Category: Olakunle Abimbola

What happened yesterday — a presidential broadcast making June 12 and MKO Abiola the core of this democracy — should have been routine since 1999.

But back then, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, first president of this 4th Republic, somehow felt burying the annulled election — and MKO’s supreme sacrifice with it — was wise.

Thirty years later, it’s Obasanjo’s turn, still alive and kicking, to see the burial of his own stratagem.  History never forgets — and Obasanjo is thrilling living example!

Thirty years — 1993 to 2023 — have been a hard and bumpy ride, especially testy for the democratic forces — testy because it appeared only the reactionary forces were structurally entrenched to milk a democracy they actively worked against.  

But yesterday, that nearly turned full circle — President Bola Tinubu, a proven democrat that pulled all stops for June 12 and its revalidation, was finally in the saddle.  No wonder, his speech was ode to June 12 and MKO!  

Even MKO, martyr of Nigerian democracy, would beam staring down! An epoch just ended.  Another one is beginning.

Read Also: Abiola and lessons of June 12

In 1993, when the military were arrogant overlords, was Hope ’93.  In 2023, with a growing democracy, though with birth pangs and learning storm, is Renewed Hope.  

The link, again, is Tinubu — the man that broke ranks with his Shehu Yar’Adua People’s Front (PF) faction of the victorious (but now defunct) Social Democratic Party (SDP).

The PF faction, under SDP national chair, the late Tony Anenih, traded off MKO Abiola’s   win for Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING), which the late Gen. Sani Abacha brusquely collapsed to revert to jackboot rule of the harshest hue.

In Tinubu, as president, the immutable lesson of history is clear: the future belongs to the bold, the persistent and the consistent — so long as the cause is just.

As he was a thorn in the flesh of the haughty military (epitomized by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida aka IBB and Abacha: 1993-1999); so was he the palladium of opposition during the neo-military era of looming civil domination (symbolized by Obasanjo’s imperial presidency and the entire PDP years: 1999-2015).

Still, today isn’t for Tinubu’s further lionization.  History has done that already. Besides, it’s a solemn time, at the start of his presidency to further anchor the progressives era, for which he needs fulsome prayers, not excessive praises.

It is, however, a fit period to x-ray how the noxious forces that tried to arrest Abiola’s destiny have fared, 30 years after.

IBB annulled that election in a fit of military hubris.  But today, he lives to witness the futility of a reckless and wayward wield of power.

It is perhaps Karma’s special rebuke that President Muhammadu Buhari, who IBB toppled in a palace coup, became the elected president that eventually validated MKO’s win, though long after the man had died.  IBB’s own civil power comeback was guillotined by a hideous uproar!  He scrambled off the race like a frightened rat!

The late Yar’Adua thought trading off MKO’s mandate would game the system in his favour.  But he got consumed by it all, just as Abacha, by his own iron tyranny — but not before he jailed Yar’Adua and Obasanjo, two principal players in Shonekan’s ING contraption, for an alleged coup.

Ironically, the “luckier” Obasanjo (unlike Yar’Adua, he got out of jail to become elected president) earned about the harshest verdict of history.  Like IBB, he’s very much alive to carry the can!

Under his nose, Obasanjo’s many plots are collapsing: ING; vaulting May 29 over June 12 as Democracy Day to bury Abiola’s martyrdom; the unhorsing of PDP, following its loss of power in 2015; hardly any physical legacy traced to Obasanjo’s eight-year imperial presidency: beyond hankering after an illegal third term, brazenly rigged polls, and the moral stink of his presidential library.

God has laid the ruins of the conservative era before President Tinubu for a reason: to actualize MKO’s pro-people Hope ’93 cry with his own “Renewed Hope” agenda.

With the back-breaking foundation of the Buhari years and his own sure-footed policy directions so far, he is condemned to succeeding — for failure is no option.

Second Niger Bridge.  Dangote Refinery, Lagos.  BUA Refinery, Akwa Ibom, due 2024. Nigerian rice and sundry agricultural strides. Loko-Oweto Bridge, on the Benue River. 

Lagos-Ibadan rail and expressway.  Apapa-Oshodi-Alapere expressway, Lagos.  Bodo-Bonny road and bridges — first time ever that oil-rich Bonny Island, home of NLNG, would have a road link with the Rivers mainland!

Contrast the serious headwinds, local and global: Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) and oil facility bombings.  IPOB’s murderous campaign.  Boko Haram.  Two recessions.  COVID-19. #EndSARS’ arson and killings. Russia-Ukraine war and global grain crisis.

