CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO AND MKO ABIOLA: THE LEGACY ROARING IN ASIWAJU TINUBU’S PRESIDENCY
By Musa Bakare
History does not repeat itself; it resonates. In Nigeria’s turbulent political evolution, certain leaders do not merely govern, they channel the unfinished missions of those who came before them. Today, in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, we witness the fierce convergence of two formidable legacies: the ideological steel of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the populist fire of Bashorun Moshood Abiola.
Chief Awolowo was the architect. His politics was built not on applause, but on blueprint: free education, regional development, and federal balance. He stood for discipline, structure, and long term design. His heirs are defined by strategy, not noise; by institution building, not improvisation.
Chief Abiola was the heartbeat. Where Chief Awolowo engineered, Abiola embodied. He forged a visceral bond with the masses, transcending tribe, faith, and class. His power flowed from an unshakable truth: in Nigeria, legitimacy belongs to those who make the people feel seen.
Asiwaju Tinubu operates at this crossroads.
Like Awolowo, he is a master builder, patient, tactical, engineering political machinery that outlives elections. His rise was no accident; it was a calculated, decades long project. He thinks in systems, not slogans.
Like Abiola, he commands the street.
His language, symbolism, and coalition building speak directly to traders, youth, and artisans, the emotional core of Nigerian politics. He merges grassroots energy with elite negotiation, a fusion rare and potent.
This is the synthesis that defines his presidency: Chief Awolowo’s spine, Bashorun Abiola’s pulse. One supplies the map, the other the movement. In a nation as fractured as Nigeria, leadership that wields both intellectual architecture and mass legitimacy does not merely rule, it transforms.
Critics will quarrel. Historians will judge. But one truth stands sharp and clear: Bola Ahmed Tinubu is no political accident. He is a deliberate heir, a vessel of twin traditions, the strategist’s mind and the populist’s touch, now fused in the furnace of power.
If Chief Awolowo was the science of statecraft, and Bashorun Abiola the soul of democracy, then Asiwaju Tinubu’s presidency is the relentless attempt to forge both into a new political reality. The echoes have become a roar.
Musa Asiru Bakare, APC foundational member and political analyst, writes from Lokoja, Kogi state.
February 14, 2026.
