It has been over 45 days since a presidential candidate in Nigeria’s
2019 election, Omoyele Sowore, has been detained without bail by state
agents; and one would have thought that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the
National Leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), could
learn from recent events and begin to toe the path of honour in his
pursuit for more power.
In the piece, “I Pity Tinubu”, where I had berated President
Muhammadu Buhari during his first tenure for alienating the former
Lagos Governor, I asserted that, “if dynamic opposition is the
life-wire of a democracy, it is very fitting then to name him (Tinubu)
the saviour of Nigeria’s current democratic journey.” Yet, the
history of that journey would be incomplete without a defining chapter
on Omoyele Sowore.
Backed by his revolutionary newspaper, Sahara Reporters, Sowore was a
key component in the vanguard of the opposition movement that not only
catapulted Tinubu to the helm, but also instrumental in gaining power in
2015. Sahara Reporters became a daily testament for transparency in
government. Such activities contributed in no small measure to how the
corrupt leadership under the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was
exposed. That is squarely how the APC became the ruling party. It is on
that platter that Bola Tinubu became its National Leader, even though he
is neither the president nor the chairman of the party.
Today, the Asiwaju might have emerged as the shrewdest politician in the
Nigerian history. Today, having dictated the content and the character
of the current government, including the leadership of the ruling party,
and both the executive and the legislative arms of power, Tinubu’s
faculty foresees the North under his palm. Today, with such
unprecedented influence, the current optics is that the man even
dictates who is intimidated, investigated or arrested, as his political
foes are being hounded with an interesting sense of urgency. Today,
believing that he has successfully humbled those from the East with a
farrago of sectional politics and primordial prejudice, the emerging
spectacle is that former Lagos State governor is now zeroing in on
potential opponents in the West towards the 2023 presidential race.
So, Asiwaju Tinubu, where is Comrade Sowore?
Make no mistake, any grudge from Tinubu against Sowore is superficially
understandable. Though they worked together in 2015 against the common
enemy in the gross misrule under PDP, quite alright, Sowore has always
seen Tinubu as the godfather of the corrupt cabal stifling progress in
South-West Nigeria in recent times. Therefore, even if Tinubu—the
alpha and omega of the ruling party—has no hands in the travails of
the publisher of Sahara Reporters, his stoic silence suggests a clear
acquiescence, and naked duplicity to boot.
Moreover, to who much is given, much is expected. Tinubu can learn from
the popularity of recent protest in Nuremberg, Germany, where the
Eastern youths unleashed their anger on Senator Ike Ekweremadu. While
the former Deputy Senate president was neither the governor of the
entire East nor the only politician involved in the gross exploitation
of the region, the Eastern youths saw him as their leader and thus
deserving a share of the burden of failure in leadership. It is only
normal, therefore, that the Western youths are craving for bold
leadership from their titanic Asiwaju in the current predicament where
their promising and courageous Comrade is being detained with trumped-up
charges.
As I elaborated in an earlier essay: “Sowore And Revolution: As Buhari
Forgets Why And How He Became President”, the very rhetoric, in which
Omeyele Sowore is being hounded today, is a page from the opposition
movement that brought APC to power. In short, the history has shown that
both Tinubu and Buhari had effused worse revolutionary themes in their
path to power, yet they were never arrested by past governments for the
freedom of speech.
This growing pattern of injustice, as well as hypocrisy in Buhari’s
democratic regime, explains the necessity of #RevolutionNow. The
Nigerian masses are worried that power struggles in Nigeria are merely
to replace existing leaders with their opponents, whose attitude in
governance would not be different from those of their predecessors. The
Asiwaju must also come to terms with the reality that the Yoruba
intelligentsia is understandably irate that a party it helped to gain
power on the mantra of equity, probity, and integrity has become the
grand promoter of injustice.
Bola Tinubu better knows to toe the path of honor in his quest for more
power. He should know not to ignore the sophistication of South-West
politics. The Yoruba did not defend June 12th because of the person MKO
Abiola nor vote for APC in 2015 because of the man Buhari. The common
cause was justice. It was Abiola yesterday; it is Sowore today; and it
can be any one tomorrow.
SKC Ogbonnia, a 2019 APC presidential aspirant, is the author of the
Effective Leadership Formula.
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