PRESIDENT AHMED BOLA TINUBU IS A WORTHY PERSON AND A GREAT LEADER TO SUPPORT ANY TIME – SENATOR UMAR TANKO ALMAKURA

Dear reader, as you may know, I don’t like doing easy things. I also don’t believe things easily. Tinubu looks like the unlikely president. Yes, he looks frail. He looks old. He has all sorts of allegations around him. But. But. Sometimes, the best gems are hidden in the rough. That he has survived so far in politics must mean that he has some aces in his pack. He is the one that the whole country has been discussing for a few months, being the one who has stepped out to say he wants the job of the number one man in the country.

Many on social media have taken turns to lampoon, abuse, vilify, curse, excoriate, de-market, devalue, defame, accuse him. Some hate him more than anything living or dead. A few have posed as friends and exposed him at his most vulnerable moments. But the man keeps going. My very few friends will likely tell you, that I show up when they are most vulnerable. And there are two things I hate with passion; bullying and ingratitude. I don’t go around seeking favours often. But when I get a favour from someone, I never forget them. So, Tinubu is at a moment when many of his mentees are ready to show that ingratitude and when there is a growing crowd baying out loud, wishing to bully the man to submission. That, to me, is despicable

Too many of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s associates, proteges, those who call and know him as ‘leader’, have abandoned him. Though he still has the usual bedlam of people around him because of tremendous investment in people over time, many of those who benefited from close association with him has since shifted position. For some, it is just the cold, calculated exigencies of time. A political position is about to open up, and politicians usually have that driving ego and overestimated self-worth. Everybody wants it. The platform known as APC is up for grabs. It doesn’t matter anymore who it was that invested the most in creating the platform. Life is full of injustices; and so, shoving a Tinubu aside in the blinding scramble to get to that position is fair play. While most have been plotting silently and working their ways closer to the prize (knowing in their minds that they are traitors of sort), a few others have gone full blast – almost ready with their daggers to stab Julius Caesar to bleeding death in the Capitol, like Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Casius Longinus, and Publius Servilius Casca Longus, among the rest, while Cicero looked away. Some have even suggested, and are working on ways to disenfranchise the man who has worked his way to the pole position. Magomago arrangements instead of party primaries, and every trick in the game, are on the table. Anything to stop Tinubu from becoming president.

I see a man at his most vulnerable state, seeing betrayals on a daily basis, wondering who next, from among those he may have trusted in the past. Such is life. But for me, this is one of the attractions. As a child, when I was barely 10, my brother and I were returned to Akure to go and live with our granny. My dad’s house was being built but the boys’ quarters was ready. The old woman and her first daughter lived in one of the boy’s quarters. Eye Esther Faparoko Fasua used to sing. And these days, one of her Akure songs she sang often – which I never sang with her but which was burnt (etched) in my brains goes this; “maa s’ope o me ra fibi so’oloore. Oso fibi so’loore aje fibi soloore, ma s’ope o me ra fibi so’loore”. Translated, it means it is good to be grateful to your benefactors. Only truly evil people repay good with evil. I should know. In my little political experience I saw the same; people who saw my investment of time, intellect, and the little money I had, poured into building a party but who rose in staunch, bitter opposition when I needed their support, sponsoring baseless and hopeless stories. I saw many who had no plans and wanted nobody else – including the party – to have any plans whatsoever. So, I think I understand the feeling fairly well.

No matter how bad Tinubu is, should the world hang him out to dry? Is he truly guilty of all he has been accused of, or are some of these accusations part of the price of leadership? During #EndSARS, one guy was dishing instructions from England or wherever, that his boys should burn down Oriental Hotel. They did. It was meant to belong to Bola Tinubu until the Chinese guys who own Wempco made their claim. In fact, they have tried to sell off the place because it had become a target. Tinubu is supposed to own half of Lagos if we are to believe traducers. Whereas I cannot vouch for transactions done under his government, from what I now know about Nigerians, we love a wonderful, fantastic story; and most of those stories are deployed against those we hate. Sometimes, these stories destroy them. I have come to fear leadership roles in this country. I often caution friends on social media to go easy on the hate they express for our leaders – especially because I see these same friends aspiring to the same leadership positions.

