One of the baffling mysteries of life is the spectacle of a cross bearer who ordinarily is tangential to the commission of an offence, to the happening of an untoward event or to the misjudgment of an affair or situation. A hapless fellow is fetched to carry the burden of an offender even as the culprit is allowed some respite from the full weight of his transgression. Often, a relatively-innocent person is sought just to lessen or ameliorate the full effect of the measure pertaining to the punishment prescribed for the real or substantive offender. Here, the all-time principle of social or moral justice insisting on punishment only for the offender in each case is upturned to accommodate the literary device of a comic relief whereby attention of the audience is shifted away from the enormity of the main character’s calumny, obloquy or reproachful conduct by the introduction on stage of some funny-behaving interventionist. Bathos, pity or a deep feeling of grief for the misfortune of the unfortunate one is fortuitously replaced with a forgiveless sense of poetic justice even for a person that is not blame worthy; one who may at worst be deemed only obliquely connected with the infraction, breach or misbehaviour.
The recent appointment of Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu, the extant strongman of South-West politics, as the pointsman of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Council is a fitting exemplar of how a hatchet man may be procured to repair a battered reputation or to rejig the record of the poor performance of projected campaign promises and of vaunted policies of a political party even as the main actor responsible for the pervasive sorry plight is shielded away from the consequences of his infamy. The failure or inability of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to fulfill many of its 2015 campaign promises respecting strategic issues of state e. g. power, infrastructure, unemployment, the economy, anti-corruption, insecurity, etc. has advisedly necessitated the establishment of a presidential campaign team that is as crack as the political razzle-dazzle of a Tinubu even as elections are only a mere couple of weeks away. A governance style which all through three and half years manifested emotionalism, plaintiveness or mournful lamentation truly requires a new face or approach. A buck-passing or blame game tactic, even at the best of times, is invidious or likely to provoke or excite ill-will. It needed to be changed or replaced. It is also proper that the charge of lie-telling or lie-lie regarding the party’s 2015 election manifesto thrusts, of the convenient excuses for failure of programmes and policies vainly put forward by ministers and other officials and of the habit of talking or acting at cross purposes be interrogated. The popular perception of the government as slow, tardy or sluggish and of the party as rancorous, fractious and un-coordinated is required to be explained or rationalised, one way or the other.
Enter Tinubu and his magic wand to the rescue! Even though his task is daunting, Tinubu is projected to give a good account of himself, his earlier record of abysmal failure to resolve the searing conflicts among the party’s warring factions in 2018 (which task was assigned him by President Buhari), notwithstanding. Tinubu, even as National Leader of the party, is one leader that many members of the party particularly at the top-most echelon of the party love to hate ostensibly for his presumed audacious bearing or carriage, his dare-devil braggadoccio or his peculiar fierce or jam-body disposition, etc. Possessed of the uncanny gift of making friends even with those who had publicly differed with him on issues that are fundamental, many of his front-line allies today are persons who had ferociously opposed his alleged vengeful, spiteful one-man up-ism. Tinubu’s accustomed political temper of accommodation and of collective effort is matrixed in some curious personal idiosyncratic manifestation.
In appointing Tinubu for the job of the functional chairman of his campaign, Buhari may have sensed the requirement to latch on to Tinubu’s massive following in the largely-sidelined South-west geo-political zone which in spite of the region’s considerable contribution to the APC victory at the polls in 2015 has little to show for its support. Buhari may also have reasoned the desideratum to rake in the one who has been suggested to have become weary regarding government’s narrow diagnosis of the national question or of the limited remedy it is offering to resolve it. Tinubu’s worldview of the requirement for an effective mobilisation of ideas through a wider involvement of experienced and knowledgeable persons (not party hacks or blood relations) has reportedly not been shared by Buhari. Opinion is rife that Tinubu may have been pressured to lead the campaign outfit following threats by agents of the government to expose and prosecute him over allegations of corruption. It is rumoured that Tinubu did not see the reason for him to be enlisted to market a “toxic” product which the Buhari re-election quest portends. Tinubu himself at the 15th Annual Daily Trust dialogue in January last year decried the Buhari government’s nepotic, incompetent and corrupt bearing. He had reportedly stated that under the Buhari presidency, “Nigeria has become a cruel playground where the fears and concerns of the average person get exploited”, lamenting that the people’s “interests never get protected” despite the country’s potential to be “a joyous nation.” Tinubu was quoted to have urged Nigerians “to follow their conscience in the 2019 elections by resisting old prejudices.”
It is being canvassed even among members of the Tinubu political family that this new Tinubu assignment is positioned to denude the Tinubu political capital of its essence or influence even as the possibility of failure in the achievement of the objective is probable and sure to make him lose his primus political stature or prestige; or, in fact, deconstruct his proverbial awesomeness or invincibility in the light of the carrot-and-stick offering by the APC of its 2023 presidential slot to mutually-exclusive South-West and South-East zones. If the pendulum swings the way of the South-West, Tinubu, it is suggested, is easily the most likely or the most visible contender for the crown. However, if he fails in his assignment of marketing Buhari to victory in the 2019 elections, his efforts may become like the strivings of a thirsty traveller across the desert who is encouraged each time by the prospects of a pool of water in a perceived oasis ahead of him but never gets there. It is also being touted in some authoritative quarters that this Tinubu appointment as Buhari’s chief campaigner is a deft, tactical move by the Buhari political machine to build a permanent wedge between Tinubu and his erstwhile conspiratorial friend and mentor, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (the PDP presidential candidate), just to forestall any last-minute rapprochement between them during the elections which may be injurious to the Buhari interest. As chief product manager, Tinubu’s sponsors may have reasoned correctly, he is duty-bound to project and protect the values of his product. He is even estopped from disclosing or exposing any defects in his product.
Deep and worldly-wise as Tinubu is reputed to be, a critical lack of a profound sense of history is discernible particularly in his quest to drag the South-West geo-political zone into Nigeria’s “mainstream” dining or food-ladling table. The characteristic private purpose of such enterprise dogs an advertised altruistic intention and so is generally held in suspicion or derision. The South-West must begin to learn how not to allow itself to be used as the cat’s paw for fetching the chestnuts from relentlessly raging fire.
Rotimi-John is a lawyer and public affairs commentator.