The travails and triumph of Emilokan

He can also be equated to the proverbial CAT (my emphasis) with nine lives. One peculiarity of a bat in the animal kingdom is that it cannot be easily pinned down. It is a bird when boxed into a corner, spreading its wings; it is also a rodent at another time, baring its teeth.

Like the typical bat in the animal world that is neither here nor there, our own BAT is a dyed-in-the-wool political chess master… difficult to subdue or impossible to beat. You can easily beat someone who is pinned down but not the one that is smart and elusive.

BAT survived the NADECO era because of his illusive power in the positive sense of it. He was haunted all over the place but he could not be pinned down because he was both a bird and a rodent. Illusionists have an edge over those that confront them. In other words, the more you look, the less you comprehend!

All eyes were kept on BAT from the very moment he publicly declared his interest in the epic race for the Aso Rock Villa during a meeting with the occupier of the seat, Muhammadu Buhari, at the time. Perhaps, it was only BAT that knew he would triumph at the end of the race.

In the run-up to the presidential primary contest, all manner of obstacles were laid on his path by a cabal in his own party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). Short of telling him that the presidential ticket was not for the highest bidder, an attitude reminiscent of the treatment meted out to the late business mogul cum politician, Chief M. K. O. Abiola, during the NPN era.

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That declaration temporarily retired him from active politics on the admonition of his first wife, Simbiat, who was so pissed off by the treatment meted out to him by his party stalwarts. But he came out of retirement when his good friend, President Ibrahim Babangida, rolled out his tortuous transition time-table that culminated in the 1993 Presidential poll. By that time, Simbiat had gone to the great beyond.

At the end of the exercise that threw up the best political campaign in the annals of Nigeria’s democratic experimentation, Chief Abiola emerged as the winner of the poll. But the forces against him were enormous and the exercise adjudged as the freest and most credible contest in our electoral history was annulled by the Babangida regime.

It was this sad turn of events that eventually threw up NADECO or National Democratic Coalition. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other democratic forces that birthed NADECO went underground and the battle to end the era of repression of our democracy took off, while the face of democracy, Abiola, was kept in custody by the ruling junta supervised by the maximum ruler, the late Gen. Sani Abacha.

It should be noted that events fell rapidly between 1993 and 1999. President Babangida, overwhelmed by the repercussions of the annulment, set up an Interim National Government (ING) and recruited Chief Ernest Shonekan, a kinsman of Abiola, to head the new arrangement. He then stepped aside. Chief Shonekan was allowed to run the show for less than a year when Gen. Abacha, serving as the ING’s Secretary of Defence, shoved him out. The latter took over power, harried and harassed Chief Abiola until he was arrested and put away.

With the shepherd in custody, the NADECO sheep fled the country and remained as fugitives for the period that Gen. Abacha reigned. After about five years at the helm of affairs, the maximum ruler died mysteriously, and Gen. Abdulsalami took over as the head of government. Chief Abiola was on the cusp of regaining his freedom when death visited him, mysteriously too.

With the wolf gone, the fleeing sheep gradually returned to the country. In less than one year in the saddle, Gen. Abdulsalami returned the country to democratic governance in 1999. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, incarcerated by Gen. Abacha and languishing in the calaboose, was freed. Obasanjo, an Egba man like Abiola, became his military constituency’s favourite to contest for the presidency as a way of placating the South-west that produced Chief Abiola and as a kinsman.

Chief Obasanjo contested on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and won the 1999 presidential poll. At the state level, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu cliched the guber seat in Lagos on the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD). He governed the state for two terms. His tenure was not without turbulence despite the admirable accomplishments he recorded. The controversies surrounding his ancestral and educational backgrounds as well as his conduct long before his forays into politics have become enigmatic till date. His traducers’ inability to drag him to Golgotha is also confounding.

The period between the end of his tenure and the time he expressed his wish to contest for the 2023 presidential diadem was devoted to building bridges and mentoring his proteges. Most of them occupied key positions in government long before his presidency. However, his bridge building efforts were at an apogee when he spearheaded the assemblage of some opposition parties and a faction of the ruling party, the PDP, that produced the APC ahead of the 2015 general elections.

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Fast forward to 2023. BAT faced stiff oppositions from within the ruling party spearheaded by a cabal in the Villa. The party became divided. While some wanted the presidency to go to the South, others rooted for it to remain in the North. There is a saying that a house divided against itself cannot stand. But Tinubu, a few northern governors and his loyalists defied that time-honoured logic. They teamed up to keep the house together.

The travails of Tinubu took another turn after clinching the APC’s coveted presidential ticket against all odds and picking his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima, himself a fellow Muslim. The Tinubu-Shettima ticket elicited a feeling of déjà vu. Some 30 years ago, we had the Abiola-Kingibe combination that fetched the Social Democratic Party (SDP) the June 12, 1993 presidency, though it was annulled.

Coincidentally, Tinubu and Shettima were of Yoruba and Kanuri ethnic stocks like Abiola and Kingibe. Dust was raised and the country was polarised along religious and tribal lines. And as the stage was set for the February 23, 2023 presidential poll, all hell was let loose against Emilokan and his running mate. They were pigeonholed as a drug baron and a terrorist, respectively. Their traducers argued that the country’s future should not be handed to the duo. Besides, Tinubu was specifically portrayed as a sick, senile man, unfit mentally and physically to lead the country. They warned that Tinubu that governed Lagos state 30 years ago was different from the man seeking to lead a 21^st Century Nigeria!

However, the formidable pair weathered the storm and won the race to the Villa, leaving the main opposition party, PDP and the fledgling Labour Party (LP) in the second and third positions, respectively. But interestingly, both the PDP and the LP claimed they won the race. They approached the Presidential Election Tribunal to challenge the result. When the tribunal upheld the result, more hell was let loose. The main challenger, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and a former political ally of BAT, went the extra kilometre by targeting what he considered to be Tinubu’s Achilles’ heel… his academic records at the Chicago State University in the United States which he believed were forged.

As for the LP and the Obidients, they alleged that their mandate was stolen by BAT and they were determined to leapfrog the PDP that came second to reclaim it at the Supreme Court.  The drama that unfolded at a US court in a bid to compel the university to rubbish BAT’s records all went up in smoke. Besides, it was believed in the legal circle that no fresh evidence could be admitted at the Supreme Court level. But the hyena lawyers would not admit that!

About two weeks ago, the apex court affirmed the Tinubu-Shettima election, thus ending all the anxiety and distractions that had put the country on tenterhooks for many months now. The opposition elements have bluntly refused to come to terms with the Supreme Court’s verdict. Emilokan is now sitting firmly on his seat in the Villa. He can now fully concentrate on governance. He must justify the confidence the electorate reposed in him. His triumph should translate to a better life for the generality of Nigerians including the Atikulates and the Obidients. It is the only way to get them to sing a new song, with his Renewed Hope Agenda serving as the hymn book!