It is the constitution, stupid

By Akin Osuntokun

The Yoruba including myself are conflicted about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Since the return to civil democratic rule in 1999, he had actively sought to mentor me. At a point, he actually offered to sponsor me for the governorship of Ekiti state and urged me to cross over to Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. This is the most compelling of all such gestures. In the Afenifere primaries in 1999, he fought tooth and nail to get me selected as the senatorial candidate of the Alliance for Democracy, AD. If I were to hazard a guess for this infatuation, it has to, mostly, be his consciousness of the role I might have played in the media during the 1993-1998 annulment crisis.

We drifted apart when I was tapped to direct the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s reelection campaign in 2002-2003. There may be additional reasons for his indulgent attitude but the latter I believe is the primary reason. So why have I not heeded his generous overtures? Yes you guessed right. It mostly has to do with partisan divergence and my relationship with President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Even with all these counter currents, I still enjoy a good personal relationship with him. When I visited him, in the company of my son) at his London residence years back he wanted my son to be friends with Seyi and he committed to bringing the two together and he did.

What eventually decided my political position was the fulfillment I found in national politics especially with the facility provided by the Obasanjo presidency. It was a pleasant experience for me to find the opportunity to apply my political science background towards making Nigeria a viable nation.

Quite fulfilling was also the fact that Obasanjo’s presidency was a rainbow coalition of happy warriors from all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. And the former President could not be bothered about your prior partisan inclination, even if you dine and wine with the late Senator Abraham Adesanya on a daily basis. He was fond of employing me as a proxy and sounding board for tantalising the Yoruba, even as I did not wane in bonding with my peers across the length and breadth of Nigeria.

When the issue of Tinubu’s presidential ambition materialised, I went to see him (Tinubu) and told him that I was going to support and actively campaign for the emergence of the president from the South-East. The information was the subject matter of my column the following day. In the event, my exertions in this respect was not limited to media advocacy, I emerged the Director-General of the Peter Obi presidential campaign. In the rough and tumble campaign that followed we gave as much as we received.

The sheer magnitude of the Obi tsunami caught all unawares especially in Lagos state. The peculiarity of his victory in Lagos bothers on the fact that it is Tinubu’s home state and the other is the massive margin of the victory. Knowing fully well he stands to gain nothing from the disclosure, it was many thanks to the PDP collation officer in Lagos state who availed the public of the genuine results of the election.

After the judiciary decisively turned into the enabler of the Tinubu/APC electoral shenanigans and the red chambers fell under the gangster leadership of Godswill Akpabio, Nigeria firmly took its first steps towards one party dictatorship. State-capture is another lingo for the appropriation of the entire three organs of government, the judiciary, legislature and the executive.

The most intriguing aspect of this emergent phenomenon is the personalisation of the state implied in the spree of naming national institutions after himself. It is all the more strange given that throughout his two terms tenure as governor of Lagos state I cannot recall any precedent for this behaviour. What I do remember is Tinubu’s rejection of a street named after him by his successor, Babatunde Fashola. He promptly rejected this recognition and proposed Dr Nurudeen Olowopopo as a worthy alternative. We should be worried about this (personalisation) because it often serves as a precursor for a sit-tight in office ambition.

If he proves such speculations wrong and depart Abuja after what promises to be a turbulent incumbency it is all but certain that his successor will be compelled to reverse the egregious effort at such personalisation (except the first lady or the first son happens to be his successor). If there is no ulterior motive behind this troubling initiative then what is it all about in the first place.

Obviously, I borrowed the caption of this essay from the camp of President Bill Clinton. When asked what he thinks would determine the presidential election of 1992 in the United States, US, (James Carville, speaking for Bill Clinton) responded ‘It is the economy, stupid’. It has since gone on to become additional lingo to the vocabulary of politics. In this electoral cycle, the dominant theme of the forthcoming election is the estrangement and outrage of the Islamic North at President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the latter seems not to give a hoot.

The Yoruba would say ‘omo eni o sedi bebere, ka fileke sidi omo elomiran’ (you cannot adopt another person’s child over your own, who doesn’t measure up to standard). This adage did not gather sufficient steam in the last electoral cycle for the reason that no Yoruba man was sitting on the throne as president (and seeking reelection). Now, the situation has altered dramatically with Tinubu as a president angling for another term.

