He will never get it. But that should not stop those who consider him a stain and an aberration on the presidency of this country. He will spend his four years or eight years or any number of years at the helm of our ruling structure seeking validation and genuine acceptance. He won’t get it. Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will spend the rest of his life attempting to fill holes that he has created in his pilgrimage thus far on this side of eternity. He has lived for over 70 years. Officially. Even the seven decades we have benchmarked with are riddled with controversies. His controversies are serial and debilitating. That’s the life of the man. He is like no other Nigerian. That ordinarily should be a compliment. But here, it is not. He is unique but for all that’s repulsive and atrocious and abominable. We will illustrate. Former president (1999-2007), Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, and Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka are from Ogun state, and they are generally regarded as childhood mates. Soyinka has a generally accepted and recognised birth record which shows that he is currently about 90 years old. Obasanjo does not have such and so has consistently admitted that he doesn’t know his birth date. At the last check Obasanjo is reportedly slightly younger than Soyinka, though in some quarters there’s a joke that in their younger days, Soyinka and others in their playgroup used to defer to Obasanjo as their senior.
But somehow along the way, Soyinka overtook Obasanjo and became his (Obasanjo’s) elder brother on record. Elder brother or not, at least Nigerians have a fairly good idea of how old Obasanjo is. More importantly, he has not fought shy of saying that he doesn’t know when precisely he was born. There’s little or no controversy hovering over his person on this issue. That’s not the same with Tinubu. He has no settled state of origin even though his ‘traducers’ award Osun state to him. He does not have publicly or privately known brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, father or mother. He had no agemates and playmates from Osun state. He claims to be from Lagos state. Here also he had no agemates and no playmates either. If he were to be like Obasanjo or Soyinka, Nigerians would have used his mates in the mosque where he worshiped as a child or a young adult or the school which he attended, and who have birth records to determine the age group he could be assigned to. With Tinubu there are no such benchmarks. It’s one of the gaping holes in his life which needs to be filled. We are, however, minded to treat this matter as a minor issue though in the character count of every man nothing should be overlooked. Often, the building of character flaws start from the insignificant, from the little, until it becomes a full blown fraud.
Tinubu is Nigeria’s president but he’s a haunted and troubled man. Look beyond the bravado and the strongman posturing. He is weak. He is vulnerable. He is constantly looking back. When you have holes in your life as he surely does, you will never stop to seek for things that would serve as veneers to cover up the yawning gaps. So those who take umbrage at Tinubu’s obsession with seeking validation and the company of decent people and society and immortality are gravely mistaken. In a sense Tinubu can be likened to some of us who are obsessed with titles. Part of the obsession is that we feel at every point that there’s something missing in our lives. And we believe that prefixes and/or suffixes will fill the void. Yes, those who have walked the straight and narrow path for almost all their lives have good reasons to treat Tinubu and his co-travellers with scorn and disdain, the offices they occupy notwithstanding. But they should also be treated with understanding. In the realm of conjecture, there’s a possibility that given another chance some of these monstrous transgressors and human scums may opt for a different path in their next incarnation. But we will never know.
It’s the emptiness and the fear of ultimately amounting to nothing in spite of being created as the president of Nigeria that drives Tinubu in his cravings for moments, memorials, and monuments in his name. He lives behind a facade, if not outright lies, through and through for much of the 70 years or even 80 years of his life. He had to battle through multiple fronts to attain the presidency – in Nigeria and abroad – over the schools he allegedly attended, his national youth service corps certificate, the diplomas he was alleged to have been awarded, monetary forfeiture in the United States in connection with a suspected drug trafficking ring in Chicago, US, alleged identity theft, litigations in Nigeria and the US, and sundry odiums. The man still lives under a cloud of whether or not he has an adverse and incriminating record with the Intel (Intelligence) Community of America while he lived there in the 1970s. He is also perennially under the weight of his cover being fully blown as an asset of the US. It’s neither inconceivable nor unique but it should be concerning that the ruler of the biggest black country on earth might just be a mere agent or pawn of a foreign power, available to be manipulated, used and dumped. Former president of Panama, Manuel Noriega, once lived under that shadow. He was an asset of the US even while he was the president of his country. Later, the same US toppled him, moved him to America, tried and jailed him for drug trafficking. It takes courage to go to bed every night and wake up every morning with this knowledge playing in the back of his mind.
