By Iliyasu Gadu, Ilgad2009@gmail.com
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The nationwide end hunger protests which took place from August 1 to 10 have clearly established that indeed President Tinubu has hurt Nigerians across the various divides in the country.
Although the intensity of it was in the north, there were nonetheless clear manifestations of passive anger in all the geo-political zones of the country. It did not help President Tinubu’s case that he could not even bring himself to address the issues that made the people come out to express their anger at his administration’s policies.
But perhaps many Nigerians may not know that President Tinubu is following a well laid out path of eventual political and economic ascendancy starting right from his days as a prominent National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) activist. As a close confidant of late Chief M.K.O Abiola, he witnessed first-hand the intrigues of the June 12 debacle. And when he had to flee to exile he began to plan his way to political reckoning. And one of the abiding lessons he learnt was to attribute the reasons that made him flee the country and into exile and indeed Nigeria as a country to what he saw as the machination of the northern political elite. In an interview he granted a national newspaper, he alluded to this by stating that he never believed in the unity of Nigeria which was taken in context to mean that a Nigeria that was largely skewed in favour of one particular region, the north, should either be restructured for balancing or possibly dissolved.
Now that Tinubu has finally ascended the presidency of Nigeria by the instrumentality of the same northern political elite, it is ironically the north that is groaning most from the harsh economic policies of the Tinubu administration.
But if President Tinubu’s economic policies were targeted at the north as claimed, they have ended up affecting every other part of the country and the anger and consequences are being sharply felt all over. President Tinubu perhaps anticipating opposition to his economic and political plans would come more effectively from the north more than from any other geopolitical zone, has been working to decapitate the region economically and politically.
Thus with the measures taken by President Tinubu to checkmate leading northern political figures from mounting or being a rallying figure of political opposition who then can fill in the gap?
The relevance of this question lies in the fact that as it is now no leading political figure from any of the southern geo-political zones can hope to successfully challenge President Tinubu.
Ultimately this makes the permutations for the 2027 elections very interesting; the north will want to use its voting strength to prevent President Tinubu’s re-election; President Tinubu will want to win re-election by all means possible in order to consolidate his economic and political plans. The north has the numbers and President Tinubu has the power.
President Tinubu would want to whittle down the political advantages of the north through a political restructuring of Nigeria. The north will want to either bring up a northerner and throw its numbers behind him or support a southern candidate with a northern vice-presidential candidate.
If the north decides to opt for a leader then the choice must be informed and driven by certain cast iron variables.
In the context of our present circumstances the putative northern leader must be one who will connect not just with the north where comes from, he should also connect with the rest of Nigeria. It is now clear to Nigerians that Tinubu’s agenda serves only his personal purpose. He does not connect with the geo-political area he comes from because the area is also reeling from his harsh economic policies.
From the tenor of the nationwide protests, Nigerians now see President Tinubu as the signature image of Nigeria’s current tribulations. It is now clear to Nigerians that the president intends to achieve his long term purpose of emerging as the economic and political numero uno in Nigeria even using our institutions to achieve that. It is not a healthy development for our democracy and certainly not for our country ultimately. Our march to democracy was a collective effort, its forward movement must not be hijacked or halted by the megalomania of one man otherwise all that effort would have been in vain. In the struggle to rescue Nigeria from the vicious grip of military dictatorship, the south especially the southwest played the leading role by virtue of the many attributes and advantages.
In our present circumstances with President Tinubu seeking to appropriate the gains of our collective efforts to restore democracy in the country, the north is advantageously placed to stop him. President Tinubu has lost his connection with the people of all regions, class and shades of opinion. He is on a trajectory of self-promotion and aggrandizement at the expense of Nigeria.
In this wise if the north brings forth a leader for this purpose of stopping President Tinubu he must see himself as leading the effort to rescue Nigeria from the suffocating grip of the president Tinubu’s economic and political plans which has brought unprecedented misery all over the land. While necessity may have dictated that such a leader will come from the north, under the current circumstances he must see or allow himself to be hostage to any partisan or sectional interest.
This necessarily calls for the leader to be bold, courageous and focussed on the task of not just defeating President Tinubu at the elections, but more importantly of committing to mobilizing Nigerians to lay a platform for economic and political reforms with the involvement of all shades representing our diversity (Concluded)
Iliyasu Gadu, a former Foreign Service Officer who served at the Nigerian Missions in Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), is a columnist with Daily Trust