Tinubu, 2023 election, ethnic politics and xenophobia

By Gozie Irogboli

The Yoruba man does not believe in sharing power; he believes in politics of exclusion and winner-takes-all. The Yoruba man is in unrepentantly clannish and culture-trapped. His loyalty is to the Yoruba Empire and the Yoruba culture and whoever is the custodian of it.
The charade that is the Nigeria 2023 general election has come and gone but the unsavory effects will linger for a very long time and may alter irretrievably the conduct of future elections in Nigeria. The All Progressives Congress (APC) and the people of Lagos took electoral malfeasance and violence to egregious level with the deployment of hooligans to disenfranchise voters. There were gory tales of arson, blood-letting and mayhem unleashed on the hapless citizens who heeded the patriotic call to perform their civic duties. It is worrisome and heart-rending that during the March 18 Gubernatorial and State House of Assembly elections, hell was let loose as the area-boys and the motor park touts known as agberos in Lagos were mobilized and armed to attack Ndigbo to prevent them from exercising their franchise under the full glare of security officers in a country they call their own without any official reprimand and INEC went ahead to announce the said election result despite the widely reported cases of voters’ suppression.
Prior to the election, Nigerians saw, read and heard of the numerous incidences of attack on the Igbo people in Lagos; first from the area boys who harassed the Igbo who trooped out for their PVCs which was interpreted to mean a move against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who had emerged as the APC presidential candidate. Tinubu’s daughter, Mrs Folashade Tinubu-Ojo who was appointed by Tinubu as the Mama-loja of the Lagos markets took it upon herself to harass traders, closing different markets indiscriminately, coercing the traders to contribute and participate in Tinubu’s campaign rallies against their will. Tinubu’s wife, Oluremi was caught on tape insulting the Igbo calling them ingrates and Tinubu’s allies and stooges took turns to denigrate the Igbo all in a bid to intimidate and blackmail them to vote Tinubu. After the presidential election, hell was let loose again as Ndigbo were attacked in different parts of Lagos, markets were burnt down, goods and markets stalls destroyed, shops looted and property of Ndigbo worth billions of Naira at Ikate, Oshodi, Olodi Apapa and many other places destroyed without compensation. It was reported that in some locations, the Baale and the community heads spearheaded and supervised the attack on Ndigbo. The notorious leader of Lagos Motor Park touts, Musiliu Akinsanya alias M. C. Oluomo issued an open threat warning Ndigbo in Lagos not to come out to vote on the day of election except they are coming out to vote the APC.
From the onset, Tinubu left no one in doubt as to what his intention was, going into the election. He declared that it is his turn to rule and that he was prepared to fight dirty to make it happen and anyone that thinks otherwise should shut up. He was caught on tape instructing his people thusly: “power is not served a la carte; fight for it at all costs, snatch it, grab it and run with it.” And shortly before the election Tinubu stoked the fire of xenophobia when he accused the Igbo this way: “these are people who left their villages, came into Lagos from childhood, 12 years of age. We accommodated and took care of them. Now they want to bite the fingers that fed them…” Does it therefore surprise anyone that there was no official statement from Tinubu’s camp condemning the xenophobic attack on the Igbo in Lagos during the election? Those who spoke notably Bayo Onanuga one of the Tinubu’s henchmen justified the actions, regaled in their pyrrhic victory, celebrated the criminality and failure of democracy and the triumph of hooliganism and brigandage in Lagos without any official reprimand. Yet, these are people that claimed to have fought for democracy; those who claim to be progressives and pro-democrats. Tufia kwa!