But even with tough challenges and the harshest of economic climes, pockmarked by dwindled cash, the Muhammadu Buhari administration signed off yesterday with the most impressive of term-end harvesting of critical infrastructure since 1999.

Going back in time, it could well be the most impressive in Nigerian history, despite the negative hubbub from droning naysayers.  

Yes, the Yakubu Gowon government might have done better in those halcyon days of oil boom and easy wealth.  But no government has ever posted more in dire times than PMB’s — dire times imposed by past greed and sleaze.

But that all of these only lifted infrastructure to GDP ratio from 1:5 (in 2015) to 2:5 (in 2023) — from former President Buhari’s own admission — shows not only how crumbled Nigeria was in 2015, but also the yeoman’s efforts that the new government — and many after — will need to get the economy sprinting again.

This grim reality was wilfully lost in the snarl-and-growl temper of the Muhammadu Buhari years.  Here, a media fixated with bile and irrational blame was chief culprit.

That combative vice, Ripples must warn, won’t just vanish because a new government is in town.  But it would push the press even further behind the people it’s supposed to lead and guide.  That would be quite some catastrophe, though well-earned.

Despite this emotive babble, however, the fundamentals are far better than in 2015 — though there is still a long way to go.  So, no respite for the new Bola Tinubu order.  

It must press harder on infrastructure, until it reaches, at least, 3.5:5 infrastructure-GDP ratio.  Strictly, no economy can fly without support infrastructure — and good the president, in his inaugural speech, just pledged himself to exactly that.

Still, Muhammadu Buhari 2nd Niger Bridge!  That itself is symbolic on at least two levels.

One: critical infrastructure need not be sweet mirage: to harvest cynical votes, but leave doting partisans in the lurch, as PDP did to the South East, all its 16 years in federal power.  After eons of brazen deceit, that bridge is now reality.

Two: Muhammadu Buhari, at least by grand hateful propaganda from a loud section of the South East political elite, was Igbo Enemy No.1.  

Read Also: A farewell note to PMB

Yet, that “enmity” didn’t stop the former president from throwing in everything to give the Igbo their due — as he did to other parts of the country.

That’s rare in contemporary Nigeria, where public officers often assume a paternalistic complex: pamper friends, thrash foes, and crow about it in supreme arrogance. 

Still, by dint of his own hard work, PMB is stamped — for aye — in the South East subconscious, even if all he got while toiling were boos and jeers.  Yet, the South East wasn’t the sole guilty party.  It was vicious din from the nay-ensemble all-round.

But as the economy gradually powers back to life — especially if the new Tinubu order continues with the infrastructural heavy lifting of the Buhari years — the joke of history, on the naysayers, will be loud. 

Then, Dangote Refinery — the ultimate “game-changer” — in the “friendly” territory of Lagos!

The birthing of the Lekki, Lagos, Free Trade Zone (FTZ), now home to a deep sea port, Dangote Refinery and sundry other ventures, is a golden tutorial on visionary politics, even as opposition.

The Lekki FTZ was conceived during President Tinubu’s tenure as Lagos governor (1999-2007).  The imperial instinct of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency was to crush whatever golden ideas that came from the Lagos front.  The president simply hated the guts of the governor and his nimble — and audacious — mind!

But see how that dream from the past has paved the future for President Tinubu, as a putative game-changer in local refining, en route to a sweeping economic rebirth?

Tinubu had clear and lofty policy dreams.  But it took another president, as focused on the collective as the Obasanjo Leviathan was distracted by personal glories, to make that dream a reality. 

Still, to ensure the revived downstream petroleum market doesn’t cake into an early monopoly, the Tinubu government should facilitate the coming of rival refineries, public and private, to make for healthy market competition and birth fairer pricing.

But even ahead of all that, economic recovery prospects, other things being equal, appear bright and far more exciting than they were in 2015.

But away from the stark to the near-intangibles, as public morality in politics.

For starters, the 2023 election was eons ahead of any other from 1999 — never mind the inconsolable jabber and yammer of sore losers and their fascist media, abetting losers that insist they must be declared winners, or else …  

As Obasanjo bellowed do-or-die at his exit in 2007, PMB harped on clean polls; and walked his talk with requisite support laws, in concert with the  National Assembly.

Besides, a direct comparison between the only two full eight-year terms, so far from 1999 — Obasanjo: 1999-2007; Buhari: 2015-2023 — is quite instructive.

