Any political investment that is anchored on personal reward is nothing far from selfish investment. A Yoruba man reigned as president from 1999 to 2007 and never provide any traceable tangible development for the region, it took a Fulani man faced with global financial meltdown and Covid 19 logjam to build the Lagos -Ibadan Expressway afresh and linked Lagos to Abeokuta with modern rail transport at a time his region of Bauchi-Kano- Borno that rained in the thunderous votes have no traces of these critical infrastructures.
In life, no matter our biases, we must be fair to genuine efforts rendered by those not incubated in personal fiefdom. I sincerely think BAT has benefitted more for his region than the likes of Amaechi who is leading the rail revolution. The railway that would have connected to Itakpe through Rivers to Port Harcourt stopped at Warri even though you have a south-south man as the revolutionist.
No one should get me wrong, Tinubu ‘s contributions to Buhari’s emergence are humongous and unrivalled. In democracy, while people give power, those in possession of power are more influential in the transmission of power. Thus, it is not who the people want that eventually come out to contest, but who the party presents that becomes the choice, not ‘of’ the people but ‘to’ the people. And most times the person may not even be ‘with’ the people yet he is made to be a choice ‘to’ the people.
Those who genuinely want power don’t fight for it, they negotiate it- Awolowo with all his sagacity didn’t eventually get the power he wanted because he fought for it, the same way Abiola took the fight to the power brokers frontally instead of negotiating it. Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu may get the ticket of the APC but may not have genuinely ingrained stakeholders who would work for him- many of them will surreptitiously work for an Atiku presidency because he understands the politics of compromise. Atiku can go down low for anyone but an Asiwaju won’t do that because God created him in the image of a kingmaker- a role he perfectly fits in. Everything about Tinubu is about absolute kingship whose says are usually stamped with the seal of finality. Even Kashim Shettima who tried to damage repairs Tinibu’s vituperations while in Ogun state ended up doing exactly like Tinubu- Kashim didn’t only describe other APC presidential aspirants as lilliputians but tragically painted Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as a leader fit only to sell ice cream! That was not only derogatory but salacious of a former governor and now senator!
Power is given to those who have tables prepared for negotiations and not those who say the table belongs to them -for only they have the materials that form the table.
Compromisingly musing
