- We congratulate Bola Tinubu on his victory while noting the huge task ahead
The man has, in a few words, summed up his role in a new administration. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the president-elect, emerged the clear winner of a competitive contest in which three gladiators, and some would say four, went head-to-head for the plum prize of the first citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In spite of the outcry of electoral malpractices, late turnout, BVAS glitches and slow performance in the relay of the results, Tinubu rose above his peers with an unassailable 1.8 million votes over the next rival, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) trots a distant third with about 2.6 million votes behind.
Tinubu said he will be a conductor of the Nigerian orchestra. In a nation of discordant voices and instruments, he promises to make a symphony out of the Nigerian babel. The riot of voices does not come out of the hundreds of ethnic groups and countervailing religions alone, but also from the pains many Nigerians feel over quite a few ailments eating into the Nigerian wellbeing.
They include the fear at home and on the highways, a nation in which many young are seeking fulfilment as an existential crisis drives them out of their native land for elusive paradise in strange places, the health crisis that makes many Nigerians seek salvation outside the country when they can afford it and waiting fatalistically for death when they cannot; the frustration of talent; power failure that leads often to economic paralysis with its spinoffs in layoffs, mass graduate unemployment; educational hurdles in which many parents strive often in vain to secure admissions abroad because schools at home not only fall short in standards but students cannot guarantee how many years they would spend in the university; a social castration in which values that pay often are values that will fail society always. The problems loom large.
Hence, Tinubu knows that the task ahead is immense. Nothing even demonstrates this task ahead more than the fury expressed by those who have lost the polls, and the rhetoric of division that privileges a breakdown of the polity over a culture of dialogue.
The PDP flagbearer and his Labour Party counterpart seemed to have found a dubious comfort in an alliance that also pits them against each other. They have each claimed that the elections were tampered with. This is their right to say and the courts also allow them in a democratic dispensation to assert such rights within the constitution.
But while they are at it, they should always remember to restrain their followers from overplaying their hands and taking the country to the brink. Since both party leaders have expressed their desire to follow due process, some of their followers have transmitted their bile online with effusive social media umbrage.
The Nigerian babel resounded across the various geo-political zones in the last presidential poll with the factors of religion and tribe often overshadowing the factor of unity, economic blueprint and templates to unite the country. Tribes and faiths hid in bubbles and enriched themselves in that disenchantment with the other.
Some voted tribes over faith, others faith over tribes, and quite a good number saw faith and tribe in their candidates.
The numbers from the polls substantially did not lie, but as a nation we lied to ourselves as a people in the name of tribe and faith. Tinubu understands this hence, in his acceptance speech, he extended the warm hands of fellowship. That is the first path to healing, and Nigeria needs healing.
Division is the first wound, and friendship is the first balm. That is what he has decided to do. We have a few months for that to effectively start, but he has started to do it in a series of rhetorical assertions, and it is the part of the whole nation to accept. The spread of his performance during the elections shows that he has a basis for this healing process. He won in the northwest, southwest and north central. He came second in the northeast and southeast. His showing was not hidebound, and so he can exploit the love for all. None of the other candidates was able to show such hefty numbers like him in a regional spread. We believe, given his performance in forging Lagos into a melting pot in spite of contrarian tendencies, he will succeed in his efforts on a national scale.
The question of security is also important. This has been prominent in the north and north central as it regards the issue of the bandit. In the southeast, the caterwauling and the blasts of gunmen and the separatist hysteria require a lot of wisdom and statecraft. If we need the right weaponry and diplomacy, we also need to dig down the economic and emotional content of this discontent. As many voices noted in the course of the campaigns, Lagos State remains a tower of peace throughout the past decades. In fact, in the past four years, the state hardly witnessed a bank robbery. It is indeed a testament to a security architecture, Tinubu pioneered, and set the country going along that line with the establishment of a security trust fund, though not so well prosecuted in Abuja. We expect that he can bring that mollifying vision to the benefit of our diverse nation.
Again, we must admit that one of the big tasks he would pursue is handling the fuel subsidy that looms as a big issue in the early months of his administration. We expect that the subsidies will go, and it will test his mettle in navigating compassion and policy. His credit vision and promise to revitalise tertiary education point to how performance can also help in a nation in dire need of healing and prosperity. We congratulate Asiwaju Tinubu, while hoping that his will be a truly transformational era for a country aching for a leader.