2007: In-between a surreptitious hustle for an illegal third term, the outgoing president was busy slanging with Atiku Abubakar, his deputy, in a fight-to-finish: mutually exposing who allegedly poured public funds to buy new cars for side chicks and allied concubines; and who allegedly cooked up sweetheart deals for friends and cronies. 

2023: The much maligned PMB publicly declared he never stole anyone’s kobo.  True every past leader has made that claim.  But that it sparks little controversy coming from Mai Gaskiya — the honest one — speaks volumes. Also note-worthy: he neither accused Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of vaulting ambition nor illicitly buying up the whole country!  That’s rare decency in Nigeria’s power corridor.

Besides, while one president anchored his legacy on a last-minute peer gaming for a presidential library of dubious motive, the other, tenure-long, invested in priceless public assets — again, Muhammadu Buhari 2nd Niger Bridge, on Ripples’ mind!

In truth: PMB set new heights, in decent governance, difficult to match.  Yet, many a medium wails, and won’t be consoled, at his exit.   History will have a good laugh at their comical outpouring!

Still, blame not the errant media.  They just mirror a Jewish messianic complex, gripping the polity.  Many Jews still await their “messiah”, more than 2,000 years after Christ Jesus had salvaged the world, according to the Christian tenet.

That temper is to thoroughly lampoon the sitting president, in blissful hope of some messiah-to-come.  PMB won’t be the last to be scourged by that scurrilous bulala.  

That is why President Tinubu must deliver value, undistracted by any elite rabble, sure to make a non-stop row.  

Adieu, PMB.  Welcome, the Tinubu era!

From the conclave of “Yes Daddies”, to emergency daddies on the partisan front and now the iconic literary world of our own WS, it’s the universe of Peter Gregory Obi’s many fathers!

But on one thing, you can be sure: during electioneering or strutting post-election charm offensives (whatever for?), you can trust Holy Gregory to skew the tale.

That was crystal clear from Obi’s May 7 visit to the “Ijegba”, Abeokuta, “fortress” of Prof. Wole Soyinka; and the Kongi’s rather scathing put-down of Obi’s rude and crude Obidients, the rabble WS dismissed as “a spectral emanation”.  

“I do not know, and unable to relate to something known as the ‘Obedient’ or ‘Obidient Family’,” Kongi roared, “Thus, albeit in a different vein, any notion of reconciliation, or even relations — positive, negative or indifferent — with such a spectral emanation is simply gasping at empty air.”

Ouch!  Yet, poor son Obi was busy spinning WS and some rapprochement with “Obidient Family”!

His exact tweet: “I cherish this Sunday visit which was intended to erase the needless misconceptions about the relationship between the great icon and the Obidient Family.”

Obidient Family!  That clinical disavowal echoes the Yoruba joke about Tenant Kolawole: a name that evokes great wealth.  Still, whenever ejection comes from his landlord, Kolawole would exit with his imaginary trove!  Obidient Family, indeed!

No one, that saying insists, kids himself like Kolawole.  So, Kolawole — at least in that saying’s context — is the quintessential metaphor for wilful deceit.  

Wilful deceit aptly captures Obi’s post-poll exertions: as wilful captive to own whims; and wilful serf to Obidients’ sorry phantasy, over an election Obi couldn’t have won — even conducted a million times — given his clannish appeal and suspect structure. 

A clear over-performance has pumped Obi full of the wild steroid of self-deceit, which he and his ‘Obidient Family’ somewhat hope would turn crushing defeat into stunning victory, so long as they are boisterous enough.  Comic! 

Still, Obi’s many fathers straddle many layers. 

Pre-election: many Daddies Spiritual — Catholic, Orthodox and Pentecostal: a conclave of holy fathers and sacred vote mendicant, hush-hush in less-than-civil droning, about elections as faith wars; recruiting pulpit brain-washed Christians, into their zombie election Salvation Army, against real or imagined enemies.

To be sure, the only one caught out — no thanks to that satanic audio leak — was the “Yes Daddy” of Ota, who — Holy Moses! — instantly balked and fled.

Yet, you could finger other “Yes Daddies” crawling out of holy woodworks, well-hidden behind a finger, strutting their bits in Obi’s post-defeat pantomime: insisting honed legal precedents must be changed, for a son in whom they are well pleased!

It’s holy hush-hush that nevertheless beams blinding lights into the rot deep behind the holy-of-holies curtains, were the polity a theocracy, with all its thumping, glittering hypocrisies!  But thank God, ours is still a democracy!

Yet, Obi’s daddies are not found on the straight and narrow path that leads to the spirit.  Theirs is the wide and merry way that thrives on earthy lobbies and flatteries.

