Gradually, the truth is being confirmed. Saraki said recently that Tinubu told him that he, Tinubu, was supporting Buhari despite his administration’s apparent failures because the president would return power to the Southwest (presumably to Tinubu) in 2023.
Uncharacteristically, Tinubu, who never lets such damaging revelations slide, kept quiet. He did not deny Saraki’s reporting of their private conversation. That was proof of the claims’s veracity.
Today, Fashola, speaking in Yoruba, has basically confirmed this Tinubu-driven Yoruba elite consensus. It is a simple political calculation: let’s support Buhari’s second term even if the man has failed because he would return power to the South-west in 2023.
The unspoken insinuation is that a President Atiku may seek a second term in 2023 (delaying this return of power to the Southwest) and even if he doesn’t seek a second term he may favor a successor from outside the Southwest.
The subtext here is clear: Tinubu’s ambition is defining how the Southwestern political elite of the APC fold approach the 2019 election. That’s how they plan to campaign for Buhari in the region, appealing to crass regional political interest and ethnocentric emotion. “Vote for Buhari or jeopardize our return to the presidency” is their slogan.
It’s not clear if the Southwestern people will go along with this manipulative substitution of one man’s desire to be president for an entire region’s political interest.
What is clear to me is that both Tinubu and Fashola, along with their Southwestern political allies, are in for a shocker should Buhari win reelection. It is not a question of if but when and how their 2023 delusions and permutations about Tinubu succeeding Buhari will be rudely punctured or interrupted.
After February 2019, win or lose, Buhari and his cabal will have little political use for Tinubu.
Source: Facebook
