Former Governor of Lagos State and national leader of All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is now the President elect of Africa’s largest population and largest black race, a height he did not achieve without a painful journey due to the bumpy pathway to Aso Villa. Our correspondent, Ikechukwu Okaforadi reviews the intrigues and his rough path to the presidential Villa.
On Wednesday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja, declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu winner of the tight race leading to 2023 presidential election, having satisfied all the legal requirements in both spread and majority votes to become president more than the three other leading contestants, including Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).
This development, on the first day of March, marked not just the conclusion of a contentious presidential election process, but also the culmination of his long and difficult march to the apex power house of his country.
In what could be regarded as the most wide-open presidential election Nigeria has seen since 1979, Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat 17 other candidates. His two closest opponents, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and former Governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party, are calling for the cancellation of the 25 February poll, alleging that it was tainted by voter suppression and the failure of INEC to upload polling units results from the over 176,000 polling stations to a web portal as stipulated in its guideline.
INEC has dismissed the claims of the candidates, whose agents walked out of the national collation centre, where the returns from the states were tallied, and advised them to take their grievances to the election petition tribunal, as stipulated by law. The president-elect, a few hours later on Wednesday gave an acceptance speech before cheering party leaders and supporters, in which he offered reconciliation to his opponents and their supporters.
It seemed on many occasions, between the point that he declared his bid and the certification of his election early Wednesday morning, that the feat might elude him. Tinubu was the first in the APC to announce his aspiration in January 2022, after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja.
Also,the choice of location or timing of the announcement seemed to have been a strategic design to create the impression that President Muhammadu Buhari was in full support of the former governor’s ambition. But after several weeks of hesitation, many other aspirants declared too, including some ministers assumed to be close to the President.
And when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, an associate of Tinubu, also declared, it was taken as a confirmation that the President did not want the former Lagos governor, his most important political ally since they formed the APC in 2013, to succeed him.
In one of the occasions where Tinubu met with APC Governors in Kebbi Governors Lodge in Abuja, journàlists confronted Tinubu with a question of his political son (Yemi Osinbajo) declaring for the plum job, but he said “I have no son old enough to contest for the office of the President”.
This was interpreted as a drawn battle line between Tinubu and his reported political son, Yemi Osinbajo, though Osinbajo was considered as a preferred candidate of the alleged cabal in the presidential Villa.
What followed was a shopping of endorsement by both Tinubu and Osinbajo, both of who crisscrossed the northern States to seek backup by emirs and key northern politicians.
At a certain point, Tinubu’s presidential ambition seemed imperilled a few days before the party primaries forcing him to make the controversial “Emi lokan” (it is my turn) remark in Abeokuta, Ogun State while addressing party delegates. It was taken as a public attack on the President Muhammadu Buhari, and the last kicks of a dying horse. But after a few more days of intrigues in the party prelude to the APC presidential primaries, Tinubu recorded a stunning landslide victory at the APC national convention in Abuja.
In what looked like a political masterstroke, most of the presidential aspirants began to step down for him, except those who were being backed by cabals in the presidential villa, and others contesting on principles. Those who stepped down were ex Akwa Ibom Governor, Godswill Akpabio, ex Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi, ex Ogun Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, senator Ajayi Boroffice, ex Speaker of House of Representatives, Oladimeju Bankole and Uju Ohanenye.
Others, including the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, ex Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonaya Onu, ex Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amechi, all sustained their contest for the APC presidential ticket.
Though Tinubu won the presidential primaries landslide, it did not take long before the speculation that President Muhammadu Buhari was not supportive of his candidature regained momentum. Tinubu seemed to confirm the speculation when at a campaign stop again in Abeokuta, he spoke out against a fuel supply shortage that had lingered for several months across the country, and a currency redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, later said on television that some fifth columnists at the presidency designed the two disruptive policies to incite voters against the APC at the general elections.
Surprisingly, in spite of appeals by APC governors to the president to extend the deadline for the swapping of old naira banknotes for new designs of the banknotes, the Central Bank stuck to its schedule. Violent protests broke out in parts of the country over the severe scarcity of cash that arose from the implementation of the policy.
But, even after some APC-led state governments sued the federal government at the Supreme Court over the policy, Buhari refused to vary his approval to the central bank for the implementation of the policy. The opposition, led by PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, hailed Buhari for his stand on the issue, interpreting it as a determination to stop Tinubu and state governors from buying votes during the elections.
It was under these circumstances that the APC went into the elections on Saturday. And the outcome underscored widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling party. In the presidential poll, it came top in only 12 states across the country, down from 19 when Buhari was reelected in 2019. Tinubu also lost Lagos, his stronghold since 1999, to the Labour Party, while Buhari’s Katsina went to the PDP. In the North of Nigeria, where it had been dominant since 2015, the APC won only six of the 15 states in which it has governors.
In the end, Tinubu managed to draw the highest votes, although the votes in quantum and as a percentage of the total votes cast, were still the lowest by a winning candidate in the Fourth Republic. Yet that feat was entirely due to the division of the opposition, which split into three, and an unresolved internal crisis in the PDP.
The Labour Party, whose candidate was the PDP vice presidential candidate in 2019, seized the strongholds of the main opposition party in the South-east, South-south and North-central. In Lagos where Obi embarrassed Tinubu, the PDP candidate suffered a worse rout, leaving Tinubu with a gain of about 500,000 votes over Atiku, his closest rival.
And in Kano, where the APC share of the votes fell by half, the beneficiary was the NNPP which also seized most of what had been the PDP shares in previous elections. The crisis in the PDP also saw the party losing strategic support in especially Rivers, Oyo and Benue states.
However, in spite of the opposition cannibalising and leaving itself injured in the fight, the poll could still have dragged into a run off, but for the residual support that the APC retains across the North. Tinubu came out with more votes in the North-west and North-central than Atiku, despite losing the four-K (Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi) states and taking only two of the seven states in a zone with the largest voter population in the country and long-term fortress of the APC.
By his victory in the presidential election, Tinubu became the third person from the South-west to be elected president in 30 years and in the entire history of the country. However, the election of the first one, Moshood Abiola, was annulled and he died in prison under the military, while insisting on retrieving his victory in the 1993 presidential election and validation of his mandate.
Despite the hard way he secured his victory, the president-elect is going to the Aso Rock Villa with a reputation of a successful governor, party builder and political strategist. This will raise expectations among Nigerians and outside the country about the prospects of Nigeria on his watch. After the security and economic crises of the past eight years, many believe Buhari’s is not a tough act to follow. Some reports on Tuesday stated that Nigerian stocks rose upon information that Tinubu was heading for victory.