Which was why Obi — was he wracked by immediate post-defeat neurosis? — once declared President-elect Bola Tinubu as his brother, nay, father!  

It was March 13 after the February 25 election had been lost and won; and post-poll neurosis had not quite darkened into the psychosis it now approaches.

“The APC presidential candidate is an elder brother; I can even call him a father …” he told Arise TV, his favourite media watering hole, with trademark cant. “I am only challenging the process in which he was declared winner …”

Enter another Election ’23 quip, in the quicksands of immediate electoral defeat: I challenge not the result, but the process!  

Still, that challenge came with Obi cocking guns at Obi’s holy fathers — those perhaps outside the holy-of-holies of sacred electoral plots.  Clearly not guided by the spirit, they had the effrontery to tell Obi to cease lusting after a lost cause, after a fair loss.

“I am very respectful to prominent Nigerians especially church leaders, traditional rulers and all that … but,” Obi screeched, “l disagree with them.  What they are actually preaching is the problem of Nigeria, the problem of accepting wrongdoing, accepting what is unacceptable; that is using God’s name in vain; that’s not what God said, God said do not use my name in vain.”

The grand irony: Obi and co, hiding behind smudged cassocks, are the wrong doers, using God’s name in vain.  Still, a fitting raking fire from an entitled but beloved son, in whom they were all well pleased!  

WS was Obi’s latest jaunt in search of fathers.  

But WS does no hush-hush.  He operates behind no holy-of-holies — only in the full open of the republican space, where it’s freedom or nothing. Hence, his stark disavowal of Obi’s cant. 

All, however, is again grand metaphor: Obi’s election-time dissembling and on-going post-poll pantomime.  Both are holy high dramas to sell genuine fakery.

That Nigerians somewhat dodged this consecrated fakery is prime proof God is still on the throne, despite the prime conclave of “Yes Daddies” that mouth his name in vain.

It all started as grand fraud: APC and PDP are the same; Obi and LP are new; so vote the new messiahs.  But that was a lie from the pit of hell which the spectral Obidients nevertheless blared.

Then Tinubu, a model of fresh ideas and revolutionary policies that shaped Lagos to a national reference, became synonymous with Olusegun Obasanjo and his Abuja PDP pests that Tinubu — and progressive forces — spared no effort to dislodge.

Open sesame: Obi, part of the old dregs, is new messiah of the youth, the Church and his clannish folks, just because loud Obidients can out-shout and out-abuse everyone, from their (anti)social media bastion.

It all fell flat.  For one, Obi, no great believer in infrastructure, began regurgitating plans already put in place by the Buhari Presidency, as something esoteric and new.  

For another, right-thinking Nigerians — the majority on February 25 — saw through Obi’s full emptiness, narrow clannish appeal and crass weaponization of faith and rejected him.

Yet, his fascistic minority zestfully pushed to browbeat the legitimate majority, and even pitched a military putsch, at Defence Headquarters, in vile desperation.

When all that collapsed, Obi’s Catholic fathers and cynical lawyers are pushing a stay on May 29, until Obi’s litigious electoral challenge is determined.  Nice try!

As the Lord (that these fathers worship) lives and the Law (that these lawyers profess) holds, May 29 — some two weeks away — stays: and the president-elect would be inaugurated.

Not even Obi’s many fathers — and lawyers — will prevail over the supreme rule of law, which democracy epitomizes.

Put  your ear close to the ground: what can you hear?  The magic ensemble already swearing President-elect Bola Tinubu would just snap his fingers and all age-old problems would vanish?

Or heady traducers, equally priming your ears for bold but empty court tales, of some new cabal replacing the old?

Believe either and you’d believe anything!  

Still, beware of a bumpy but sterile ride: the frenzy of not a few between 2015 and 2023.  It was a bubble that produced a delusional echo chamber.

Yet, life outside moved on, leaving behind that bubble and captives, to bitterly bleat after losing the last polls — a grim reality check!

No sooner was President Muhamamdu Buhari elected than many proclaimed him a Titan, whose mere moral shadow would vanquish the teeming army of the corrupt.

Enter, the pious magic man!

Indeed, the new president came highly recommended — a near-ascetic with a solid reputation for honesty, dignity and integrity: traits that vaulted him over presidential rivals, intra- or inter-party, after sleaze, like ferocious termites, was gobbling Nigeria.

And the man gave it his darned best, even with the justice system playing coy; the churches and rotten clerics mouthing holy cant; and the wayward trying to paint the man in own lurid colours — nice try!  

