By Steve Nwosu
The working title of this article was ‘Tinubu: This House Is Falling’. But, not wanting to sound alarmist, I had to settle for a more subtle headline.
Irrespective of whatever title one runs with, the truth remains that all is not well in the political household of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Call it BATCO, Mandate Group or whatever, there appear to be a few loose nuts and bolts, here and there, which seem to be making the superstructure a bit shaky at the moment.
A few previously unheard-of occurrences are taking place. Increasingly, the tail is attempting to wag the dog, and without consequences too.
I wouldn’t know if it’s just me trying to read meaning into meaningless happenstances, but as our Yoruba elders say, the birds are no longer chirping as birds ought to.
Yes, I know we might be in the minority, but I’m one of those who feel that the long knives that were recently unsheathed in the Lagos House of Assembly have very little to do with Hon. Mudashiru Obasa.
Yes, he may have lost his comfy seat as Speaker, but Obasa was at best, an accidental victim, or even a bait for the entrapment of a bigger game. That bigger game is far away in Abuja.
But, make no mistake about it, there are always more than enough reasons to impeach (or ‘remove’ as Obasa insists is his case) any Speaker in Nigeria. It’s just that members of the respective houses – both federal and state houses, always choose to look the other way.
However, it is still curious that members of the Lagos House, who had indulged Obasa over even more grievous ‘excesses’ these past 10 years, decided to wield the big stick as a result of what many of us, the non-initiates, thought was, at worst, a misdemeanour.
Of course, the initial suspicion was that the Ogun State-born Speaker of the Lagos House of Assembly had finally got his cup of sins, before Tinubu, to overflow. And it was not just about the seeming lack of emotional intelligence around his alleged governorship ambition. There were also talks about disregarding Asiwaju’s gentle advice that he reconsider some house committee appointments among other things. But those now seem like aeons ago.
But subsequent developments suggest the President may have had nothing to do with the fall of The Speaking Speaker. In fact, Obasa’s impeachment may actually be a shadow-boxing on the President.
Further rubbing insult into injury was the gusto with which the lawmakers prevailed on the new Speaker, Mojisola Meranda, to tear up her own resignation letter, which she had brought to the House with her, and was hoping to read at plenary. That letter, itself, was said to be the outcome of a long telephone conversation she was said to have had with a monarch, who had conveyed the directive of Abuja that she step down to pave the way for Obasa’s reinstatement.
Now don’t ask me who or what ‘Abuja’ connotes. But the Alausa lawmakers are carrying on like that proverbial kid that suddenly begins to dance in the middle of the road. Surely, there must be a drummer hiding behind the nearby bushes.
As a long-time admirer of the strategic politics of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I’m particularly pained at the way things are unravelling in his Lagos backyard.
If Tinubu could lose the presidential election in Lagos, with a strong and united APC, and the party having to resort to underhand tactics to wrest the governorship re-election (even for a Sanwo-Olu who was generally adjudged to have performed well in his first term), it is unthinkable what would happen in 2027, with a divided party. Especially, given that it is not only in Lagos that things are not at ease for both Tinubu and the ruling party. The signals coming from North, East and even West do not look too encouraging.
In the East, despite all the “good work” the likes of Dave Umahi, Hope Uzodimma, and my boss for life, Orji Uzor Kalu, would want us to believe Tinubu’s administration is doing for the South-east, Asiwaju is still not one of the most loved persons in the zone. And the situation has not been served any better by the continued detention and trial of IPOB’s Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as well as the seeming refusal of the Tinubu government to explore a political solution to the matter.
Of course, that is not to mention the South-south, where, despite Edo and Cross River swinging to the APC, and the party now having all three senators of Delta State, the PDP remains the party to beat.
In the North, which has continued to tell whoever cares to listen that it accounted for over 60% of Tinubu’s vote, there’s now increasing disaffection against the government, with allegations that the region has been deliberately edged out of the commanding heights of public service and being replaced with persons of South-west extraction. Now, I wouldn’t want to go into the debate of how Buhari used his eight years as president to, brazenly, rig the system to give undue advantage to the North, or whether the proper solution to Buhari’s pro-North lopsidedness is Tinubu’s pro-South-West lopsidedness. But one thing is certain: irrespective of how excited Abdullahi Gabduje might be, the North is not happy with Tinubu. And it has threatened to do something about it come 2027. It does not matter whether SGF George Akume screams from now till 2027 that he too, and his family, are also from the North, and are still with Tinubu.
Even in the South-west, the tragic drama playing out in Osun over the recent local government election is not likely to endear Tinubu more to the people of his original state.
Yes, the President may have taken full control of the institutions that matter, at least as it relates to the before, during and after processes of the 2027 presidential election, but he cannot afford to treat the potential foot soldiers (which is what majority of the Lagos lawmakers are) with levity. It is like a war. And, like in all wars, it’s not the Generals and the GOCs alone that matter. We cannot forget the RSMs, the platoon leaders and the Rank and File who will do the actual shooting.
Several years ago I had a stint at a media house where the company’s managers had a faceoff with the locals who dwelled in shanties that doted every space outside the company’s perimeter fence – with some of them boldly spilling towards the front gate of the publishing house. The company finally engaged a joint military and police task force to eject the pesky squatters. But in the milieu, one faceless old man dropped an enduring hint:
“Tell…(he called the full name of the publisher) that he will look for us when he wants to bury cow next year”.
