Why should an Igbo man be grateful to Tinubu? What did they benefit from Tinubu? Nothing! Under Tinubu, Igbo business men were excessively taxed and exploited. There was uncontrolled extortion by area-boys. Igbo traders were displaced from Tejuoso, Alaba/Suru and many other places they do business without compensation and their stalls acquired by Tinubu and his cronies.
In an essay I wrote earlier on current political developments in the country, I observe that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be going into the 2023 presidential election from a disadvantaged position despite being the flag bearer of the ruling party for reasons associated with the woeful performance of his party these past seven years, Buhari parallelism that has made many Nigerians conclude that voting Tinubu is akin to replacing Buhari with Buhari and for the Asiwaju’s antecedents, foibles and many scandals. And we can see it playing out already. If the feelers coming from Tinubu’s camp is anything to go by, we can see palpable fear, frustration and despair setting in as demonstrated in the activities and utterances of Tinubu supporters. A case in point is the statement circulating in the media that has not been officially refuted credited to Tinubu’s daughter, Mrs. Folashade Tinubu-Ojo berating and threatening Ndigbo for her perceived attack on her father. She was quoted to have attacked Ndigbo for closing their shops and going for their Permanent Voters’ Cards for the purpose of exercise their civic duty which she misinterpreted was for the purpose of voting against her father.
In the said statement, Tinubu’s daughter presented Ndigbo as ungrateful people who want to pay his father evil for the good things he ostensibly did for them while he was Lagos State governor. This is mischievous and misleading. She sounded as if Ndigbo owe their existence to her father and her people. Ndigbo have lived in Lagos long before Tinubu was born and became governor. Before Tinubu, two prominent Igbo sons, Commodores Ebitu Ukiwe and Ndubuisi Kanu have been governors of Lagos at different periods the military era. And Ndigbo have more stakes in Lagos than those who claim to own Lagos. Lagos was the former capital of Nigeria and was built from oil revenue derived from South-East and South-South regions of Nigeria. Ndigbo contribute more to the much-talked-about revenue collected in Lagos than any other group inhabiting Lagos. Ndigbo are nation builders whose world view is broad and limitless. They are everywhere in the world. Ndigbo are not in Lagos because the Yoruba are accommodating or hospitable contrary to the erroneous claim that is being bandied around. Far from it! As a matter of fact, Yoruba are evidently the least accommodating of all Nigerian people. How many Igbo live in Yoruba towns despite their proximity to Lagos? People have alleged jocularly and somewhat rightly that if the oil deposit in the South-East and South-South were to be in the South-West they would have excluded others from having access to it.
Undoubtedly, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo’s statement smacks of ignorance, insensitivity and lack of respect for others. It is hate speech coming from a mind cauterized by arrogance, ignorance and hatred. Of all the people and groups that have commented on the candidature of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it is Ndigbo that she chose to attack out of hatred and probably because she knows that most times Ndigbo are too busy to react to comments from idle minds suffused by hatred. Ordinarily, there would not have been any need to respond to her thoughtless outburst but for the fact that when there is a careless assertion like this in the public domain and there is no appropriate repartee to it, the gullible and unsuspecting members of the public will accept that to be true as is always the case in Nigeria where people regale in stereotypes, rumors and hear-says. People have always spewed out falsehood and hate speech especially against Ndigbo in Nigeria but regrettably they have always gone unchallenged because Ndigbo appear too indifferent and too busy to respond to such things. But the day Ndigbo will rise up to engage those harbingers of hate speech, the narratives will change irreversibly. And that day draws nigh!
Evidently, Tinubu’s camp has nothing tangible to campaign with other than the nebulous and fraudulent claim that Tinubu built and developed Lagos. A cursory peep into the archives has shown that of all the individuals that have governed Lagos since independent, Tinubu seems to be the least in terms of development programs. The roles played in developing Lagos by the various governors are in the public domain. For instance we can remember Jakande’s achievements even though some may not like him for his alleged discriminatory disposition in the distribution of the state amenities in the supposed non-indigenes area but the relics of his works are still speaking for him. Jakande, like a real leader knew the problems of the state and set out to tackle them. He built the State’s secretariat at Alausa. He built Lagos State University, Lagos State Polytechnics, the state college of Education, the cluster of schools in different locations, the Lagos Housing Estates, the Iju Water Works and many other landmark projects. His metro line project designed to solve Lagos chaotic traffic problem was truncated with the intrusion of the military junta in 1983. But, what can we really remember Tinubu for as his contribution to the development of Lagos other than the enthronement of the reign of area-boys, OPC and agbero? We only know of his cut-and-paste BRT project that he never concluded and the rest is media fireworks about development that was never there. With the much touted revenue profile of Lagos and the head start it has over other cities in Nigeria, Lagos should be the most beautiful city in the world but what those who claim to develop Lagos gave us is a mega slum that rank among the worst cities to live in, in the world.