Still, after eight years, no one could accuse PMB of pinching his kobo, itself a record since 1999, despite the empty huff-and-puff of you know who.

Besides, PMB clawed back as much of the stolen funds as he could, pouring them into hard infrastructure, just to ascertain no re-loot of the recovered loot.

Proof?  A term-end harvest of critical infrastructure: rail, roads, air and sea, with hardly any part of the country short-changed — itself a rare record — despite the resource-challenged times.

Indeed a document, published by NAN on May 1, titled “Buhari’s achievements from 2015 to 2023; hands over May 29 to President-elect,” made this claim: “As with legislative reform, Nigeria is also seeing, under Mr. Buhari’s watch, the biggest and most ambitious federal infrastructure programme since Nigeria’s independence.”

Don’t know of “since independence” claim — regime hyperbole perhaps?  But no doubt at all: PMB has trumped all governments since 1999, in agriculture and infrastructure.  

When you add its social safety net — the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) — to tide the vulnerable over a grim economic season, then you speak of a programme never carried out on such a scale, by any Federal Government since independence.  

NSIP places more than 50 million, from 12 million poor homes, spread across some 150, 000 communities, in 36 states and FCT, on the National Social Register (NSR), receiving a monthly stipend of N5, 000, by the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.

Yet, wild propaganda, by a section of the southern media, brand Buhari as some antediluvian bloke, lost in his northern cave with his so-called cabal!

That sweeping tarring, frothing with biting ethnic profiling, is clearly unfair.  But the real crime, from the societal watchdog: the reason the media penetrates public affairs, is a classic failure of reporting — a morbid fixation with the inane; a spritely disinterest in the vital.

That PMB’s APC won re-election, despite this twisted mirror, shows how the people, which the fourth estate should guide, are eons ahead of it!

That a new president is coming doesn’t trash that reckless media conduct.  So, like the outgoing president, like the in-coming one.

But if PMB was a moral paragon in 2015, new President Bola Tinubu’s sheer magic would leap from his policy nimbleness and political street wisdom; and a far more cosmopolitan feel, contrasted with PMB’s northern provinciality.

No surprise: many are already swearing by all that, as if governance  — in a Nigeria with all its grave challenges, many of them structural — was some magical switch to be turned on and off, by a “City Boy” that has all the keys!

Again, believe that and you’d believe anything!  

Indeed, such wild fantasy the Tinubu order must tamp down, though with restrained hope.  Why?  Because the magic ensemble swing in utter extremes: railing as hard as they hail.  If you doubt, ask PMB!

Still, there are reasons to be hopeful.  As Ripples mentioned in a previous take, 1999-2007 was an informal plebiscite on how former President Olusegun Obasanjo (PDP) ran Nigeria against how Tinubu (AD, later AC) ran Lagos.  

The clear answer came in 2023: Obasanjo, with new love Peter Obi, crashed; despite the infernal ploy to brand Tinubu as part of the old PDP ruin (he was not), and spin Obi as new and fresh (a lie from the pit of hell: Obi was part and parcel of the PDP rot).

Besides, the continuing PDP power Siberia is fair lesson — and trophy — to Obasanjo.  It was he that laboured, body and soul, to destroy PDP that gifted him power in 1999.

Indeed, Tinubu’s solid Lagos record — and Lagos continues to be a national model —drives some hope, though there are already idle tittle-tattle about some Lagos “cabal” replacing PMB’s Daura cabal!

Again, Tinubu’s comprehensive campaign manifesto and multi-layered messaging also project a mind prepared for the daunting task.  The exciting bonus comes with a man at home with driving policy as he is with driving politics.

Still, the path to Tinubu’s Nigeria success would appear to follow a Lagos rehearsal, though in some reversal.  

In Lagos, Tinubu built the blocks.  Babatunde Fashola pushed those foundations to soaring levels.  Now, sustainable Lagos is not only national but continental reference.

Now, at Abuja, PMB has built the blocks.  It’s left for Tinubu to take Nigeria to dizzying new heights.  

That Fashola is crucial, visible and fecund infrastructure minister under PMB, just echoes that old paradox, by that old bard, William Wordsworth: “The child is the father of the Man”!  Viva Lagos!

Tinubu would probably dazzle with policy foxtrots.  Still, the stark track is clear: build on the solid infrastructure and agriculture of the PMB years.  That was one reason Ripples rooted for the Tinubu/Shettima ticket.

