By LANRE ADEWOLE
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu should not have been president in 2023.
He really was almost not.
A witness told me the story of the moment a faction of the ruling APC National Working Committee, led by a former Nasarawa Governor, Adamu Abdullahi, in cahoots with the presidency of now-late General Muhammadu Buhari, announced then Senate President, Ahmad Lawan as the “consensus” candidate as requested by the then President.
Today’s President, then a leading aspirant, reportedly “slumped” on the laps of a former House of Representatives’ Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, who was with him in Abuja, when the “devastating” news came.
It is the kind of momentary collapse you do when overwhelmed, according to the eyewitness.
Dogara, a minority Christian from predominantly Muslim Bauchi State was reportedly high on the shortlist for the vee-pee search, considering the widespread assumption that the religiously “balanced” presidential ticket of either Muslim/Christian or Christian/Muslim, would be the norm, for a party serious and desirous of winning a pan-Nigerian mandate.
But Asiwaju was neither a “normal” aspirant, candidate nor even, President and his trajectory to the seat was everything but normal too.
So Dogara’s arms of empathy lifted the man he thought would be his future direct boss but subsequent events showed that even if Dogara has presidency in his destiny, 2023 wasn’t the appointed time. Neither 2027 too, except a last-minute miracle happens.
Any day I run into the almost-reticent politician, I intend to ask him about the Lawan moment for Asiwaju.
For standing in Asiwaju’s corner during the nomination battle with the Buhari forces, the president eventually appreciated Dogara with the chairmanship of the board for the newly launched National Credit Guarantee Company Limited (NCGC), with a N100 billion takeoff grant, when his administration clocked two.
The former number four didn’t become number two, but a new agency designed to help the poor and with a jumbo-sized off-the-blocks budget, isn’t an unfair deal.
Let me leave a short note for the president at this juncture: he should do everything possible not to embrace the reported Ajimobi model on how to repay good because God says those who repay good with evil, evil will not depart from their own household. Scary!
Each time Chief Niyi Akintola tells the story of Ajimobi telling him that he could choose to repay the learned Silk’s good deeds to him with evil, during an altercation between them in the buildup to the 2019 gubernatorial election in Oyo State, I usually worry for the household of the former Governor who is now late. Hopefully, his wacky philosophy was just for what the street will capture as “just making mouth” (a threat one doesn’t intend to carry out). If he was truly giving vent to the mindset when alive, then may God have mercy on his household.
Let me summarise his take on repaying good. According to him, good can be repaid with good, not repaid at all or repaid with evil and in his relational with the Silk, he allegedly said he chose evil. Some talk!!!
Days to the ruling party’s presidential nomination exercise for the 2023 poll, then President Buhari publicly pleaded with the governors elected on the platform of the party to do him the honour of allowing him choose his successor by single-handedly nominating the party’s candidate whom he believed would win the election.
He also granted the Governors the freedom to handpick their successors through the nomination exercise. What a democracy!
Asiwaju Tinubu, a supposed political ally of President Buhari who was then the real national leader of the party, , was not the choice of his “political friend”.
But ultimately, because there is a God who forever rules in the affairs of men (Daniel 4:17), President Buhari got a successor on the platform of his party but not his preferred pick.
Despite the desperate attempt by Buhari to distance himself from the debacle that followed the Lawan announcement, Adamu Abdullahi, as the main enforcer then, later confirmed in multiple media interviews, that the Lawan project was real and Buhari Villa’s.
My people will call someone owning his truth with full chest, even if as bitter as the water from the Biblical Marah Falls, ase aje mase (a self-outed witch).
The Yoruba will say there is no death that will kill an elder that you won’t find his hollowed-out skull in place.
In the Lawan North-replacing-North saga, Adamu demonstrated more nobility, even in error, than Buhari. May God rest the latter’s soul.
There are times you want to cut Asiwaju’s hero-worshipping supporters some slack, in their deification of their man. Some stuff of his politics is truly impressive. If a sitting president who is also a retired military general, trained in the art of warfare, says he doesn’t want you as a successor, especially in an African democracy where everything begins and ends with the president and you are now in the same party, the fellow’s fate would be deemed sealed.
But not Asiwaju’s, and not because he wasn’t human like the rest of us, but because he would appear to be God’s choice in 2023.
No, I’m not a prophet but I remember a significant dream of an uncle before the general election in 2023, in which he accosted the former Lagos governor, telling him to do what he promised God he would do as President.
Then his choice wasn’t Asiwaju but it was clear to him what the night vision meant. Tinubu was going to be president and he became.
The question is, has he been fulfilling his promise to God? What exactly was even the promise he made to Him?
Did he tell God he would instill financial discipline in us by squeezing everyone and everywhere?
Last Friday, I was in a banking hall when a visibly distraught woman came in for an explanation. She had received a message from her bankers that going forward a sum of N32,000 thereabouts would be deducted monthly as tax from her company account. She came to draw the entire account down.
For heaven’s sake, who is making all these decisions for the federal government? I found out from the manager that it was a policy from the Central Bank of Nigeria which all commercial banks, must enforce.
Why are doing this to ourselves?
Whatever promise Asiwaju made to God, which likely cleared the hurdles for him to berth at the presidential villa, is between him and Him.
However, Solomon has an admonition in Ecclesiastes 5: 4-6, which those seeking to lead Nigeria in 2027, including the president, should not disregard, especially when their vows are directed at God.
“When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools, fulfill your vow. It’s better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth lead you into sin” the Preacher says.
Maybe that is why you hardly hear politicians make direct vows to God. It’s always to men, who they know they can always disregard with little or no consequence for four years before returning again to them with loaves of bread and pasta, topped with N10,000 for their votes.
Learnt some audacious ones are now buying votes on credit!!
And talking of audacity, as politically bold as Asiwaju’s supporters would want us to believe he is, it would be an error thinking he climbed the Nigeria’s Rushmore Mount just by his sagacity.
He was a mentee of sorts to M.K.O Abiola and we all know how the latter’s presidential run, almost a perfect precursor to Asiwaju’s, ended, amid similar forces that battled Tinubu’s.
God denied a man and allowed another.
A man of God was recently quoted asking politicians to leave Jesus out of their matter and focus on delivering on their campaign promises.
If the substance is left out, of what use is what is left.
Nigeria’s brutal politicking may not interest God, but voting is biblical and islamic.
Everywhere you read lots being cast in the Quran and Bible, that is voting.
In replacing Judas Iscariot after his suicide for treachery against his Master, the rest of the apostles cast lots to choose between Matthias and Justus.
But not until they had prayed.
Acts 1:24-26 reads, “So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry which Judas left to go where he belongs”. Then they cast lots and the lot fell to Matthias, so he was added to the eleven apostles”
May the God who knows the heart of men give us a president next year. Not necessarily your fav, not necessarily my candidate.
