By Ochereome Nnanna
It
is obvious now that, for the first time in his illustrious political career,
Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the much touted National Leader of the All
Progressives Congress, APC, has fallen into a political ditch. He needs a
helping hand to get out fast. If the APC manipulates itself to victory in Ondo
State (by using the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the
Judiciary to ensure that a fake candidate, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, stands for the
ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP), it might signal the end of the Tinubu
political saga in the South West.
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| *Tinubu and Buhari |
Buhari’s
Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, masquerading as the APC that won the
general elections last year will have two states in the zone (Ondo and Ogun) in
its kitty. Being the party in power, and with the Tinubu loyalist governors in
Oyo and Osun not eligible to run again, Buhari can use the same INEC,
Judiciary, Directorate of State Services, DSS, and the
“may-my-loyalty-never-be-tested” former Tinubu boys like Babatunde Fashola to
make a grab for the rest of the South West come 2019. If that happens, the pro-Caliphate, Kaduna Mafia Arewa North led by Buhari
would start calling the shots in the politics of the South West on their terms,
and no longer in alliance with a “homegrown” political leader of the zone.
That
will bode very ill, not only for our democracy that thrives better on
inter-regional alliances (which was what brought Buhari into power) but will
entrench Buharist Northern domination; a recipe for national instability and
eventual disintegration. Buharist Arewaism (coded into his 97%/5% parasitic
formula for the distribution of the Nigerian commonwealth) has been on open
display since he assumed power on May 29, 2015. It has shown itself in the
manner in which the Federal Government was formed, the deployment of the
security agencies, the repositioning of the top echelon of the Federal
Bureaucracy, the denial of the South the right to produce the substantive Head
of the Federal Judiciary (the Chief Justice of Nigeria) and in the way the INEC
has been robbed of its Jonathan-era independence.
It
is also manifesting in the Islamisation of Non-Muslim communities in the Middle
Belt and South by armed Muslim militias masquerading as herdsmen, the frequent
abductions of under-aged Christian girls by emirs and Islamic clerics who
promptly marry them off to themselves or other Muslims without the consent of
their parents, the manner in which “blasphemy” murder suspects are being set
free when the law enforcement agencies bother to get them arrested and tried;
and the way the Federal Character principle in the constitution is
contemptuously ignored while a brash reign of nepotism is plunked down the
throats of Nigerians. Who knows in what other forms we will be seeing it in the
years to come?