Push agriculture from cultivation to processing.  Add regular electricity to the prime infrastructure record.  Consummate local refinery efforts of the past eight years to re-embed local refining of crude — and Tinubu would have achieved PMB’s lofty dreams of a vibrant local real sector, from the mirage of the SAP years.

As the economy expands, offering more sustainable employment, millions can get off the NSR and its N5, 000 monthly stipend — but not a second before.   

The NSIP is a pro-poor progressive policy — though under-reported — for which PMB should well and truly be proud.  The Tinubu order should continue with it as long as it takes.

After eight brutal years, the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari is ebbing out, but with grace — the rare grace of a man at peace with himself. 

The last time a party-to-party power transfer held was in 2007: a failed “third-termer” hoofing off like some bull in a china shop! Holy chaos!

The difference, between then and now, is stark.

Still, what didn’t PMB’s traducers hurl at him: politicians, ethnic champions, equal opportunity hustlers and noisemakers, and even the grandstanding media?

Yet, the inflexible man from Daura, grandmaster of strategic silence, wore them all out — with granite quiet!

True, PMB’s silence was not always golden.  

His last major policy was utter disaster: the Naira redesign catastrophe; and the brazen lies from CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, whose bank didn’t print enough new notes, yet gloried in bare-faced confiscation of citizens’ cash, under some macabre cashless policy. 

But PMB got his swift comeuppance.  The Supreme Court voided the exercise. The president licked his wounds in dignified quiet — the same quiet he used to unhorse his galloping traducers, with their clattering hooves.  Quite a study!

Ayo Fayose, former Ekiti governor and author and finisher of stomach infrastructure at its crudest, set the earliest — and scariest — tone for a long night of political crudity.

Fayose must have been petrified at power slipping off his PDP, having run Nigeria aground under President Goodluck Jonathan.  

So, Fayose started having dark dreams; dark dreams he punched into a rabid scarecrow; rabid scarecrow he served as Nigeria’s most grotesque political advert ever: don’t vote Buhari.  He would die in office as Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Sani Abacha and Murtala Muhammed did before him!

Morbid?  Worse.  A new era of illiberal politics, anchored on blatant lies; plus ethnic scapegoating and profiling, wild and reckless, was born! 

Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), as sinking PDP’s campaign spin doctor, weighed in with own fecund mind: APC, then the rising alliance that would send mighty PDP into power Siberia, was nothing but an Islamic “Janjaweed” — a dark throwback to Sudan’s ethnic- cleansing horror in its Darfur region — despite that Buhari’s running mate was Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, then a Pentecostal pastor, now the outgoing Vice President.

But where are Fayose and FFK today?  

The one, though still a PDP man, swears by the integrity of the 2023 presidential election; and tells Atiku Abubakar, his party’s candidate, to concede defeat.  

The other is even more trenchant as a PDP Saul-turned-APC Paul, defending Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s mandate — a clear difference, to be sure, from Obasanjo’s do-or-die show of 2007!

But FFK came with an additional baptismal: a PMB handshake as granite as Aso Rock, when FFK strayed back into the party, with Yobe Governor Mai Mala Buni, then APC interim chair, in tow!

The power of strategic silence!

Why, the wild Fulani roasting, just because a Fulani was president, gifted Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB fanatics new wings to soar, in rude and crude cross-ethnic slurs.  

Kanu himself, in or out of Nigeria, got seized by a fresh mania: conjuring up the Jubril of Sudan, directing Igbo-on-Igbo killings, or barking orders to insurgents to tar people’s livelihood in Lagos, under the guise of EndSARS riots.

But again, where is Kanu today?  Brought to heel pending the court’s final verdict, however that decision goes, on his execrable conduct.  

But irony of ironies: IPOB’s panic clatter, over Kanu’s caging, is as raucous as PMB’s silence is loud!  Blowing hot and cold, IPOB is running out of propaganda stunts!

Still, if bile and victimhood tales are a crucial mix of South East post-Civil War history, what harm did PMB do a section of the Yoruba elite, sworn to making willy-nilly foe of his government, which harbours a Yoruba son as No. 2?

An Afenifere elder — who supported Jonathan but crashed with him in 2015 — woke up one day and told The Punch the Fulani were “Yoruba enemies”! Then, some Fulani bandits were amplified, in the passion of the moment, as some regime ploy to muscle and capture the Yoruba!

That led to the toxic era of the South West: the atavistic reign of the Yoruba Nation lobby, itself a misdiagnosis — wilful or innocent? — of a national security meltdown, which could be logically explained as diffusion from the North East theatre of terror.  