It is not for nothing that Tinubu is unlike any president before him since the independence of this country 65 years ago next October 1. No past president or prime minister comes close in terms of controversy, shadowy identity, disputed names, forged schools and “Oluwole” certificates, wealth without enterprise and cult/mafia-like political hegemony. Any man like Tinubu will crave for recognition and acceptance, and where none comes forth he will conjure them. Fortunately for him he has the power “to do and undo” as we say here on the streets. It’s only the naive who will not understand why the president is in a hurry to name monuments after himself. Those who believe that the frenzy of naming institutions and monuments after Tinubu were the handiwork of his overzealous supporters and acolytes are living in a fool’s paradise. Tinubu is at the centre of the naming spree and self masturbation. He is at the sunset of his life given that life expectancy in our country is barely 55 years. In the nature of things those who are way younger than him could die before him. So, nothing untoward or morbid is being suggested. He is in a hurry to fill the many holes in his less than enviable journey through life. Being president alone will not make up for his many flaws and failings. He needs to create distractions by pasting and implanting and embedding his life into our collective subconscious through state structures emblazoned with his name. He will do so much to bury the baggage he carries but he will not succeed. History is not on his side. Equity is not on his side either. Karma cannot be his friend. He will get reprieve and refuge only from death. That’s his only hope. We will all eventually die, anyway.
The more Tinubu names or renames the country’s institutions and monuments after himself, the more the cracks in his poor and troubled life will be on full display. Within one year of his two years on the saddle, he has set the record of naming or renaming public facilities and infrastructure after himself. Eight. And counting. That will be about one such naming ceremony every one and half months. In March 2024, he caused the Abubakar Imam airport in Minna, Niger state, to be renamed Bola Ahmed Tinubu International airport. Before the name change the airport had been in existence for about 40 years. Dr, Abubakar Imam, 1911-1981, after whom the airport was originally named, was described as a distinguished Nigerian writer, journalist and politician from Kagara in Niger state. He was, among others, the first Hausa editor of Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo, the pioneer Hausa-Language newspaper in northern Nigeria. ‘Magana Jari Ce’ is one of Iman’s literary works. The book is regarded as a classic Hausa novel and considered one of the most important works in Hausa literature. His name was consigned to the dustbin of history to satisfy Tinubu’s vanity. Niger state governor, Umar Bago said at the time that he sought and got approval from Tinubu for the name change. And that he had compensated for it by naming a nondescript school after the late revered scholar.
This was in March of 2024, less than one year of Tinubu’s accession to the presidency. That marked the opening of the floodgates. The rest in the theatre of the vulgar and vanity followed in quick succession. There has been Bola Ahmed Tinubu Army Barracks, Asokoro in Abuja; Bola Ahmed Tinubu Technology Innovation Complex, Abuja, which used to be the Nigeria Immigration Service tech centre; Bola Ahmed Tinubu Polytechnic, Abuja; proposed Bola Ahmed Tinubu University in Abia state; Bola Ahmed Tinubu Library & Resource Centre (formerly National Assembly Library; Bola Ahmed Tinubu Way (erstwhile Abuja’s Southern Parkway); Bola Ahmed Tinubu Road (access way to the Dangote refinery), Lagos; and the latest for now, Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja. Except for the Abuja polytechnic which is still a forest, none of these projects on which Tinubu has affixed his controversial name on was initiated, built and completed by him. He merely splashed a fresh coat of paint on them, yanked off the old name and affixed his name. The story of the International Conference Centre (ICC) was different. He splashed N39 billion to spruce it up to make it fit to bear his name. That edifice was erected from start to finish with N240 million in 1991 by military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. The reality is that Bola Ahmed Tinubu has not started and completed any project of note in the 49 months of his presidency. When Tinubu is not appropriating any project for himself, he will paste on that project the name of a Yoruba matriarch, Alhaja Abibat Magaji, who he said was his mother, as in the case of the ICT wing of the Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development, Abuja.
As I wrote this last weekend I stumbled on a provocative post by the irreverent cartoonist Mike Asukwo. It was mockingly titled “Mike Asukwo is feeling peaceful” and sub titled “Honour well deserved”. In the background of the cartoon was a signpost proclaiming SPECIAL CEMETERY, BENUE STATE, and tombstones each with a sign of a cross. A decrepit bungalow provided a backdrop. Speeding by the side of the cemetery was a commercial motorcyclist with a female passenger. As they passed by, the woman quipped ruefully: “This is where they buried my husband and brother killed by murderous herdsmen this year”. The apparently sympathetic rider responded swiftly. He said to his passenger – “Sorry madam. The place is looking abandoned already. I think the governor should renovate it and name it after the president”. Does this not sound like a great idea?
Credit:The Sun