atiku and Tinubu are expired products.

It depends on your agreement with your bank.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

Advertisement
Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

Advertisement
We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.

Why Bola Tinubu lost the 2023 presidential election

JANUARY 17, 2022

In his article, “Osinbajo’s Road to Abuja: The Untold Story,” Olawale Olaleye told how Osinbajo ‘defeated’ Bola Tinubu to become Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-presidential candidate.

According to the story, early in 2015, as soon as Buhari became the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu set up a committee to come up with a way to justify to the nation his inevitable choice as Buhari’s running mate. That was because the Buhari-Tinubu ticket would have imposed Muslim-Muslim candidates on Nigeria. One of the committee members was Yemi Osinbajo, the current Vice President of Nigeria. As the story went, Osinbajo expressed to the committee members that it would be difficult for him to go back to his constituency and explain the potential Muslim-Muslim ticket. Osinbajo’s discontent got to Bola Tinubu, and he held it as a grudge against his former Attorney-General when he was the governor of Lagos State.

While this was going on, Muhammadu Buhari’s committee set up to shortlist his possible Vice Presidential candidates arrived at three names. One of the names was Yemi Osinbajo. When Buhari took the three names to Bola Tinubu to give him the honor of picking one in recognition of his contribution to Buhari’s campaign, Tinubu flared up when he did not see his name on the list. In the intriguing negotiations and permutations that followed, despite Bola Tinubu’s initial rejection, Osinbajo ended up as the Vice Presidential candidate of Buhari instead of Tinubu.

That was how Tinubu lost out in his quest to be Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Of course, if Bola Tinubu had been Vice President for the last six years, a different conversation would be going on in Nigeria today.

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Now, here is how Tinubu will lose out in his quest to become the President of Nigeria in 2023.

Undoubtedly, amongst those who have declared their interest in running for president in the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu is the most formidable. It was not a secret that he had nursed the ambition of being president since he left the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. He has invested a lot of political capital in building a humongous political structure across Nigeria. As the political season opens up, he hopes to deploy all his resources to attain his ultimate political goal.

The troubles with Bola Tinubu’s candidacy are enormous. Some are within his control, while others are not. No candidate for the presidency of Nigeria has ever come into the campaign with much political baggage as Tinubu, not even Muhammadu Buhari.

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We can find in three folds everything wrong with Muhammadu Buhari in Bola Tinubu. In 2015, there was the myth that Buhari’s abbreviated performance in 1984 as the military Head of State was what Nigeria needed. We cannot say the same about Tinubu. Nobody can say that Tinubu’s abysmal performance as governor in Lagos State from 1999 – 2007 displayed any spark of brilliance that can make a dent in Nigeria’s precarious situation today. In 2015, some thought Buhari was disciplined. In 2022, everyone knows that Tinubu is not disciplined. In 2015, some saw Buhari as incorruptible. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu as the epitome of bullion-van-level corruption in Nigeria. In 2015, some looked at Buhari as healthy and agile. In 2022, everyone knows Tinubu is ill and sluggish. In 2015, some perceived Buhari as someone that commanded respect within military circles. In 2022, everyone knows that the only military wings that respect Tinubu are the touts, alayes and the area boys.

Unlike Buhari, who had several opportunities to try, Tinubu has just one chance – 2023. It is a do-or-die situation for him. He has no second chance. If he doesn’t win, he goes home without fulfilling his dream. That puts tremendous pressure on the man.

So, we expect a vigorous campaign from Bola Tinubu. And as the first week of his one-shot campaign shows, it won’t be an easy ride for the self-described “kingmaker” who wants to be a king.

The self-inflicted personal baggage of Tinubu is well known to all. His inability to present a straight biography is one of them. Nothing about him is straightforward – his age, his name, his certificates, his schools (primary, secondary, university), his parents, his source of wealth, the state of his health, his ever-changing ideology, etc. Even his classmates are unknown. At least, Buhari has been taking pictures with his secondary school classmates as proof that he went to secondary school.

Though possession of a crooked biography has never stopped anyone from being the president of Nigeria, the case of Tinubu is so egregious. They are coming at a point when Nigerians are less tolerant of such character flaws. It does not help that more and more Nigerians are beginning to see the correlation between such flaws and the performance of the bearer, as Muhammadu Buhari exemplified. It does not help Tinubu that Nigerians are coming into a new awareness of how personal things affect professional things and how individual faults impact the collective interest of we, the people.

Of course, in Nigeria’s crooked democracy, the people have little say on who will ultimately become their president. The power brokers are the most significant determinants of who will emerge as president.

Here is what is working for Bola Tinubu.

If APC fields Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. If APC does not field Tinubu as its presidential candidate, APC is finished. As a result of that reality, APC is trying, but it has not found a way to extricate itself from that quagmire.

In 2015, when Nigeria was still at its innocent stage, Buhari was forced to pick a pastor as his running mate to deflect the perception of him as an Islamist. In almost seven years in office, Buhari’s obscene mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity raises the stake so high for Bola Tinubu. The heightened ethno-religious tension in Nigeria complicates Tinubu’s life on so many levels.

If Tinubu were to become the presidential candidate of the APC, his first challenge is finding a Vice Presidential candidate that will be satisfactory to Northern leaders. As we have seen in the past, a Northern Christian is not satisfactory to the North as a vice presidential candidate when the presidential candidate is a Southern. It doesn’t matter if the Southern is a Muslim because, in the North, a Southern Muslim is not seen as authentic as a Northern Muslim. The North would rather have a Southern Christian president with a Muslim vice president than a Southern Muslim president with a Northern Christian vice president.

While a Muslim-Muslim ticket could win the presidency in 1993, it was unacceptable in 2015. And that was why Bola Tinubu was not named the Vice President to Buhari then. Buhari’s performance makes it ten times more difficult to sell a Muslim-Muslim ticket to Nigerians in 2023. Of course, Bola Tinubu thinks he can sell it, another indication that he lives in a world of those who have taken mkpurummiri. Tinubu thinks his Southwest base, known to care less about whether their leader is Muslim or Christian, will abide by him. This is so 1993.

But the truth is that the power brokers in the North are not going to take that chance. They instead back another candidate that will not bring about so many complications to their interest. And that is why they are leaving the room for a Northern candidate to be the presidential candidate of the PDP, just in case they need to default to supporting the party in 2023.

Another thing not working for Bola Tinubu is that in northern power circles, nobody trusts him. He is not an Obasanjo. In the past, he had expressed his distaste for one-Nigeria. Coming out of NADECO, he once flirted with the campaign for a radical restructuring of Nigeria in ways the North detests. The bottom line is that Tinubu does not fit into the character that either the North or the South will want for president. No wonder the Southwest-based cultural group, Afenifere quickly disassociated themselves from his campaign for president.

When it is all said and done, history will record that Bola Tinubu used the first part of his life to destroy the last. He was not the first to do so. And he will not be the last. That realization should console him. And irrespective of who becomes the president of Nigeria in 2023, Nigeria would be better off than the country would have been if it were to be Bola Tinubu.

TheCable

Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef”, “Children of a Retired God” among others.