With that theatre getting too hot, insurgents were fleeing with small arms, and causing havoc in other areas.  Ultimately, worst hit would be the North West (bastion of the Fulani) and North Central — not even the South West.  

But the media, that ought to have put out this clinical analysis, was busy playing shameless echo chamber to breathtaking ethnic and sectional inanities.

Still, whither these South West antagonists, posing as supreme ultra-nationalists?  All dissipated and unhorsed. The Yoruba Nation’s virtual collapse need not be rehashed.  

But Baba Ayo Adebanjo is fitting metaphor for that fair collapse.  At the dawn of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) — formed because of the grandees’ perennial feuding — Baba hit on a brilliant pun: Afenifere Rebel Group (ARG), to dismiss the new body! 

But now, Baba is facing real rebels — “youths”, as Pharaoh that knew no Joesph — calling for his scalp, as his Afenifere rump’s honorific leader!  

Not unfair a sentence for grabbing Afenifere to fight personal battles as “Yoruba” wars!

PMB won the presidency, not because of his especial brilliance, but for his honesty, integrity and Spartan grit.  That vaulted him above the rest, after the debris PDP-era sleaze had made of Nigeria, under President Jonathan.

Yet, how did the Church, the prime social agency against moral decay, take his anti-corruption war? Instead of systemic support, many of their leading lights seized their pulpits as launch pads for wild politics.

In 2019, Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto and Winners Bishop, David Oyedepo, with others in tow, went to former President Olusegun Obasanjo to plead Atiku Abubakar’s case, to run on the PDP ticket.  

In 2023, it was Oyedepo and his “Yes, Daddy” collabo with Labour Party’s Peter Obi, Atiku’s running mate in 2019.

Both gambits collapsed, exposing not-so-wily politicians in cassock.  PMB not only won a second term, his APC just won a third, though with PMB bowing out.  

The “magic”, of course, is PMB’s iron concentration on the right stuff; and ignoring noise makers, spiritual and temporal.

Yes, he hasn’t quite bequeathed an el-dorado, after eight years. But by his stubborn focus on agriculture and infrastructure, he has done the heavy lifting of re-birthing the local real sector, from the 1986 import-powered wide-and-merry SAP, that leads nowhere but destruction.  

The incoming government must drive that foundation to new heights.

Still, for the Tinubu Presidency, these vital take-aways: Do justice to all but appease no one.  Focus on your goals. Give every part of the country its due — just as PMB did.  

But din your accomplishments into public consciousness — as PMB clearly did not.

From the results of 2019 and 2023, the masses make smarter choices than elite noisemakers, temporal or spiritual!  So, come election day, they’d give you your due.

Wouldn’t be bothered about whatever rackets the western media conjure.  

If you roil at their annoying condescension, then you can’t joy at whatever praises they heap, earnest or cynical — except, of course, you’re congenitally dishonest.

That, more or less, was Ripples’ attitude to Time magazine’s listing of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, as among the globe’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023.

Yet, the Tinubu citation, by Astha Rajvanshi, hardly shorn of routine western patronizing, is boiled down history the ignorant but curious can gobble: 

“Winning an election in Africa’s most populous country is no easy feat.  But Nigeria’s newly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has had nearly two decades to prepare.  Called Jagaban, or “leader of the warriors,” by his supporters, the now 71-year-old ran in a presidential election for the first time this March.  His campaign slogan, ‘It’s my turn,’ was a nod to his role as a longtime political power broker.  Tinubu helped restore the country’s democracy in 1999 after fighting military rule and then served two consecutive terms as governor of Lagos.”  Less than 100 words!

To be sure, it wasn’t all accurate. Emilokan (“It’s my turn”) wasn’t Tinubu’s campaign slogan — “Renewed Hope” was.

But in truth, Emilokan was a penetrating pre-nomination byte that vibrated all through the campaign.  It also averred Tinubu’s presidential bid, as Time correctly interpreted.

Aside, Tinubu’s presidential preparation was in excess of two decades.  From 1999 to 2023 alone is 24 years.  Fighting the military, for democracy to thrive, dated back to 1993 — 30 years ago.  That shows how long it took him to build his network.

Of course, the citation also rehashed sweet music to western ears: a shambolic election, with hardly any redeeming value, which Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi bitterly contest; and how Nigeria, the 21st century Armageddon, scraped through its seventh set of general elections since 1999 barely sane!  Predictable?

Peter Obi always coos, with his “youth” army, he wanted to birth a new Nigeria. But by his supporters’ crowing crudeness and eternal cyber-bullying, it is clear Obi has done nothing but inspire dregs — and Obi-dients’ reaction to Tinubu’s Time listing is latest proof of that ringing notoriety.