I used to look forward to being a leader and bringing to bear my knowledge, my energy, my imagination, and whatever else I think I have, on changing our country. But for some years now, I have been expressing serious doubts about the wisdom of offering oneself for leadership in these parts. Is it worth it? Why try and serve people who will never appreciate it? People who, oftentimes, don’t even know what they want? People who are not even ready to make a single sacrifice to secure that El Dorado they speak about? People who fail the pragmatism test, by imagining a paradise when what we should be striving for is sure, incremental improvements in our polity? People whose daily vocation – and oftentimes profession – is to damage the country, steal her blind, rob her dead, ruin her reputation – yet they come out and pontificate about the state of the country? People who cannot introspect for a second – it is all about what they want and when they want it, never about how the collective could make progress? People who will falsely accuse others of thievery, and bribery, simply because that is their own default mode which they project onto others? These are the vocal minority. Thankfully, Nigeria still has patriots for whom good leadership should be a worthy sacrifice.

Asiwaju is being projected by the vocal few as the ‘baddest man that ever liveth’, but I strongly doubt it. I think though he is surely imperfect, he is largely a victim of the kind of politics he has played so far, which is also borne out of the person he is. I have never been in government. But as a Lagos man, yes he could have taken a bung or two, but given the number of people he has raised, I think people should really show him some more respect. Asiwaju is a good man. An eleniyan (a man of the people). His investment is largely in people. They even teach us in business school that the best investment is in people, but most of us find it hard to practice. People, when well cultivated, will deliver the money. How much do you really want? You will get tired. A Chinese adage goes further to say; “if your vision is one year, cultivate flowers. If it is ten, plant a tree. But if your vision is eternity, cultivate human beings”. Of course, some of those you cultivate will go bad, toxic, and poisonous. Some will want to gut you. When that happens, the only thing to do is to plant some more human beings.

Asiwaju’s human cultivation prowess is legendary. His plantation of human and social capital is vast. They are everywhere you turn. Too many years of familiarity may have led some of his plants and trees to disdain their planter, or for some of them to even go after him. He maintains his position and looks for more seeds. We see those he has planted everywhere, every day. Some of them are doing incredibly well in positions of leadership. The question nobody seems to have asked is how come most Nigerian leaders are not also actively seeking people who can make a difference and cultivate them? How come this man is about the only one who looks out for talent wherever they may be and stakes his bet on them. Bola Tinubu is the best football scout in Nigerian politics. He doesn’t get it right all the time. But sometimes he does and scores a Ronaldo or Messi.

He has been hands-on in Lagos. Say what you want, Lagos is still the reference point in development and governance in Nigeria. It is not only about the money they generate. Some decades back, we didn’t even know the money was there. So, it took ingenuity, effort, and organization to bring out the potential and transform Lasgidi into what it is today. Tinubu heralded it. I recall the days of Pa Otedola in Lagos (Femi’s dad was nicknamed Baba No Bitumen), then Marwa came and showed some hands-on approach. Then Tinubu came and laid the foundation for the massive expansion of Lagos. When I left Lagos for Abuja in 2001, most of what is known today as Lekki up to the Epe axis were bushes and swamps. The trio of Fashola, Ambode, and Sanwoolu are some of the smartest, most-hardworking Nigerians we have seen in public service in this country.

I have met Asiwaju twice. Once in 2016 when I commented on some of his articles. He had written about economic concepts of full employment, currency sovereignty, the futility and toxicity of austerity measures, financialism. I was enthralled. I sent a link to his then special assistant who is now minister of sports, Sunday Dare. He invited me and I met him for a few seconds at Asokoro, gave him two of my books, chatted a bit, and left. I liked that he called me. He is a headhunter. He caused my article to be published on pages 2 and 3 of The Nation (you know my writeups are usually long). Since this new era of politics started, and the bullying went into overdrive, I have made a few comments that he should be allowed to freely pursue his ambition. I believe that many of those who should be organising are busy looking for who to abuse. Abusing people does not give power. In fact, it eats the abusers from inside, makes them die bitter. I swore too long ago never to be in that group of timewasters, that is why I moved for the formation of a party, ran on it, and encouraged others too.

So, as the man has been traversing the whole of Nigeria, what we see on social media especially are super commentators, savage writers who can pen the bitterest few words about how he is ugly, frail, old, and whether he peed in his pants or not. Yet, the man keeps marching on, building momentum for himself that would be hard to rob him of. It was a similar thing MKO Abiola did pre-1993 and why his election was clear, and the military had to do the unacceptable just to stop him. Tinubu has put himself in pole position for 2023; a fishbone in the throats of everyone who is eyeing that position. He has declared, he is building a network, convincing people, going round, shaking hands, even spending for those who don’t have. He is subjecting himself to a grueling schedule that will buckle some of the fittest amongst us. But my people on social media think abuse will stop him? The grassroots don’t really care about the grammar.

ESV Saliu Abdullahi Osuko
(Garkuwan Giza)
Media Aide To Distinguished People’s Senator Umar Tanko Almakura.