If Tinubu had quit 2023 presidential race (1)|Palladium
On the day he turned 73, President Bola Tinubu reminisced on the 2023 presidential race and confessed he nearly quit. The man widely believed to have a steely interior stunned his audience at the State House in Abuja on March 29 when he disclosed just how close he was to abandoning the race. It was an interesting revelation that quaintly humanised him during the crisis triggered by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s currency redesign. Everyone, he indicated, thought the crisis was a product of his ambition to run for the presidency. Should he quit, they believed, the crisis would abate, especially because they didn’t see an immediate end to the naira shortage madness. The reports did not, however, say whether the president’s eyes moistened as his visitor spoke to him about dropping his ambition because the naira crisis was all about him.
Historians recall that during World War II, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, flagged off the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, his eyes moistened with barely concealed tears, and his hands shook very badly as he held a cup of coffee. He moaned that he knew that some of the ‘boys’ he was seeing off that day would never come back. President Tinubu gave no hint about what else he felt about the presidential race beyond wondering whether it was not time to quit the race as he saw wealthy people reduced to nervous wrecks over the naira crisis. While candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi openly extolled the naira redesign measure, knowing of course that it was expected to hurt the chances of then candidate Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress standard-bearer was agonising over what fateful step to take to mitigate disaster. The president did not also reveal how long he contemplated the option of withdrawing from the race, but it is fitting that when his relative told him he would be defeated, he was spiritually smart enough to vigorously assert that he would win.
Many people are today spiritually aware of death and life being in the power of the tongue, and have learnt to confess unwaveringly from the depths of their souls their victory over hostile circumstances. The time may come soon when President Tinubu will give further insight into just how he steeled himself to victory despite nearly the whole country and the entirety of the federal government being against his presidential ambition. That story has not been told. Yes, the country remembers how he organised and funded his campaign, posted sentries to various lookout mountains in the North and Middle Belt, and shuffled his men as well as his cards to take advantage of various positions and situations. Yes, they have reviewed his calculations, especially where he planned to win the most votes, where he planned to place second, and which regions to focus on in order to eventually place first overall. Yes, also, the country remembers how the balkanisation of opposing parties helped ensure his victory ultimately.
But so far, neither he nor anyone else has spoken of what went on in his mind, where and how he conjured the audacity to speak out about his turn (emi lokan) in Abeokuta, and where, despite knowing how well he was encircled by enemies, he found the courage to deprecate the naira redesign measure and pronounce that voting would take place and he would win the presidential poll. By his unmeasured and cavalier remarks, he seemed to wave a red rag to a bull, yet seemed all the more confident he would win. Did he place the confidence for victory in his calculations and permutations or was it something more ethereal, more spiritual, more transcendental? His opponents in the party, he knew and saw clearly, had a head start over him, as they removed former Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole from the chairmanship of the ruling party, stifled the chances of the APC’s Osagie Ize-Iyamu who was comprehensively beaten by then Governor Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party, and engaged in fierce manoeuvres to whittle down his influence and reduce him to pulp. And he saw just how bitterly his party’s leadership, interim and substantive, resented him. Yet, he shouldered on inexplicably.
By far the most damaging to his ambition was how most of his high-flying mentees in and around the corridors of power broke ranks with him and plotted his defeat. Where did he get the courage to plod on? Citing implausible theories about political liberalism, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who was then vice president, simply scorned history and culture and vied for the same stool with his mentor. Former Osun governor and Interior minister Rauf Aregbesola turned vindictive and scurrilous; former Ekiti governor and one-time Mines and Steel Development minister Kayode Fayemi also actively undermined his mentor; and a host of other officials who had received a helping hand from him at one time or the other lacerated him. But it got even worse. Many of those close to him, who did not actively undermine him, were either indifferent to his ambition or insistent he could never win the 2023 presidential race. After all, did not his relative, the president mused, turn to him and told him pointblank that he could not win the race. In other words, he knew that some of those skeptical about his chances did not come to that conclusion out of malice; yet he neither wavered nor relented.
Sometime later, perhaps the public would catch a glimpse of how his mind worked and still works, and the spiritual insight that underpins his ambitions. It may be assumed, however, that his spiritual insight is the product of his own deliberate and orchestrated efforts to get into realms the ordinary politician would find inaccessible. Or perhaps it is a mixture of both divine and personal orchestration. It would be interesting to know what he saw when he announced his interest in the race, especially when his party leaders had virtually given him up for dead, shut him out of the corridors of power, denuded him of influence within the party he laboured more than others to build, and largely stripped him of the support of those he had helped to prominence. Even his Yoruba kinsmen became his chief opponents, hating, despising, denigrating, and ridiculing him with passion, composing spiteful hymns about his childhood, educational background, family dynamics, and political trajectories. It is unclear whether most of those who resented him even knew why, especially the unmoored youths of the Southwest who paradoxically roam and idolise the Lagos he helped to elevate.
To throw his hat in the ring, shrug off the insults, turn a blind eye to the massive betrayal of mentees and friends, repose faith in the unconventional and provocative Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, contend with overwhelming internal opposition from the ruling party and the presidency, and go on to announce that it was his turn to assume the presidency and would win the office is either sheer political lunacy or a far deeper and inscrutable appreciation of how spiritual and celestial constellations align in favour of an individual. More, having gone through a particularly tough and chastening childhood, he had been forged in furnaces fiery enough to empty a normal person of hope and purpose. If he emerged through all the trials fairly unscathed, perhaps he felt he had become adopted by the ‘gods’. Indeed, throughout the presidential race, he spoke the language of the spirit, and did not for once spoke about or make room for doubts or contemplate the thought of defeat. While his closest and most faithful allies oscillated between days of highs and weeks of lows, aspirant and later candidate Tinubu fixed his gaze on possibilities and outcomes which were fairy tales to the ordinary man.
Until President Tinubu gives unfettered insight into how his mind worked before the poll and what factors have shaped his outlook over the decades, or how he became inured to the demons that torment the ordinary man, the public would never know what transpired in the last poll beyond the arithmetic of the votes or the regional dynamics that thrust him into the presidency. Nigerians catch glimpses of his real but hidden self in some of the policies and appointments he has made so far, whether it was the subsidy removal measure, the currency float, or the tax bills. And they also catch glimpses of the hidden hands of the spiritual forces arrayed on his side, whether it pertains to defeating ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s coordinated efforts to scuttle the presidential poll result, the massive calls for coup and revolution, and the continuing sabotage in various sectors of the economy and society. Whatever it is, on the occasion of his 73rd birthday, he gave a hint into the other, unspoken and hidden side of how he nearly turned himself into an alien to win the election. Meanwhile, he has taught many a Christian leader a lesson in how to resist the portents of failure and disaster, by asserting that there is a lifting up when others speak about casting down, and by turning words into spirits.
Credit:The Nation