In an election that is shaping up to become a Tinubu vs Islamic North blowout, the South West electorate is under duress to provide a block vote for one of their own. Given the operative philosophy of what is dubbed the ‘turn-by-turn’ Nigeria Ltd, it is unpardonable naivety and ignorance to think otherwise.

It is going to be a predictor of the demonisation of fellow Yoruba who aim to vote and campaign independent of this herd mentality. Matters may then progress to become a warrant for another _Wetie_ moment in Yoruba history.

If, in 2023, when he was just a candidate, he could, ‘single handedly’ pull off the feat of clinching the presidency, how would he now fare with the arsenal of the almighty presidency behind him?

I have been hoping for Nigeria to reach this point of inflection in which the throw of the dice is between two fight-to-finish power players in a balance of terror situation. The probability of the forthcoming presidential election in 2027 spiralling into a massive breakdown of law and order is far higher than the projection of a peaceful election.

Nigeria has this dodgy tradition of muddling through and somehow eluding the consequences of the dystrophy it has blindly set in motion. May there be no repetition of this rogue luck on 2027. In 2023, part of me was silently hoping that Buhari would push through his covert sponsorship of former Senate president, Ahmed Lawan to succeed him. That would be the kind of radicalisation that can potentially upend Nigeria. As they say, you cannot make omelette without breaking eggs.

If we cannot agree that the present constitutional structure is irredeemable then let the logic of gridlock force a resolution. Any constitution that enables Nigerian presidents to indulge in a nation shattering power grab, is, by definition, a very bad constitution and deserves not a second longer of survival. Hiding surreptitiously behind the facade of multi party democracy to run a quasi unitarist dictatorship is worse than outright dictatorship itself.

Where on earth, except a banana republic do you coerce and steamroll the replacement of a national anthem within a breakneck record of three days.

Without the annually remitted billions of dollars, (including the proceeds of yahoo plus syndicates) that are pumped into the economy of Southern Nigeria by diaspora Nigerians, Nigeria would have probably gone under water. Meanwhile, in the dispensation of this manna from heaven, Northern Nigeria are largely precluded.

In addition to the legacy of a repetitive countrywide poor governance and other historical inhibitors, government patronage and largese is the critical life support. Unfortunately, the prevailing neo liberal economic dispensation has targeted much of the Nigerian free booty. Hence, (subjectively speaking), the North has got more axe to grind with the harbinger of this ‘misfortune’

Increasingly, the utility of Nigeria’s power politics players, for me, lies in their capacity to accelerate Nigeria towards the appointment we have with fate. I’m less interested in the governance capacity or lack of it than Tinubu’s preparedness to provoke a balance of power breakdown of the system. He keeps poking his fingers at whatever remains of a disappearing northern hegemony. Those who are bitter with him and desperately want him out of power will only get my support with an immediate sign up to the return Nigeria to constitutional sanity. I’m not at all in any hurry to trade Tinubu for a reconditioned Buhari or any Northern or Southern power monger.

I want to take my destiny into my hands not in the hope that the next president will be better than Tinubu. I do not want another president to have any potential to grow into a monstrous leviathan. The way to this destination is to constitutionally denude the Nigerian presidency of ever being in a position to contemplate evolution into another bull in a China shop. For those who want Nigeria to constitutionally remain in situ, they need to suffer the consequences and partake of the degradation and pain others have endured within a country that is structurally rigged against rationality. So far, Tinubu is making a good job of bringing all of us to this realisation.

For all I care, Tinubu may decide to fill all federal government vacancies with the people of Lagos state, if this is the catalyst required to spark a constitutional crisis and political meltdown (that will provoke a constitutional overhaul) then so be it.

For quite a while, Nigeria has been sinking deeper and deeper into the Rehoboam complex. In a fit of insanity, king Rehoboam, the son and successor to King Solomon, was counselled by his fellow delinquents to declare the escalation of his father’s iniquities as his mission in office. Rather than pledge an amelioration of their plight, Rehoboam committed to besting his father’s cruelty. “Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” Nigeria has become a partaker of this legacy.

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