“I appreciate your write-ups. But your ‘Bird`s eye view of the Tinubu roadmap to Nigerian greatness’is a misadventure. Do you know Sir, that Tinubu imposed Buhari on Nigerians?” Ibe, Enugu (+2348064- 65 – 63)

When I wrote in my last week article that I will leave analysis of the Tinubu Road Map to experts in the various sectors of the polity mentioned in the document, little did I know I would return to the subject this soon. However, two things prompted my early return to it, namely: one of the reactions I got to the referenced article,  captured laconically above in the epigram  to this piece, and, the second, a promise by a decampee, former APC stalwart, now turned Atiku campaign spokesman, Daniel Bwala, to make the 2023 presidential election a referendum on President Buhari’s administration, forgetting that though its leader, Buhari is neither the owner, nor does he equate to APC,  a political party.

Any keen watcher of the Nigerian political scene would have noticed that for a number of reasons into which I shall delve in some future date – God helping us – President Buhari has been particularly lucky as a Nigerian President.  I actually  doubt very much if that Nigerian president would ever come again, no matter where from, South or North, who would be as driven by  considerations  for his ethnic exceptionalism for his actions, as President Buhari has been.

That, Bwala should know, as well as realise that Nigerians perfectly understand. The opposition, Labour  or the Northern Peoples Party ( NPP – National chairman, Presidential candidate, Chairman, BOT,  Chairman, Governors Forum – all Northerners),  in particular,   will therefore, be hard put to ascribe everything President Buhari did, or did not do in office to APC, even though the party on which platform he became president and proceed, therefrom, to use it to blackmail the Tinubu – Shettima ticket.

It will also be extremely difficult for a brilliant but foxy Bwala, who must have deployed his alleged Tinubu promise to make him his presidential campaign spokesperson, to wangle his new position from a desperate Atiku Abubakar going for his 5th(?) and, presumably, last attempt at the presidency,  whilst he (Bwala)publicly hangs on to ‘his alleged angst’, against a Muslim – Muslim ticket as pretext for his hurried, almost impromptu, exit from the APC.

I doubt if he knew that he further gave himself away during his interview with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels TV’s Politics Today,  when he vigorously lamented his having never gained anything from the APC in his many years,  despite his rabid pro APC advocacy during which he described PDP in the most lurid of terms, calling its members all manner of names.

These young men!

Babachir and Dogara had better make hay while the sun still shines yonder or it may be too late – quite a while off the public kitchen too.

Bwala will soon come to know what Nigerians already know of the duo of Tinubu and Shettima, from their distinct and very measurable achievements as governor of their respective states  – development- driven leaders, with an incomparable management of the Nigerian diversity; having people from other geo – political zones, not only among their Advisory cadre, but right in their state executive councils. Indeed, Tinubu’s successive cabinets could have  justifiably been described as Pan – Nigerian.

Granted that elections are an examination of current governments as  we see in even much more advanced countries like both the U.S and the U. K, there can be no denying that there are instances where extenuating circumstances  suffice to  explain some governmental shortcomings.

I have in mind here, for the Buhari administration, as I wrote only last week, things like two consecutive recessions, the low price of crude oil for a substantial length of time, the global pandemic – Covid -19, which shattered the economy of many countries  and, of course,  the no less consequential Russia – Ukraine War.

While the negative effects of all these have been exacerbated in Nigeria by President Buhari’s peculiar management of the Nigerian diversity, nothing – repeat nothing at all – says that any other APC president, or his Vice, would, in future, be that ethnically driven. You can therefore, not successfully run down the APC ticket with whatever you might consider the failings of the Buhari government, no matter how hard they try.

This, therefore, is the juncture at which we must deal with, at least, one of the things which  APC had intended to do for the people of Nigeria and which, had it  successfully pulled through, would have served as a silver bullet for many of our current challenges of nation building.

Here I am referring to Restructuring.

Incidentally, this is one subject which features prominently in the Tinubu Road Map. Even though he refrained from using the term,  the document contains all the ingredients of restructuring.

So concerned with restructuring was APC, even at  inception, that it included Power Devolution in its manifesto. In August 2017, it set up a 9 – man committee on True Federalism, headed by the Kaduna state  governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai. The  committee was given the  responsibility of distilling, and defining true federalism as promised in its manifesto in 2015, and on which basis  it campaigned to Nigerians ahead of that year’s  election. As part of its work,  it was further mandated  to study the reports of the various National Conferences, especially  that of 2014,  and to come up with appropriate recommendations on restructuring the country for more  effective  governance, and peaceful cohabitation amongst its various ethnic groups.

It was a very exhaustive, and painstaking work, at the end of which it came up with very helpful, country- cohering recommendations on things like the creation of state police, introduction of fiscal federalism which would have given the states more financial teeth, rather than their monthly pilgrimages to Abuja for the ever dwindling handouts.

Others included rejigging the constitution to have some powers devolved to states, enshrine, once again, the Derivation  principle, change the unitary legal system to one that is more applicable to a democracy and, among others, grant sole authority to states on Local Government administration.

So excited with the recommendations was then Governor  Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State and some Niger – Delta groups  that the  governor publicly commended the APC for what he called “its far reaching recommendations”,  adding that “the recommendations had further strengthened the agitations for true federalism  and resource control in the Niger Delta”; all this while expressing the hope that APC would be sincere in the report’s implementation.

Unfortunately, President Buhari’s position on restructuring which he explained, as quoted below, killed off all the hopes. I refer to  an interaction between  President Buhari and Abraham Ogbodo, a Guardian reporter, as reported in the newspaper on 29 May, 2016.

Asked if he would go back to the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference, President Buhari answered: “No, I don’t want to tell different stories. I advised against the issue of National Conference. You would recall that ASUU was on strike then for almost nine months”. “The teachers in the tertiary institutions were on strike for more than a year, yet that government had about N9billion to organise that meeting (National Conference) and some (members) were complaining that they hadn’t even been paid. I never liked the priority of that government on that particular issue, because it meant that what the National Assembly could have handled was handed to the Conference while the more important job of keeping our children in schools was abandoned”. “That is why I haven’t even bothered to read it or ask for a briefing on it and I want it to go into the so-called archives”.

Again, I hold firmly to the belief that President Buhari neither owns, nor equates to APC.  His opinions should, therefore, be regarded strictly as his.

Finally, this ever reverberating charge of Tinubu ‘inflicting Buhari on Nigeria’, a charge that literally drives opposition to him mostly in the Southwest. You would  hardly believe that it was Nigerian voters, not Tinubu, who gave Buhari 15,424921 votes in the 2015 presidential election. By a long stretch, and without a scintilla of doubt, APC’s Tinubu – Shettima ticket is, demonstrably, the most qualified team going into the 2023 election when practical, demonstrated management of human affairs is the focus as Nigerians saw when both were the governors of their respective states as mentioned already.

As their campaign will  copiously demonstrate, a country on its belly, as Nigeria presently is, needs nothing more, or less, than the warrior pair of Tinubu and Shettima to see it through the tough days ahead. Tinubu completely re-engineered  Lagos at a time when former president Obasanjo said no human being, in his right senses, would live there, just as Shettima performed wonders in a Borno state at war,  at a time when a coterie of PDP presidents were at sixies and sevens, as Boko Haram descended on the Northeast.

Without the slightest of doubts, Tinubu and Shetimma are divinely made for post Buhari Nigeria.