By Ugoji Egbujo
Tinubu hasn’t done half of his term. But he already thinks he is entitled to a second and perhaps more terms. The obsequious lackeys he has surrounded himself won’t let him catch a moment for sober reflection, a glimpse of reality. They seem bent on making him the Oba of Nigeria, unaccountable to no one but his whims and caprices. They are gradually conscripting the entire political class into the Tinubu bandwagon. And emboldened by the relentless flattery, Tinubu is now unfurling his disdain for democracy.
Tinubu had promised a trillion-dollar economy. He has done nothing to give the people a stable power supply and resuscitate dying industries. Rural farmers have been conveniently sidelined. The food security program, it appears, has been outsourced to India and others. The government now proudly talks about food importation like it requires some genius. Tinubu had promised surplus agbado and told the masses to reject him if he didn’t provide power in his first term.
But halfway into that term, Tinubu is no longer bothered about how the masses
feel. He listens to his fawning aides and grovelling political hustlers in the
corridors of power. His preoccupation is political conquests. Tinubu is not
troubled by the perception of naked presumptuous. Politicians do not like to
make people feel they are being taken for granted. Not Tinubu. He is perhaps
too astute a politician to be hindered by mere optics and conventions. Since he
controls many instruments of coercion and persuasion, once he wins or forces
all the politicians over to his side, nothing else will matter.
The last time a president tried to win an election
by being the sole candidate was in 1998. Abacha, the military dictator, had
formed five parties. The leadership of all the parties were programmed, prodded
or paid to project Abacha as a messiah. Before Abacha died, all five parties
had adopted him as their presidential candidate. All genuine potential
presidential contenders were either in exile, hiding or in utter prohibitive
contempt of Abacha’s Charade.
Ironically,
Tinubu of NADECO is now being compared to Abacha, who was once touted as the
very anti-Christ of democracy. Tinubu has barely completed half of his first
term. Still, the governors of the major opposition parties, mimicking Daniel Kanu,
the very emblem of youthful political opportunism and savage obsequiousness of
the Abacha years, are earnestly yearning for Tinubu. Unlike the Abacha
ecumenical worshipers, these 2025 senior yesmen are willing not just to
organise million-man marches on the streets of Uyo, Asaba, Portharcourt and
Enugu, but they are also dismantling the main opposition parties and carrying
the beams to Tinubu.
Perhaps,
Abacha was more mindful of the ugly appearance of a one-party dominant system.
So, he created a farcical multiparty system, which Bola Ige termed the five
fingers of a leprous hand, to prosecute his transition to a life presidency. On
his part, Tinubu, who was in the opposition for 15 of the 26 years of the
current multiparty democratic dispensation perhaps prefers a clenched
fist. In less than two years of his assumption of power, major
opposition figures and elder statesmen have blamed him for masterminding a slow
and steady liquidation of the opposition parties to instigate a deluge into the
ruling party to create a one-party dominant state.
At the recent summit of the ruling party, the senate president called on lawmakers from all parties to join hands with the lawmakers from the ruling party to install Tinubu as the only presidential candidate for the country. He said Tinubu had overachieved. Akpabio’s flippancy is remarkable. Many political observers think he clowns a bit too much.
However, that brazen call in May 2025
to make Tinubu the sole candidate for the presidential election in 2027 was not
another act of buffoonery. It is perhaps the denouement of the clandestine
democracy destabilization plot to which the opposition has alluded. Moles, they
said, had been used to seed and nurture intractable crises in the opposition
parties to make them unviable platforms. The law enforcement, they argue, is
being used to intimidate and coerce the dispirited opposition to seek refuge at
the president’s feet. And possibly what is left of the opposition will be
dragged by the herd effect, greed and cowardice into the president’s temple.
Now, Akpabio has cleared all the doubts.
The desperation to make Tinubu the Oba of Nigeria and make any future presidential election redundant has exposed many politicians and institutions to ridicule. But our constitution and laws are also bearing the brunt. Electoral campaigns are subject to strict regulations. It’s irresponsible to start another bout of campaigns so early in a term. Starting campaigns for the 2027 elections in 2025 is illegal. But Tinubu is above the law. His posters decorate the major highways in Abuja. He alone can paste campaign posters now. Perhaps he isn’t just above the law; he is now too important, too indispensable to be subjected to electoral laws.
In the fullness of time, he might become the law. The defecting
legislators know the law. Their seats ought to have been declared vacant.
However, the architects of the Tinubu Forever Project understood their
mission and did their spade work before dawn. The Supreme Court in an awkward
interpretation of the law on defection in February 2025, decided that
courts could no longer remedy a deliberate refusal by the head of any
legislature to obey the law and declare the seat of defecting lawmaker vacant.
In effect, the law on defection now has to be rewritten to cure the intended
mischief. When the Supreme Court determines the case filed by eleven states
against Tinubu, who on a whim suspended democracy in Rivers State, we
might discover if section 305 of the constitution also has to be
rewritten.
But
rewriting laws only yields benefits where there is a virile opposition, strong
institutions, independent judiciary, legislative checks and balances, and good
faith. If the National Assembly is now a department in the presidency, the
lawmakers will only rewrite ambiguous laws to make them less ambiguous and make
the president more powerful or make the laws more ambiguous to allow the
president room for greater arbitrariness.
Tinubu
knows this country needs a virile opposition. He knows his focus on political
conquests rather than transformative leadership that nurtures freedom and
protects the opposition will hinder the country in the long run. But it appears
Tinubu is negligent of history and unmindful of posterity. The gloating man
servants in the Tinubu temple won’t remember a certain Daniel Kanu.
Tinubu wants to become a Mandela by behaving like Adedibu. Without a
virile and competent opposition, Tinubu will invariably become a despot. And
when he becomes one, many senior members of the Tinubu Forever Choir will go
into exile. Because absolute power doesn’t just corrupt, it breeds rampant
paranoia.
Dr. Egbujo is a commentator on public issues
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