We created easy passageway for Tinubu

Editor Abraham OGBODO on how we created easy passageway for Tinubu to pay for our collective amnesia and are now paying dearly to ransom our captive souls.

We know the Yoruba better today because some of us have lived in Yoruba land for decades. The people are not infested with herd mentality. They are too sophisticated to be led by the nose by one man onto an uncharted path without a moral compass.

In 1999, the fiercest opposition against Obasanjo’s candidacy came from the Southwest. It wasn’t any different in 2023 regarding Tinubu. In fact, the mainstream Yoruba establishment has never resolved anything again in favour of Tinubu after the seeming error  of supporting him against others, like the murdered Funsho Williams, in the Lagos governorship contest in 1999. The consideration for the role Tinubu played in the NADECO struggle was too compelling for Afenifere to exercise wide discretion. Whether  or not that role was calculated for a purpose is not the point to drive here. Rightly or wrongly, they in Afenifere thought Pa Awo had finally reincarnated in Tinubu.

Perhaps no one, outside Tinubu himself, understands his near infinite capacity to pull surprises in the power game. Tinubu might have sworn never to subject himself to the inconvenience of an Afenifere endorsement for a second time in his political life. He hates to be told no by anybody. And so, upon his enthronement in 1999, his first strategic move was to decapitate the so-called king maker. Almost immediately, names like Afenifere Renewal Group and Yoruba Elders Council got thrown up and strengthened on the socio-cultural and political landscape of the Oduduwa enclave.

Tinubu is a democrat who also understands the value of nuisance, or more specifically, violence in the Nigerian power game. He knew that dismantling that patriarchal leadership structure in Yoruba land and separating them into power blocs would be in his ultimate interest. His hands were also deep in the emergence of any notable Yoruba Oba after 1999. Even chairmen of motor parks in the Southwest did not emerge without his input. He infiltrated the Yoruba intelligentsia to rearrange the tendencies to his advantage. He did the same to the vocal Southwest media.  

Overall, he successfully redistributed the group momentum the Yoruba are known for into various but coordinate power levels such that in the emergent power mesh, no one level would hold the jokers but would only act as a counter to another level while the master player snaked through the labyrinth undiminished.

Done with the Southwest, he moved national and the result was his inevitability in the 2023 power calculations. Tinubu does not have too many comparative advantages. He understands this. His only clear advantage is cash which he uses so well to secure all the advantages in a playing field where nothing else, including elevated spirituality, counts better than cash.  

I think everybody in the national lineup is guilty. Somehow, the whole nation stepped aside and offered a free way to a man that nobody knows beyond the street, to forcefully bring together all critical institutions and elements of nation building to act on his behalf. He could not be stopped when he was a mere subterfuge. Now that he has become a substantive agent, how on earth do we now hope to stop him?

Tinubu pays the price and gets whatever he wants. He paid to secure our collective amnesia. It is now time for us to pay dearly to ransom our captive souls. It is same as saying that complacency and political lethargy come with a consequence.

Abraham Ogbodo: We created easy passageway for Tinubu