Perhaps at no other time in the history of our country’s democracy was so much focus, so much national attention across party lines, so much horse-trading, so much aggravation, so much ado, so much hoopla, so much falsehood peddled, and so many daggers drawn in making a choice of a party’s vice-president candidate as just witnessed of the All Progressives Congress.
In itself, it speaks to many things: it speaks to the rising stock of the APC party as an (the) authentic, formidable opposition party to the overdrawn dominance of the ruling party in our national life. It speaks to the impressive number of high-worth personalities, the surfeit of choice, in the APC. It speaks to the credibility of the process of selection. And, above all, it speaks to the seriousness and huge premium placed on the office of VP by the party; that it ceases to be a “mere appendage,” a “spare tyre,” of the president.
The reasons for the tussle are not farfetched. It is a combination of lessons of recent history, contested personal ambition, and the contending forces at play.
Gone, it seems, are those days when it was entirely left to a Presidential-candidate-Olusegun Obasanjo to sleep and wake up with a name of whom he wanted as his VP, and the whole party ceding the right to him without question. Or when an outgoing President Obasanjo could solely determine not only who succeeds him but, indeed, who the deputy to that successor would be. All of that was owed to both the stage of development of the PDP and the force of personality of General Obasanjo.
But APC is not the then Peoples Democratic Party, its history and composition being entirely different. Still it should have been easy for APC as an amalgam of two political parties and two strong leaders, Bola Tinubu and Muhammadu Buhari, with vaulting ambition to be president. And since the two came from differing ethnic groups it was easy to see that if one yielded to the other for president, the other yields to the one for vice-president.
But not that easy, it turned out. In a country beset and riven with primordial challenges and rivalries; and a country whose people have found themselves unable or incapable of rising above base animalistic instinct of self rather than national interest, then the easy is oft garbed in masquerade of thorns.
From day one it was clear that Tinubu had his eyes on being the president of Nigeria – one day, and, as Nigerians are wont to saying, if it was “the will of God.” It is not particularly an odd or unjustified, or even undeserved ambition. From humble, even painfully cloudy, beginnings he has risen to become arguably the greatest political generalissimo of our present democracy. He is a man imbued with genuine vision, passion, and intellect for uplifting his people and country; and someone singularly prepared to make huge personal sacrifices in pursuit of his mission. But he is no Aminu Kano or Adelabu Adegoke of yore to whom it is all without consideration for natural need for self, material security, in the process.
To Tinubu’s credit, he is the architect of modern Lagos. He not only in his time as two-term governor devised means of raising the economic profile of Lagos and deployed such to set the pace for a new Lagos, he evinced himself as a great leader by the quality of minds he courageously surrounded himself with, and most importantly by the quality of successor he singlehandedly chose to carry on the banner. We shall return to that shortly. It was therefore natural, like it was for Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to want to translate what he has done for his state (region) unto the larger national canvass. But again, like it was for Awolowo, the country, full of men of bile and little minds, would not be rushed out of its rottenness and ethnic quagmire.
So Tinubu had to yield the presidential slot to General Buhari, a man who stands and walks tall amidst all vicious barbs directed at him. His antecedent in and out of power makes him out as a man of unequalled probity, rectitude, indefatigability, forthrightness, and humility. We would again turn to Awolowo to find analogy; for here is a man who is not emptily voluble but whose unguarded forthrightness in moments requiring more circumspection becomes an albatross for his traducers to use.
In yielding place to Buhari, Tinubu the political guru would have calculated that taking second place is a given and necessary preparatory step to the ultimate – insha Allah! But success though has many friends, draws even more enemies, even in the camp of those who had enjoyed one’s help in attaining their positions of relative power. If the ethnic card would not stop Tinubu, then the religious card should.
We would not know by how much Tinubu’s ambition was in the mind of Obasanjo when he characteristically lent his voice to decry any thoughts of a Muslim/Muslim ticket for the president and vice-president representation, even for a party he does not de facto belong to. But the cry gained traction after that, and ready to nail Tinubu’s ambition for the VP route to Presidency.
Unfortunately, that religious wall set to debar a Tinubu would also necessarily block the way to all others who belonged to the Muslim faith, no matter how light he or she is in practice.
The choice of who to become the VP nevertheless still rested on Tinubu, for fair is fair, he is the equal if not the larger leader of the party.
The political considerations were clear: The entire (close to 90 per cent of) old Eastern Region (comprising present day South-East and South-South zones minus Edo State) is sold on Jonathan, warts and all. And choosing someone from that region, no matter his/her individual merit, would be of little or no electoral value. Equally, with the old Western Region area largely bent on an alternative to PDP and its long mess up of the country, it is assumed that the area’s vote is given even if the VP slot goes elsewhere, provided to someone of merit. Who then is to be VP?
Here comes Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, Tinubu’s successor as the governor of Lagos State. From sounding public opinion, one person emerges as the most popular choice of VP if it were to come from the West and regardless of religious tag baggage. And the winner is Governor Fashola. Amongst the Igbos and amongst the “Northerners”, from the elite to the grassroots, many were ready to overlook the Muslim/Muslim bogey for Fashola. That is the extent of how much what Fashola has done to and for Lagos is seen and appreciated all over the country.
But Tinubu would not take a chance on Fashola. If he Tinubu would not get the ticket on account of his being a Muslim, then neither would anyone else who is a Muslim, Fashola or not. Moreover, Fashola’s image had begun to grow out of being a “Tinubu’s boy” to that of an intellectual and independent mind, a clash first brought to the fore at the time of Tinubu unsuccessfully wanting to deny Fashola a second term, and more recently in the choice of who would succeed Fashola next year.
Again, here comes Tinubu as a master in the prescience of selecting eminent hands. After in his mind ruling out, for personal or other reasons, all those who were in the forefront of being picked, such as Kayode Fayemi, Rotimi Amaechi, Adams Oshiomhole, etc, Tinubu dug into his magic box to come up with someone no one, not even the person himself, could have contemplated. He picked Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.
For now, just as it was when Fashola was first picked upon by Tinubu as his successor governor, it is “Osinbajo who?” on the lips of all. He is a man without any national political visibility or vaunting political ambition, yet a man of impeccable character and integrity; an intellectual and technocrat of international repute, and someone the country would be glad they had as Buhari’s vice and as a stand-in when necessary; someone devoid of meanness and ethnic prejudices. At least someone the country could for a change be proud to show off on the international stage, talking extempore or prepared, but with eloquence and intellect.
And that’s saying it the way it is!
Credit: Sunday Punch
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