In just over two weeks, it would have been two years since President Bola Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election. His victory was hard won and is still the cause of much bitterness among members of the opposition who still cannot reconcile themselves to it. For them, it’s as if there could be a way to overturn his presidency. Which might explain why a man like Rotimi Amaechi would invite Nigerian youths to turn to violence in their struggle for power. As he claimed, Nigerians politicians would steal, maim and kill in order to grab power.
Those who would wrest power from them, Amaechi went on to say, must be willing to do exactly the same thing. That may sound fair enough, if it’s a piece of advice for politicians like him. But Nigerian youths are not necessarily politicians and need not be incited to violence in the manner Amaechi has been pushing for some time now. In October last year, Amaechi had criticised young Nigerians for not taking to the street to protest the rising cost of living. Clearly, he has something up his sleeves with his periodic calls for violence. And one wonders how old Amaechi himself is that he is not leading such protests if he is so convinced that is the only route open to him and his ilk to power.
It has to be said that this incitement of the youth is not about them. Rather, it is about politicians like Amaechi who have totally lost out in the power game. They are looking to make young Nigerians cannon fodder for their ambition. They have been at it since Tinubu was declared president on February 25, 2023. At various times and in both overt and covert gestures, opposition elements have tried their hands at inciting violence, even calling on the military not to stand by and look. Some of them literally went on their knees in front of the Defence Headquarters in Abuja, calling on the military. For them any way and anything is acceptable provided it could get them back to power.
All of this is understandable if not justifiable. Electoral loss is more often than not a very painful affair for
those concerned. In an environment like ours where winning is something of a zero-sum game, losing an election is even more painful. There is so much at stake with politicians personally bearing the cost of their election unlike in other parts of the world where there are structures for political donors to step in. Here, people steal from the state, maim and kill their opponents or anyone else standing in their way. Rotimi Amaechi, as a politician himself, should know this.
A loss is often visceral and frequently leads most politicians into financial ruin. They can only survive on public stolen funds. Rotimi Amaechi was not shy to remark at the gathering of malcontents they misnamed a national conference to strengthen democracy, that poverty would not let him leave politics. This, after he has spent about two thirds of his adult life in politics. It is remarkable that he could only explain his involvement in politics in terms of lucre. Like Amaechi, the disgruntled Nasir el Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna state, continues to speak from both sides of the mouth.
For about a year now, he has been keeping the company of his political enemies like former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. Yet he wants Nigerians to accept him as a member of the APC and he has vowed to continue his agitation against the party from within the party. How does his partnership with others to form a so-called mega party square with his claim of attacking from within what he finds objectionable about his party? Who does he think is deceived by criticisms of both his party and the APC-led government that has suddenly grown loud?
Mourning and lamenting their loss, those opposed to the Tinubu administration are daily coming together under different umbrellas. Suddenly, sworn enemies have cozied up to one another and they are all singing the same song of freeing Nigeria from the assumed stranglehold of Bola Tinubu who is now viewed as a dictator. Following the arrest of Omoyele Sowore over his issues with the Police, Atiku Abubakar, Tinubu’s
one time friend and main rival in the 2023 election, wants the world to know that the president is out to silence all opposition voices.
He sees nothing wrong in Shehu Madhi. a so-called activist peddling dangerous rumours about France setting up a military base in the north. For Atiku, except Tinubu is stopped, Nigerians would soon become a huge prison yard just because of the prosecution of some people through the judicial system. Just when Atiku Abubakar chose to project his personal fear of losing all chances of ever becoming president on other Nigerians, by accusing Tinubu of despotism, he also accused the ruling party of dolling out N50 million to bribe each opposition party. He made this claim against the background of the drama that played out during the PDP’s Board of Trustees meeting that ended in blows among supporters of the two men claiming to be the party’s National Secretary.
Rather than provide the kind of leadership required of an opposition party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar stays abroad and makes periodic trips home to rally supporters around his ambition to lead the PDP into the next election. With the PDP in confusion, the Labour Party out of joint and the other parties not knowing where to turn, the field has been left open for the APC to graze as it pleases and some politicians want to blame that on Tinubu. Are they expecting him or his party to help them win power? Was that how he got it? The sheer foolishness of opposition claims that the APC is bribing their members is self-indicting. It shows the irresponsibility of our politicians.
They are full of talks about forming another party, a so-called third force or special purpose vehicle that Professor Pat Utomi and others promoted to no avail before the 2023 election. Nobody wants to do the dirty job of building their own party. Rather, they are busy inciting violence among the youth, giving life to baseless rumours of marginalising the north.
Having failed to make any headway with the manufactured controversies around tax reforms and rising cost of living, the goal is now to encourage the invasion of bandits and the promotion of a political sharia among a south-western population that has never been known for religious intolerance. Why it should be the business of the north to teach the Yoruba about sharia is what nobody has been able to explain among the do-gooders crying more than the bereaved.
