By Remi Oyeyemi
He is a man that is very gifted. No doubt about it at all. The
seminality of his brilliance is unquestionable. His brilliance glows
like a lone candle in the stillness of darkness. His smartness sparkles
like the sullen seams of a dam. His audacity dilates dazzling fiery
fireworks that are simultaneously fearful and hypnotically attractive.
Without let or hindrance, effortlessly, he brims with sagacious
sanguinity that astounds even those who think they are peers. His mind
is ferociously fertile. His brain is endlessly bubbling with bales of
concepts with which to navigate the treacherous political landscape. He
is very calculative and deliberate in his political forays.
But he is a perfect definition of Olumuyiwa Apara’s character in
“Akítì”, if you ever read that story. A titilatingly talented mind but
odiously self-indulgent “Smart Alec.” Amazingly gifted and exceptionally
self- confident. Endowed with vision that was imbued with elements of
chronic myopia. Like “Akítì”, he is a self-destructive hero.
He is a hero to whom his followers look for guidance and salvation
because of his hitherto track record. His people, just like “Akítì,”
believed in him and had confidence in him, much more than he had in
himself. In times past, “Akítì” has rescued his people and their pride
at moments of calamitous ignominy.
To be ambitious is perfectly legitimate. Every man or woman that is
worth the salt must be ambitious. They must have fire in their belly.
The fire to heat the pistons of their engines to thunderous roar towards
accomplishing feats. Every person must have that burning desire, to
refuse to accept the sky as the limit. Rather, they must be willing to
burst through the sky, and penetrate to reach the heavens.
If one has to follow anyone, that person must be ambitious. One must
palpably feel the fire of his ambition for him to be able to elicit
one’s followership. Any man that has no ambition for himself is not
worthy to be followed. For he who has no plans for himself, would never
have plans for anyone. It is tantamount to self-immolation to follow a
man without ambition. It could never be a worthy venture.
Like “Akítì,” Bola Ahmed Tinubu was always able to rise to the
occasion, until he chose to self-destruct. The resulting popularity and
adulation came to ingrain in him a sense of invulnerability. He began to
smugly strut through the cloud and swankishly walk on water as he
desired. He ended up having an exaggerated value of himself, that he
could be above reproach and cared less about the critical mass that had
been supportive of him and shielded him all the while.
At this point, his ambition came to troll in the toga of turgid
morbidity. His ambition got attired in the toxic tapestry of catatonia.
In his scale of preference, his people, became easily dispensable. He
was now willing to sacrifice his followers, his people for the ambition.
At all costs, like in the game of chess, his people, the real reason
people claim they are in politics, became pawns to be dispensed with as
exigency demands.
That his people were massacred by foreigners at Ketu in Lagos, did not
matter a bit to him. That his people were being murdered on their farms
in Òkè-Ògùn and other parts of Oyo State by Fulani herdsmen did not
mean anything to him. That his people were massacred in Ile-Ife by the
Hausa/Fulani strangers, while those who survived the carnage were loaded
to Abuja for punishment and incarceration, did not bother Tinubu an
inch. That his people in Ekiti were being murdered on their farms and
their farm products worth millions were being destroyed, never meant
anything to him. That his kinsman, former Secretary to the Federal
Government of Nigeria was kidnapped, his guard murdered and a
substantial part of his farm, burnt, did not move Bola Tinubu.
He kept silent. He had not the courage to say a word in the defence of
his own people, who have always supported him. He could not be a friend
in need and a friend indeed to his Yorùbá people. Like a mummy, he
kept mum. He believed he had to, in order that he could be President in
2023. It does not matter, if his Yorùbá people were erased from the
surface of the earth. He was willing to be the President of a Nigeria in
which a ghost Yorùbá Nation would be a constituent unit.
Then, the Àmòtékùn Revolution ensued. Every son and daughter of
Yorùbá stood up to be counted. They made it clear that they were tired
of being kidnapped and murdered as well as maimed and raped in their
land. Àmòtékùn was for everyone and everyone was for Àmòtékùn.
The rich and the poor. The lowly placed and the highly placed. The
strong and the weak. Everyone came to the table. They made their voices
heard.
But not so with Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the godfather of mercantilist
politics. Looking for him during the Àmòtékùn birth and controversy,
was like tracing the footprints of a flying bird. It was, as in Lord
Denning’s analogy, a case of “a blind man in a dark room, looking for a
black hat that is not there.” He could not be found anywhere. Many who
had placed hope in him became forlorn. The young, the aged, the active
and the not – so – active were waiting for him.
And finally, he was cornered. He ran helter – skelter, but was unable to
hide. He had to say something. But he was cinctured by his morbid
ambition. He would have loved not to speak as usual. But this was
becoming a public relations nightmare for him. He had to say something.
He eventually said something. But what did he say? A staccato of
prevarications, exuding discombobulated thought process, brimming with
bankruptcy of a befuddled vision. It was a malodorous intervention
mauled by meandering inexactitudes spurred and guided by self-interest
couched in confusing language.
Even the Florentine born author of “The Prince,” (written in 1513 but
published in 1532), Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) could not have
imagined from his dreariest depth of depravity, the level of Tinubu’s
stunning exudation of “cunning roguerie.” To use Isaiah Berlin’s words,
the Yorùbá Nation is now saddled with “a man inspired by the Devil to
lead good men to their doom, the great subverter, the teacher of evil,
le docteur de la sceleratesse (the doctor of villany)….” (Parentheses
mine).
In fact and indeed, a lot of “good men” have been led “to their doom” by
Tinubu since 2012, when he mobilized his plan to use Mohammadu Buhari
as a stepping stone to the Presidency. That plan failed. And woefully
too. He disregarded History. He discountenanced the welfare and fortunes
of his Yorùbá people. He disregarded God Almighty in his strategising
and he has found himself in a cul-de-sac.
Tinubu actually saw tomorrow about Mohammadu Buhari in 2003 and
appropriately characterised him. But his morbid ambition calcified his
thinking and reasoning process. For this ambition, he is alienating his
people and feeding them for enemies to devour. When the enemies comes
for his head, may the Lord pacify the hearts of his people, so they may
rescue him. Amen
©Remi Oyeyemi.
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