By Jideofor Adibe
The Friday, May 26, 2023 Supreme Court’s dismissal of the appeal by the Peoples Democratic Party seeking the disqualification of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in the February 25, 2023 presidential election over alleged double nomination of his Vice-President Senator Kashim Shettima, essentially removed the last hurdle to his inauguration on May 29, 2023.
This means in essence that those who cannot bear the thought of Tinubu and Shettima as President and Vice President respectively will have to find a way of adjusting to the reality that they will be stuck with the duo till August this year (at the earliest) when the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the challenges to the INEC-declared outcome of the election. We are of course assuming that there will be no other unforeseen variable in-between.
Given the numerous controversies
that have dogged virtually every aspect of Tinubu’s life over the years, it
could be argued that while the Asiwaju of Lagos has his passionate supporters,
no leader in the country’s political history, has come to office with so much
baggage as he carries. To make matters worse, he rarely directly responds to
the allegations against him.
Rather, he sends hordes of trolls and surrogates who
sometimes offer contradictory explanations to the accusations and at other
times shout down journalists who honestly demand to know the truth about those
claims. That he has been able to survive the serial controversies that have
dogged his name over the years should be a caution to his opponents that it
will be extremely naïve of anyone to underestimate him.
Tinubu not only survived the
numerous burning landmines laid on his way during the APC’s presidential
primaries to emerge the party’s flag bearer but was also declared the
winner of the elections by INEC and eventually inaugurated as President despite
doubts in some quarters.
So what are the options for
those who cannot bear the thought of Tinubu being their President for sundry
reasons? It should be pointed out that Shettima, the Vice President, is also
mired in controversies – from the import of his mean mien to alleged links to
Boko Haram to being a gaffe machine whenever he gets lost in ‘rhetorical
flourishes’ while playing the self-anointed role of a successor to the late
Maitama Sule, the Kano-born First Republic politician famed for his oratory. As
no reasonable person would recommend violence as an option, it seems there are
basically three options available to Tinubu’s ‘refusniks’: The first is to
adopt the late ‘Uncle’ Bola Ige’s philosophy of ‘siddon look’ and hope they
will sit out his government.
The second option is to hang
hope on a possible conjuncture of intervening variables that will truncate his
rule such as the Supreme Court sacking the government. The third option is to
wax spiritual and seek consolation that he may actually be a tainted vessel
that God wants to use to bring positive changes to the country. Afterall, the
Holy Bible is replete with examples of God using the scums of the society such
as prostitutes or the most undesirables such as Paul (who was a persecutor of
the Christians before his conversion) as vessels to do His work.
It is, however, not only from
the scriptures that we find God’s mercy equipping those we may regard as
undesirables with the tools to do His work. There are also scholars who believe
that people regarded as not having the desirable character traits may actually
be better equipped for effective leadership. For instance, Rob Asghar, author
of the book, Leadership is Hell,
in a November 14, 2014 article on Forbes online, titled ‘Why Bad People Make the Best Leaders’ has argued that contrary to
what our intuition and leadership gurus tell us, the best leaders often come
from those we call ‘bad people’.
He argued that while the “best
human beings are collaborative, compassionate, empathetic and free of most
defects of character …the best leaders usually are not”. As he put it: “When
will we admit it? Effective leaders are less like Santa Claus handing out
gifts, less like Mother Teresa blessing sick people, and more like Kobe Bryant
coolly sticking a dagger into the heart of an opponent as he drops a
three-point buzzer beater to win a tight game.”
Similarly, the influential book,
Cradles of Eminence: Childhoods of
More Than 700 Famous Men and Women (2020) by Victor Goertzel et al made
pretty much the same point. In the book, the authors revealed that the biggest
stage leaders had unhappy childhood, which in turn fuels their desire for what
Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple Computers, would call a desire to
“make a dent in the universe”. That unhappiness, the authors noted, also fuels
the nasty streak in them which in turn drives their determination to get things
done. One of the narratives about Tinubu was that he was so poor that he had to
be self-taught during his basic education years.
Just as his critics, Tinubu also
has a number of options: One, the struggle to capture his presidency started in
earnest even before INEC declared him the winner and various instrumentalities
were (and are still being) used by the various contending forces in this struggle:
tale bearing, conspiracy theories and playing the ethnic and religious cards.
Tinubu has the option of which of the contending forces he wants to align
with.
Two, where does Tinubu want to
locate himself between his triumphalist supporters (the BATists) and the
‘resistant’ and ‘refusnik’ groups? In his keynote speech at the inaugural
lecture on Saturday, May 27, 2023, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta,
appealed to then incoming President of Nigeria to unite the country
irrespective of ethnic, political and religious cleavages that may exist. “The
contest is now over and the hard work of building a prosperous and unified
Nigeria now begins.
Upon assuming the office of
president, you would be wise to transcend from tactical politics of an election
and assume your role as Nigeria’s vision bearer.” This may be easier said than
done. Despite being inaugurated as President, the contest between the
triumphalist BATISTs and a coalition of anti-Tinubu forces will simmer for a
while, especially with what many regard as an insult from Shettima who
claimed during the inauguration lecture that the election that
brought them to power, (whose outcome is being contested in the court), is the
“freest and fairest” in the country’s political history.
Three, security is a major
challenge. But how can Tinubu fight separatist agitations, especially in the
South-East, banditry in the North-West, herdsmen’s terrorism across the country
and Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorism in the North-East when any solution he throws at
any of these problems is likely to oxygenate our traditional fault lines?
Four, Shettima has indicated that two of the immediate challenges facing the
new government would be removing fuel subsidy and sorting out the prevailing
multiple exchange rate regimes.
But how can a government that
has come to power with an unprecedented level of legitimacy crisis be able to
do so without compounding its problems?
Five, Tinubu said he would
vigorously fight corruption but how can he do this when many Nigerians sneer that
the phrase ‘fighting corruption’ seems to sound odd on his lips, given the
questions about the sources of his wealth and the other controversies in
which he is steeped in? Truly the challenges before the Tinubu government are
enormous at a time the economy is comatose. And the options available to
him are more like the Devil’s alternative: whichever option he embraces, there
will be unpalatable consequences – at least in the short run.
*Adibe, a professor of political science, is a commentator on public issues
No comments:
Post a Comment