Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been declared winner of last Saturday’s presidential election.
In an ironic political turn of event in which the kingmaker has suddenly become the king him-self, Tinubu who is considered as the kingmaker behind the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) in 2015 is now the president-elect of Nigeria.
It is mission accomplished for the former Lagos governor who said it was his turn to lead Nigeria, but the road to Aso Rock has not been smooth sailing; it is a difficult journey, such that Tinubu himself would readily attest that he did not relax and could not enjoy all through.
Known as the son of late Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji, the lyaloja of La-gos, Tinubu had a commendable professional life with a number of international concerns as an Auditor before joining politics in 1992, on the platform of the Social Democratic Party led by late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. He was elected to the Nigerian Senate, to represent the Lagos West constituency.
Military President Ibrahim Bad-amosi Babangida’s (IBB) unending transition, witnessed a dribbling that saw the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election that was to produce M.K.O. Abiola.
This development brought Tinubu into the limelight as he became a major arrowhead of the struggle to realise MKO’s mandate. With MKO in jail, he fled into exile in 1994, becoming a leader cum financier of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), against General Sani Abacha (GSA). GSA had pushed IBB aside, later dismissing after 84 days in office, the interim government of Ernest Shonekan that Babangida had put in place.
Tinubu only returned to Nigeria in
1998 after the death of GSA. General Abdulsalami A. Abubakar (AAA) who took over wanted to quickly leave office and Tinubu was one of the beneficiaries of the General’s call for Nigerians to canvass for offices.
In the run-up to the 1999 elections, Bola Tinubu was a protégé of Alliance
for Democracy (AD) leaders Abraham Adesanya and Ayo Adebanjo. He won the AD primaries for the Lagos State gubernatorial elections, and in January 1999, stood for the position of Executive Governor of Lagos State on the AD ticket and won.
On October 7, 1999, the late human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehin-mi (SAN) filed a request at the Federal High Court, Lagos, to compel an investigation of criminal allegations which he made against BAT. This process was stalled in court given a serving governor’s immunity. Fawehinmi’s death ended all issues.
Tinubu alonoside a new deputy
Femi Pedro, won re-election to office as governor in April 2003. He survived President Obasanjo’s attempt to sweep all the Southwestern States into his ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). How he outsmarted President Obasanjo (OBJ) is a story for another day. He was involved in a struggle
with the Federal government over Lagos State’s right to create new Local Council Development Areas (LCDs) to meet its large population’s needs.
The controversy led to the federal government seizing funds meant for local councils in the state in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court against
Obasanjo, the President.
His tenure as Lagos State Governor ended on 29 May 2007.
There are suggestions that he was wealthy before coming into politics. But many dubbed him the owner of Lagos. A 2015 documentary alleged BAT’s stranglehold on the political and financial jocular of Lagos.
Tinubu sued the producers AIT, for N150 billion for libel, and the documentary was taken off the air on March 6, 2015 as AlT allegedly made restitution and apologized. Similar controversies over the ownership of
Alpha-Beta, a consulting entity that massively assisted in raising the internally generated revenue of Lagos State has been settled with Dapo Apara, a chartered accountant and former company M.D.
Tinubu had a history of being too controlling over his successors. For example, in December 2009, there were reports that serving Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola and Tinubu had a fight over Fashola’s re-election in
2011.
A similar imbroglio happened in 2015 over Fashola’s replacement.
Tinubu allegedly decided on Akinwunmi Ambode, who was in turn denied a second-term and incumbent Babajide Sanwo-Olu was put in place
Many people suggested that PMB did not want Tinubu as his successor in spite of the role the former Lagos governor played in ensuring that he became President of Nigeria in 2015.
In June 2021, for instance, in an interview, PMB stated that: “You cannot sit there in Lagos… and decide the fate of APC on zoning.”
This was in reaction to a suggestion that the All Progres-
sives Congress (APC) presidential candidate had been zoned to the South against the 2023 elections.
This message was read as meant for Tinubu, who was the frontrunner for his party’s nomination. The body language of PMB, as he foisted a chairman on the party who in turn tried to foist Ahmed Lawan as the APC presidential candidate gave the impression that all was sealed against Tinubu butAgainst all odds, with the support of nine APC Governors from Northern Nigeria, the use of his war-chest, etc., Tinubu emerged as APC’s presidential candidate.
The ill-fated currency redesign policy was clearly read as geared at preventing Tinubu’s success, given the untold hardship that was added to the lackluster performance by the APC government during PMB’s eight years in office. However, this policy backfired in the north pushing people to look forward to BAT’s election to change the situation.
Little wonder that as Tinubu took a careful position of embracing PMB’s failure in office but skillfully suggesting that he is different, PMB was pushed into a corner of lack of trust on his support for his party’s presidential candidate, hence he had to show his ballot paper to the world to prove that he voted in favour of his party.
Tinubu faces a plethora of challeng-es. There is the controversy on whether Nigeria needs restructuring to avoid secession. The low international rating of Nigeria and worsening exchange rate, petrol “subsidy” removal, inflation, excruciating debt overhang, the
youth bulge, accompanied by high unemployment etc., are major challenges.
More importantly is the general insecurity that PMB slightly reduced by pushing Boko Haram out of territories it once held but with mayhem continuing in many parts of Nigeria.
HOW TINUBU WON
APC presidential candidate Ahmed Tinubu has been declared
winner of Last Saturday’s presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
According to the commission, Tinubu scored 8,794,729 and got the required 25 percent in 30 states to defeat his major opponents, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who came second with 6,984,520 votes and followed by Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) who scored 6,101,533 votes.
Section 134 of the 1999 constitution stipulates that a presidential candidate can only be announced as the winner if he or she has the majority of votes cast at the election; and has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the FCT.
Sub-section 3 of the said section provides that “in default of a candidate duly elected in accordance with subsection (2) of this section there shall be a second election”.
Meawhile, senior lawyers have continued to argue whether otherwise, a presidential candidate is required to score 25% in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
ECOWAS LEADERS VISIT TINUBU
Meanwhile, former President of Ni-geria, Goodluck Jonathan; head of the West African Elders Forum (WAEF)
Mission to Nigeria’s 2023 general polls and former President of the Republic of Ghana, John Dramani Ma-hama, as well as other members of the forum have called for calm over Saturday’s presidential poll.
They made their position following the call by the PDP, LP and the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) for outright cancellation of the poll, saying it was irretrievably compromised.
Other members of the Mission include former Beninoise President, Boni Yayi, former President Good-luck Jonathan, former Vice President of The Gambia, Fatoumata Jallo Tam-bajang, former Burkinabe Prime Minister and President of the Economic Community of West African States,
