By Samuel Ajayi
Take it or leave it: a certain Muhammadu Buhari would not have been president if not for another certain Bola Tinubu. No matter how popular Buhari was in the North, he could not have been president without the South-west and making critical in-roads into the North-Central. What did Tinubu do? I will explain.
You have to take your mind back to the old ACN days. The party successfully played the victim, deployed massive propaganda and created the impression that it did not lose any election. Rather, it was always rigged out. Between 2007 and 2010, ACN discredited any election it lost. It also “worked” the Judiciary and won THREE states (Ekiti, Osun and Edo) via Judicial fiat. While many of its sympathisers will never accept, in the eyes of the law, Osun and Ekiti should never have been overturned in its favour. And this perhaps explained why the party was at the fore-front of the “struggle” to prevent Justice Isa Ayo Salami from being retired in 2013. It took the intervention of two senior lawyers (names withheld) who were sympathetic to the party before its leaders backed off from the Salami Struggle. The lawyers told them that the way they were going with the Salami matter, it would confirm the wide-spread suspicion that the eminent jurist actually “worked” for them during the legal battles against PDP.
Back to 2013. ACN went to the merger with APC with SIX states and many senators. It was the most senior partner. It brought also organisational strategy to the group while Buhari brought electoral value from the North. To complete the tripod were PDP renegades led by Saraki and Amaechi. They came with a lot of moral and political baggage but the massive propaganda of their new party worked in their favour. They were sold as victims rather than full partakers of the chicanery that was the second name of PDP.
Tinubu deployed his massive media reach and influence in a ruthless demarketing campaign against Jonathan. He led them to Obasanjo and named the willy former General their “chief navigator”. The old scoundrel duly obliged.
Tinubu also agreed, albeit under pressure, to drop his vice-presidential ambition. As they say, the rest is history.
In the last three months however, Tinubu has been silent on national issues. Not less the recent ailment of his once “pet project”, Sai Baba, who spent a little shy of four months in London. He was never part of the ‘London Pilgrimage’. Not a single word from him.
No. Tinubu cannot suddenly lose his voice at this time. He was the architect of this Albatross we are currently dealing with. He played a central role. I know those who are smarter than him have given him political “sliding tackle”. But that does not mean he should leave us to our fate.
Buoda Bola, e soro o.
Source: Facebook
