Tinubu ranks with Mandela, Rawlings in leadership trajectory – PEBEC DG

By Ochiaka Ugwu

Director General of Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) and National Publicity Secretary, City Boy Movement, Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu possessed the same leadership trajectory and qualities with the former South African and Ghanian leaders, Dr. Nelson Mandela and Jerry Rawlings.

Audu who made this known in a statement released in Abuja Saturday emphasized that although Tinubu’s certificates may be questioned, biography contested, but his political accomplishments cannot simply be written out of history.

She noted that history has never required its consequential leaders to possess immaculate biographies, but consequence, stating that nations tend to remember what their leaders built, changed, defended, destroyed or transformed over time.

She said as controversies remain part of the historical record, as they should, but that alone rarely provides a complete explanation for political significance especially in Africa.

Equating Tinubu with both Mandela and Rawlings leadership trajectory, Audu highlighted that Mandela celebrated by the world was once regarded by the apartheid state as a dangerous criminal, but his greatness becomes more intelligible when the entire story is told.

She said upon the fact that Rawlings presents a very different African example, Audu maintained that political identities were not necessarily frozen at the point of their greatest controversy as history is full of such contradictions.

She said based on this reality, Nigeria’s continuous argument over President Tinubu deserves greater intellectual seriousness.

While positing that intellectual honesty requires that criticism be confined to what the evidence actually establishes, Audu said the same principle should apply to President Tinubu’s defenders, insisting that political achievement cannot make legitimate questions disappear, neither should legitimate questions be exaggerated beyond the evidence in order to invalidate everything that followed.

Audu acknowledging that certificate was evidence of education, she noted it was not the totality of human ability.

She said that political leadership produces another kind of evidence: decisions, institutions, coalitions, reforms, electoral victories, administrative systems and measurable outcomes, positing the distinction was particularly relevant to President Tinubu.

She said that Tinubu’s political journey was not accidental as his official biography describes his progression from Lagos governor to opposition leader, APC national figure and ultimately President, stating that Power was not simply placed in his hands, with his career constructed over decades of alliances, defeats, negotiations, institution-building, political calculation and electoral contests.

“That fact deserves consideration independently of whether one admires or dislikes the politics that produced it” she said.