That comment gave fuel to a rumour that the publisher had an annual ritual of secretly burying a live cow on the premises and that some of those nondescript individuals in the shanties helped perform the rites. As outlandish as that allegation was, it continued to gain traction, a development that was not helped by the fact that the shanty dwellers ended up never being ejected.
As untrue as the allegation was, there’s still a moral lesson: it’s not always advisable to take those on the lower rungs of the ladder for granted. Everyone is important.
Even in our traditional setup, the Kabiyesi, the royal household, the Oloyes and the chief priest know that a sacrifice is not complete until a certain, usually inconsequential, Arubo who would carry the sacrifice to the intersection of three roads arrives.
So, while we ‘secure and cancel’ perceived rivals ahead of the 2027 permutations, let us keep in mind that not one of those behind the crisis rocking the Lagos Assembly today can (or even has a child who can) run through the streets of Lagos with a machete, chasing down political opponents, tearing down their posters and billboards, or even grabbing a ballot box, snatching it, and running away with it, when, as K.O. Mbadiwe would say, “the come comes to become.”
The solution, if you ask me, is for the President, or whoever is hiding behind the President’s name, to discard their ego. Bring down their shoulder, as we say in street lingo, cut their losses and move on, to fight another day – when the odds are more favourably stacked.
This is not the first time Lagos State and its House of Assembly would be walking this path. It happened during the governorship of Asiwaju. A similar thing also happened under Fashola, and now it has happened under Sanwo-Olu.
Not once, in any of those instances was the sitting governor in the picture. And on all of those instances, the respective governor had, without success, tried to get the lawmakers to reverse themselves. In fact, it was only in the case of Deputy Speaker Funmi Tejuosho, in 2009, that a middle ground was reached, whereby her impeachment was rescinded and she was allowed to turn in her resignation instead.
If, as a sitting Governor, Tinubu was taken unawares (as we were made to believe) when the then Speaker, Waheed Pelumi, was removed and replaced with Adeyemi Kuforiji, it is even more unlikely that he would have prior knowledge of a similar move now that he is far away in Abuja.
In fact, it is this precedence that makes one want to give the benefit of the doubt to Gov. Sanwo-Olu on any involvement.
Understandably too, as one redhead told me at the weekend, one of the reasons for which several members of the Lagos House made a forced pilgrimage to the office of the DSS, soon after, was to determine the involvement, or otherwise, of Sanwo-Olu in the fate that befell Obasa.
But, like Tinubu and Fashola before him, Sanwo-Olu was completely ghosted out. The only recurrent decimal outside of the hallowed chamber was the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC) a contraption beyond Sanwo-Olu’s sphere of control.
Of course, it would be naive to think anyone would make it to the membership of the GAC without as much as a nod from Asiwaju, but as it is turning out, not all of them might be on the same page with Asiwaju at the moment. And as another redhead told me during the week, there is also the little issue of the alleged gang of ‘real Lagosians’. Having failed severally to wrest the political levers of Lagos from Tinubu’s vice-like grip, some indigenes of Lagos are alleged to have resolved to stoop to conquer. Rather than fighting from the outside, they have resolved to fight from within, by taking whatever opportunity or appointment offered them to be part of the Tinubu system. Such opportunities include but are not limited to, serving on the GAC.
Wild as the allegation sounds, it does remind one of that timeless prayer Fashola made on the floor of the Senate when he was being screened for a ministerial appointment: May your loyalty never be tested!
But, above all the din, I believe Asiwaju still holds the aces.
If I were the President, especially now that the horse has already bolted out of the stable, I’d have probably owned the process of whatever happened or did not happen at the Lagos House and managed the fallouts away from public glare.
That way, we do not demystify the Tinubu myth. The story would be that Obasa probably overreached himself and was cut down to size by Tinubu who made him. It could even be speculated that Obasa was removed from office because he was eyeing to succeed Sanwo-Olu on a seat for which a few cronies of the President’s were already toying with the idea of Seyi, President Tinubu’s polo-playing son. And yet, some others would go to town with the story of how Obasa paid the price of his unguarded utterances and disrespect of Sanwo-Olu. It would not matter that Sanwo-Olu, like Fashola (and unlike Akinwunmi Ambode) before him, has remained largely a technocrat, focusing on governance and leaving politicking to Asiwaju and the larger political family.
In all of this, the Tinubu myth would remain intact.
However, now that the sh*t has hit the fan, and the President appears to have thrown his hat into the ring, with the lawmakers digging in, it has now got to the stage of who would be the first to blink. Unfortunately, whichever way the matter is resolved now, the President is bound to lose some face.
If he’s able to restore Obasa to the speakership, he’d probably never have the complete support of that Assembly again. Sacrilege!! And he’d also be setting a precedent that may not augur well for democracy in the country. And there would also be a big dent in his own profile as a democrat and a progressive.
Conversely, if he doesn’t succeed in returning Obasa, then he would have considerably proven that he’s not invincible, after all. That just anyone can choose to dare the Jagaban and get away with it. His word would no longer be law.
But there’s a third option: he can decide to do nothing. Bid his time, and begin to serve his revenge dish as cold as cold can ever get. As the Gen-Zs say, every one of the ‘rascally’ lawmakers, and their backers, would be served his or her breakfast.
Last line
Of course, the apprehension in the Villa is understandable. The scenario that played out at the Lagos Assembly could well be re-enacted in Abuja, with graver consequences. It was even more embarrassing that not one of the President’s men in Abuja, nay security chiefs, had an inkling of what was about to happen. That is the real concern!