The ugly phenomenon of vote suppression started in Lagos when Tinubu was voted in as the governor of Lagos State in 1999 and ever since he has perfected and adopted the unorthodox method of using hoodlums to intimidate voters in areas considered the stronghold of his political opponents. This ugly criminal trend has continued unabatedly. Aside from the high incidences of extortion and exploitation, the experiences of Ndigbo in Lagos have been unbearably burdensome and asphyxiating since the Tinubu’s era began in 1999. In 2013, Governor Raji Fashola Tinubu’s protégé and successor authorized the arrest of some Igbo people in Lagos, kept them in sub-human conditions that claimed the lives of some of the victims and then dump them under the Upper Iweka Bridge in the wee hours of the morning in Onitsha Anambra State ostensibly in a bid to decongest Lagos. The victims were never compensated. They only received half-hearted apology from the erring governor. But some Yoruba as is characteristic of them to show blind solidarity tried to justify this heinous crime. In particular, Femi Fani-Kayode wrote a fallacious, ridiculous and ad nauseam essay attacking the Igbo in his futile bid to justify this illegality and a breach of the constitution. Also the Oba of Lagos contributed to the xenophobic tension when he declared in 2015 that Ndigbo would be drowned in the Lagos Lagoon if they failed to vote his preferred candidate in the 2015 gubernatorial election. And the xenophobic tension has been brewing unchecked reaching a crescendo in the just concluded gubernatorial election.
Clearly, all these are because of the skewed, adverse and ruinous political philosophy prevalent in the Yoruba Southwest Nigeria. The Yoruba man may pretend to be a progressive, a pro-democrat, a patriot, a nationalist or even a human rights activist but in reality he is not. When S. G. Ikoku of blessed memory said that the Yoruba man cannot rise above regional politics, he was speaking from a vantage position having worked closely with the Yoruba in his Action Group days. From Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, we learnt that politics to the Yoruba man is a do-or-die affair. And to Tinubu it is war that you have to win at all costs, fighting dirty, using unorthodox method. Politics is a zero-sum game to the Yoruba man; a game of bitterness and rancor. It is about blind solidarity. Seyi Makinde and Ayo Fayose abandoned the party that made them because of the emergence of Tinubu and so did other PDP members in the Yoruba Southwest who worked underground for Tinubu.
The Yoruba man believes in micro-nationalism; his loyalty is first to Yoruba nation before anything. And he makes no secret about this tribal instinct that tends to make him show blind solidarity and most times becloud his sense of justice. To the Yoruba man a government is good if he is part of it otherwise it bad. I have said it openly that the Yoruba man is not significantly different from those he malign in the press. In fact politically, he is worse than any other Nigerian group in the country. The only different is that Nigerians have not told them the truth about who they really are. That is why they can grandstand on some national issues to distract the gullible public. Undoubtedly, the Yoruba man biggest tool has been the press and now that he is losing dominance in the media due to the emergence of the new media platforms, he has resorted to violence.
The Yoruba man does not believe in sharing power; he believes in politics of exclusion and winner-takes-all. The Yoruba man is in unrepentantly clannish and culture-trapped. His loyalty is to the Yoruba Empire and the Yoruba culture and whoever is the custodian of it. But over the years, the Yoruba in his bid to belie his true intention has pretended to be what he is not while he tries to obfuscate others through ethnic profiling using the negative Yoruba Press. The Yoruba man will nitpick, vilify and demonize others and but in truth, he is worse than those that he denigrates.
Thus, the worst mistake and the worst disservice Buhari and his people give to this country that is already battered and factionalized along ethnic and religious line is to subvert the will of the people and hand over power to an ethnic demagogue like Tinubu. Tinubu said it before that he does not believe in one Nigeria and he has not refuted that assertion. Nigerian has seen a foretaste of what Tinubu presidency will look like. Make no mistake about it, what is happening in Lagos will be replicated everywhere in the country if we are unfortunate to have Tinubu as president. Nigeria will see the metempsychosis of a full blown dictator in Tinubu if the electoral fraud of February 25, 2023 is not corrected. Tinubu is a desperate ethnic jingoist and a war monger. And it is extremely dangerous to have somebody like that in power at the national level. Tinubu might move the capital or key federal agencies back to Lagos in order to maintain his stranglehold on the nation. He and his cohorts will claim as they have always done spuriously that Abuja is built with revenue from Lagos. And it is delusional for anyone to think that given Tinubu’s background and antecedents that he can effectively manage a multi-cultural entity like Nigeria.
Gozie Irogboli, an economist, a novelist and a public policy analyst can be reached at (goziei@yahoo.com)