Opinion: Will the Hopes of Nigerians be Truly Renewed?

By Abdulakeem Sodeeq Sulyman

May 29th, 2023, will mark exactly eight years that the outgoing President, (Retd.) Major-General Muhammadu Buhari gained access to the helms of affairs of our dear country, Nigeria, with a new catchphrase “I belong to everybody and belong to nobody.” The promises inherent in that catchphrase was refreshing to virtually all Nigerians to the extent that, as a newspaper vendor then, I sold more than fifty copies of The Punch newspaper. The goodwill enjoyed by President Buhari was so fervent, unmatched and unprecedented – I think.

Tunde Jaiyebo says, “One of the greatest sources of pain and sorrow is to be betrayed by those who are supposed to protect, love and help you.” Since President Buhari’s tenure as a civilian president had begun, Nigeria, a country blessed in every ramification has been experiencing a whirlpool and rollercoaster in different aspects of our social and national life. What is most troubling is the failure of President Buhari’s administration to robustly tackle the tripartite issues – insecurity, corruption and stabilizing the economy – Buhari and his party, the APC, used to oust the then president Goodluck Jonathan and the then ruling party, the PDP.

Initially, President Buhari started his administration on a snail movement and another factor that derailed the rail of his administration was lack of conception of governance and political leadership, leading to losing some candidacies to ‘perceived enemies,’ failure to set-up his cabinet on time and failure to take responsibility for his inconsistent policies leading to economic summersaults. All these, amongst others, clearly revealed to discerned Nigerians that President Buhari was not ready for governance.

As the President prepares to vacate the Aso Rock in some hours, I am sure it will be difficult for him to accept that he is leaving the affairs of Nigeria and Nigerians in a bad state than he met it. C.S. Lewis aptly submitted that, “To assess the value of anything, one must first know its purpose.” The purposes of President Buhari’s administration was obvious – to rescue Nigeria from the throes of PDP’s abuse of power, minimize corruption and end insecurity. However, if we use these metrics to evaluate the President’s tenure, it must have come to terms with the dumbest Nigerians that our values have been mishandled and misplaced under Buhari.

The interesting and intriguing events that unfolded during President Buhari’s reign inflamed the passion of Nigerians to be ready for the 2023 elections. As the elections were approaching, the two major political parties – APC and PDP – witnessed enormous challenges in the selection of their flag bearers for the presidential election. To me, the decisive moment to the 2023 presidential election was the emergence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as the flag bearer of the PDP. This fueled the rages of some powerful forces and their actions cost the PDP or the emerging LP, the chances of winning the presidency. Like it or not, both Tinubu and Atiku have been at the forefronts of the Nigerian political dynamics getting to thirty years or thereabouts. This made me limit my search lens of electing a viable president of Nigeria to the two of them.

Fortunately for the APC, its candidate, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu emerged the winner of the presidential election. The announcement of Senator Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election was like robbing salts on the wounds being nursed by some people who believed that the president-elect has many civil and criminal allegations levelled against him and he ought to be declared innocent of those allegations before he can be sworn-in as the Nigerian president. A small boy like me might not have swum deeper in the murky waters of Nigerian politics, but what is clear to me is that our political climate is not meant for the faint-hearted and those not ready to toy with their dignity and reputations shouldn’t bother venturing into it!

Looking into the political pedigree of Senator Tinubu, there is no doubt that he has proven his mettle to preside the affairs of Nigeria some days. His track record of working with some of the finest brains in the legal practice shows that he is sorrounded with competent individuals who can help in addressing injustice and restore social equity and inclusion. His experience as a senator during the military junta had equipped him for the liaison and collaborations required to drive cooperations among the arms of government; while his sagacity to be the only governor that survived the impeachment onslaughts against the South-west governors during 1999-2003 and many other battles he had won were enough to convince Nigerians that Tinubu is capable of steering the affairs of Nigeria to our dreamed land.

At this point that every decision to birth a virile country counts, Nigeria doesn’t deserve to be governed by ‘accidental managers’ – those that present themselves to us as problem solvers and maintain the status quo, giving us reasons why things don’t work, instead of exploring and discovering how to get things done to better the lots of ours. However, in order for us to have deliberate leaders, we must adjust our leadership selection process as submitted by Dele Momodu that “If anything must change in our country, how we select and elect our leaders must be the first change we embark upon.” Nigeria will not change if we citizens don’t change our approaches to politics and manners of electing leaders by desisting from basing our choices on factors that can be easily exploited and polarised.

Gerald Sykes makes us understand that “Any solid achievement must, of necessity, take years of humble apprenticeship and estrangement from most of society” and this is what Tinubu’s political sojourn teaches. Tinubu never hides it that he is interested in presiding the affairs of Nigeria some days. Instead of exploiting our differences to inflame the polity, he built bridges, assembling politicians with common aspirations and leveraged his political wit and acumen to galvanise resources for the birth of alliance which today’s the All Progressives Congress culminated from. I believe his role in the formation of APC qualifies him for the daunting task of rebuilding the cracking foundations of our dear country, Nigeria.