By Onu Onwe
The soapbox is a tempting platform. The politician and other users of it who utilize it to deliver an opinion may be seduced by the spontaneity it offers to say that which may be out of sync with their actual reasoning or intention.
That is why the soapbox is a dangerous place for all speakers. But Bola Tinubu, the president of Nigeria, has utilized it very well to his own advantage because Nigerian society is an “unthinking” one where emotional outbursts such as the one he delivered at Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, recently may escape critique or questioning. This essay attempts to critique or question it.
President Tinubu desires to be elected to a second term in office. He has invested enormous resources to achieve this, but he considers Mr. Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress, as his main challenger and gargantuan obstacle, even though his handlers and supporters posit otherwise. But Tinubu knows the truth. To Mr. Tinubu, Mr. Obi is an enigma, an uncommon politician whose outing in the 2023 general elections left him dumbfounded, as there has never been anything like it in Nigeria’s electoral and political history.
Standing in the vintage position as the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress and the presidential candidate, he might have had privileged information of the actual electoral scores by him, Atiku, and Obi before the “glitch” that gave him victory. So, he does not joke with Mr. Obi’s place and presence on the 2027 ballot, and, knowing this, his presidency and his party (APC) and a sundry supporting caste of mischief makers and politicos have made Mr. Obi the issue of the 2027 general election.
So, at Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Tinubu threw up a question to his audience: “Will you compare my brain to that of Mr. Obi?” Riding on that question, he threw in the jab, declaring that Mr. Obi ran away from the erosion menace, a national ecological problem devastating a multiplicity of states, including Anambra State, where Mr. Obi governed between 2007 and 2015. Driving in the jab, Mr. Tinubu told his audience that he tamed the ocean, perhaps referring to the perennial floodings in Lagos, where he ruled between 1999 and 2007.
As in all
“unthinking” societies, his audience roared in frenzied laughter and joy that
he had scored a political “uppercut,” a “knockout” punch. In actual fact, Mr.
Tinubu said nothing worthy of celebration. Taken in its bare epistemic
significance, that quip would require the services of a biologist, a
psychiatrist, a neurologist, a phrenologist, a physiognomist, and, indeed, an
anatomist to proffer answers to Mr. Tinubu.
The human anatomist will subject the two brains to anatomical dissections to know the anatomical proportions. The biologist will check if the two brains are actually biological or otherwise. Why the experts in physiognomy will study the physical features of the two brains to report on their character traits and the quality of their minds.
The phrenologist will
study the shape and conformation of the two skulls housing the brains to tell
Nigerians what such features indicate as to the mental faculties and their characters.
The psychiatrist will examine these eminent brains for any mental or emotional
disorders which Nigerians may have observed, such as the billionaire that does
not “give-shishi” while the other allegedly gives amounts nobody refuses. The
neurologist, like the psychiatrist, will study their nervous systems as they
relate to brain functions to observe if there are any abnormalities Nigerians
may have observed regarding the two persons.
Mr. Tinubu, in asking his Uyo audience to compare his brain to, or with, that of Peter Obi, was actually asking them to judge between him and Mr. Obi, who is more intelligent or clever. A layman outside the experts listed above will, in making his judgment, juxtapose the two brains’ life and career trajectories using their biological parental backgrounds. Tinubu’s parental background appears cloudy, as it is alleged that the Tinubu family name is not his biological lineage.
His primary and secondary educational attainments are also
mired in controversy. His Chicago State University is also in some kind of
controversy. But his political opponent, Peter Obi, is free of such
controversies, as his biological parental background is solidly anchored at
Agulu, Anambra State. Mr. Obi’s primary, secondary, and university educational attainments
have been ascertained.
Both men are politicians. Tinubu has been a senator and a governor, just as Mr. Obi. It was the gubernatorial governance template that Mr. Tinubu asked the public to judge between them: who was the better achiever. Tinubu claimed to have tamed the ocean, while Peter Obi allegedly ran away from the erosion menace. On many governance templates and socio-economic indices, it has been claimed that Mr. Obi did better than Mr. Tinubu.
But in Nigeria’s kleptocratic politics, Tinubu trumps Mr. Obi. Mr. Tinubu points to his alleged “unbreakable” caste of rulership he established in Lagos State from 1999 to date, whereas Mr. Obi could not establish a similar political establishment in Anambra State. Comparison between Tinubu, the politician, and Peter Obi, the businessman who holds politics as a vocation, may be misleading.
Tinubu, as governor of Lagos State,
created a political system sustained on the spoils of office and a patronage
system. The patronage system had its origin in the United States’ presidential
system that followed the end of the Civil War, especially during the “Gilded
Cage” period from Presidents Hayes, McKinley, and Ulysses Grant.
Spoils
system and patronage are most prominent in factionalized party systems, and
vote-catching becomes a special endeavour by political bosses who owe loyalty
to the party. Two spoils men prominent in this period were Senators Roscoe
Conkling and James G. Blaine. Conkling led the “Stalwarts,” while Blaine led
the “Half Breeds,” while the other group was known as the “Mugwumps,” coined
from Algonquian words meaning “chief” for “mig” and “wump” for “followers,” and
both straddle the fence on either side.
The spoils system came to a head when President Garfield came to power but was assassinated by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed “Stalwarts” office seeker. From presidential politics to city politics defined by corruption managed by party bosses who manage the patronage system, of which William Marcy Tweed of New York was the most prominent manager of the political party structure at the grassroots to win elections through graft and bribes.
From 1953 until his death in 1976, Mayor Richard J. Daley came to epitomize city political bosses who corruptly control politics, the patronage system, and the vote bank. Mr. Tinubu, through his politics, could be said to have been mentored by these American political bosses. Mr. Obi does not belong there. Mr. Obi does not appear enamoured of kleptocratic and dirty politics and its patronage system.
To some Nigerians, Mr. Tinubu represents everything wrong in
the political culture of Nigeria, while Peter Obi represents the putative
reformers that want Nigeria to break away from its kleptocratic political
culture and embrace democratic and republican democracy based on the rule of
law, freedom, free and fair elections.
Whoever
wins the 2027 presidential election does not establish clearly who is more
intelligent or clever, for, in all human affairs, it is not usually the
swiftest that wins the race. Luck is a mercurial being who rewards humans, not
according to their merits. So, let Tinubu not bother about his brain and that
of Obi to judge their abilities.
*Dr. Onwe is a commentator on public issues
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