Or why would anyone heap insults and threats on Time’s Rajvanshi, for penning a citation largely factual and true?  

Did they wish Obi, not Tinubu, was listed — beyond the condescending footnote Obi and Atiku occupied?  Did that rile the surly Obi-dients to shout it all down, in the silly hope it would vanish?

Obi’s own political trajectory, compared with Tinubu’s, perhaps provides a clue.

The late Chinwonke Mbadinuju (God bless his soul, for he just passed away) was a thorough-and-thorough metaphor for bad governance, as Anambra governor, from 1999 to 2003.  At the close of his term, everything had virtually collapsed at Awka.

His successor, Chris Ngige, showed some bright sparks.  But he too had to contend with “godfathers” that wanted their pound of flesh in illicit state gravy.  That in-fighting pushed Obi to the fore — the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate whose mandate got stollen by PDP electoral bandits.

Obi rode that messianic complex with gusto. But inside that whited sepulchre was his own bones, rotten and stinking.  

On the surface, he was “saving” Anambra funds from predators. But really, he was locking down public funds to finance his family’s business, with a bank in which he had investment interests.  True, he claimed to have returned every kobo with interest but that hardly redeemed that grave fiduciary breach.

Then, leaked Pandora papers linked him with alleged illicit tax havens and shell companies.  He was also accused to have operated foreign account(s) as governor, in contravention of the law — to which he then pleaded ignorance.

On the political plain, he swore to Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu (the APGA patron saint) while alive, never to leave APGA — a pledge he abandoned after Ojukwu died.  

He not only dumped APGA for PDP, he in 2022, as emergency “youth” messiah re-made in supreme demagoguery, also junked PDP for LP to contest for president.

While gaming APGA and PDP might be sweet political dissembling, his foes claim he is fated to fruitless peripatetic pursuits, no thanks to some “APGA curse”!

So, back to 2006 when Obi regained his mandate, he was taking over a near-empty shell, despite Ngige’s post-Mbadinuju heroics, to cover lost grounds.  

As at that time in Lagos, Governor Tinubu had honed his reforms, despite Abuja’s bad faith from then President Olusegun Obasanjo; and Lagos was coasting to being the national reference point.  

Tinubu was also carefully knitting the cross-country network that would land him the Nigerian Presidency some 17 years later.

But trust the South East elite to over-praise their own and thumb down others.  That has been the case since the days of West African Pilot, the nationalist and immediate Independence-era newspaper that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe owned.

That over-hyping drove Obi into Nigeria’s central politics from his South East regional laager.  From that enclave, Obi hardly bothered to build any pan-Nigeria network.  That was why his presidential run fell short, though he also over-performed.

Rather than rigorously correct these flaws — though in truth, the time was short — Obi and co resorted to infernal fancy and crass opportunism, founded on self-deceit.

Despite no ethnic group having enough numbers to solo win a presidential race, Obi doubled down on clannish voting.  Why, his Obi-dient cyber-army stood ready to tar anyone, resisting their clannish ploy, as “tribalist” or “bigoted” — ironically, a brilliant and spectacular capture of their own very essence!

Then, the APC “Muslim-Muslim” ticket would gift Obi the infernal spin of election as “religious war”, as revealed in his pathetic “Yes, Daddy” audio leak with Winners Bishop, David Oyedepo — which neither of them even has the balls to admit.

This faith-clannish coalition was all too glaring from the results of February 25 — which ought to have sobered Obi and got him thinking of future alliances.  

But instead, he and supporters have resorted to bluff and bluster, powered by the most incendiary and uncouth of threats.

When faced with the most innocuous of truths — like the Tinubu Time citation — they fly off the handle.  That explains the cyber attacks on poor Ms. Rajvanshi — as if such juvenile blather would banish the truth! 

Welcome to the bubble of Saint Gregory and his inspired dregs.  Just imagine if this rabble had won power!

But this mob, predictably surly and sour, aren’t the most dangerous of Obi-dient fascism. More respectable voices are — which brings back Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

After a rash letter to US President Joe Biden, she doubled down on Arise TV that her “anecdotes” could stand for sweeping electoral facts — including soiling the reputation  of the INEC chair but admitting it was all based on rumours!  

That girl must really think she’s writing grand fiction, which may yet breed grand angst!

Yet, reputations don’t just suddenly collapse.  They fade by enforcing suspect causes.  But even that is a democratic choice.