Again, Tinubu supporters claim that he developed people; a spurious claim that kept many wondering why there are still hordes of area-boys, jobless, hopeless and ruthless prowling all over Lagos. If he is a developer of men how many of area-boys did he train and empower? Lagos has the highest population of street urchins in Nigeria. He met Lagos as an educationally disadvantaged state and left it as such. Where then are his much-touted human development accomplisments? Moreover, his supporters want Ndigbo to kowtow to Tinubu because they claimed he gave appointment to some individuals with doubtful origin that claim to be Ndigbo. If the Igbo man can be a member of British Parliament, a member of Italian Senate, be appointed judges in other countries, be elected mayors in some cities of the world, hold political offices in the countries where he resides, why should I cheer because some stooges that bear Igbo names but have no Igbo contents in them are given appointment to do dirty jobs in a state where the Igbo has demographic dominance? Why should an Igbo man be grateful to Tinubu? What did they benefit from Tinubu? Nothing! Under Tinubu, Igbo business men were excessively taxed and exploited. There was uncontrolled extortion by area-boys. Igbo traders were displaced from Tejuoso, Alaba/Suru and many other places they do business without compensation and their stalls acquired by Tinubu and his cronies. There were business failures due to indiscriminate closure of markets and extortions during Tinubu’s regime.
Indeed, Tinubu daughter’s statement was provocative and irresponsible. It is not intended to persuade Ndigbo to vote for his father but to intimidate and blackmail Ndigbo in Lagos as they are wont to. But, no amount of blackmail or intimidation will make Ndigbo vote wrongly. Why should the Igbo man vote one who holds him derision? It is only the one that has no or low self-esteem that does that. The Igbo man does not show blind solidarity. Why should the Igbo man vote one who has nothing to offer but demands our vote in the name of non-existent solidarity made impossible by the winner-takes-all philosophy of the South-West politicians that think that leadership position in the South is their own prerogative? Ndigbo don’t owe Tinubu any apology or obligation and will not vote for him. It is not the fault of Ndigbo that Tinubu has ugly antecedents and questionable credentials. It is not the fault of the Igbo man that Tinubu’s party brought pain, poverty and penury on Nigerians. It is not our fault that APC portends fear, frustration and failure. Ndigbo don’t like failures so they will vote against it. They have always been ahead of others in terms of electoral decisions.
Clearly, the resort to attack, blackmail and intimidation by Tinubu supporters is a sign of desperation and a pointer to the fact that the Tinubu camp has nothing to sell. Tinubu has no selling point. I think if his supporters love him as they want us to believe, they should concentrate on issues, his manifesto and his unique selling point if any otherwise they should advice him to withdraw peacefully from the presidential race and go into retirement. The office of the president is not for the dotard. The seat of government is not a retirement home. It is not for the antiquated mind. It is for the articulate mind. Atiku Abubakar realized that Nigeria is in disarray, that national unity is destroyed through APC’s divisive policies and anchored his campaign on unifying the country. A united country will achieve peace and progress. Peter Obi said he would usher in a regime of economic prosperity by empowering the people and moving the country from consumption to productive nation. But Bola Ahmed Tinubu wants to consolidate on nonexistent Buhari’s achievement.
It is also possible that the Asiwaju camp has sensed failure coming and they are looking for scapegoats and have picked on Ndigbo to vent their frustration. Of course, Tinubu camp is not new to mudslinging. We all witnessed what they did to Jonathan between 2014 and 2015. But paradoxically, they that revel in castigating others do not tolerate criticism. This is obviously the head-hunter syndrome—one who would not want any machete-wielding person to come behind him because he thinks that everyone is a head-hunter. They have been spewing out falsehood and garbage against Atiku and Obi and yet get feisty when one thrown up at them. However I must say that all the noise is actually expected as it is usual of South-West politics characterized by rancor, bitterness and smear campaign. Be that as it may, Ndigbo nay Nigerians will not vote for what I call “Jagabanarchy”—Tinubu’s moribund political ideology based on “godfatherism”, tribalism, bitterness, propaganda, exclusion, avarice and primordial proclivities.
We want a leader, a statesman who would see the whole country as his constituency; a leader with well thought-out programs, not one who is coming because he assumes it is his turn. Nigeria needs a leader that will see us as his fellow compatriots, not his subjects. We want a unifier not the one that will emphasize our fault lines and widen the crack of disunity in the country through divisive policies of exclusion. We do not want the do-or-die politician who will fight dirty to pursue his vaulting ambition because he assumes it is his turn to lord over us. Nigeria wants a leader not an emperor who would close the road and keep the people waiting for three hours even when he is yet to be elected president. We don’t want one who will sustain the “top-to-bottom” declivity on which this regime has constrained Nigeria. Nigeria may not need a leader who would recruit fifty million youths into the army and feed them with cassava and corn and the create demand and consumption. We need a bridge-builder with the right attitude and disposition to lead a multicultural entity that we are.
Gozie Irogboli
