The Presidential Kingmakers

In the current dispensation (1999 till date), there are five known and recognised presidential king makers in Naija.

1. IBB (Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida)

2. His “cousin”, Abdusalami Abubakar

3. OBJ (Olusegun Obasanjo)

4. TY Danjuma

5. Asiwaju (Bola Tinubu)

Generally speaking, the first four of them sail in the same boat. The espirit de corps among them is simply undescribable. They are a pride of lions, if you know what I mean.

These old rascals (sorry, Generals) may disagree among themselves or even fight some petty fights among themselves from time to time. But when it comes to choosing the occupant of Aso Villa, they all go in the same direction. Nothing, repeat nothing, comes in between them at such times of national decision. If you want, you can take this to the bank.

And I think, in some funny kind of way, this is actually good for Nigeria. Without their collective moderating presence and lion-size influence, some scoundrels (in the South and North alike) would have succeeded in doing some stupid things capable of tearing this beautiful country of ours into shreds.

You may not like their guts (especially OBJ and IBB), but please give it up to them for helping us to manage and stabilise our often riotous (and potentially counter-destructive) emotions as Nigerians. Honestly, these are very elderly guys who deserve to be in quiet retirement, but the unending quarrelsomeness among ourselves compels them to continue to show interest in stuff.

For goodness sake, they laid down their lives for Naija to stay as one. Young officers (buddies at the officer’s mess), looking forward to war glory in destroying the external enemy. But ended up killing one another’s wives and children. I think that they still carry that scar in their hearts, long after 1970.

I have a feeling that if (just if) Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had lived longer, he would ultimately (and naturally) have taken his rightful seat as one of the political cardinals of our dear country. But Almighty God, who called Ojukwu to come and rest, knows best. And of course the same thing goes for the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua whose pan-Nigerianism I am a proud student of.

The new kid on the block is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is currently a lone ranger in our political Holy See. I often criticise his style of politics, but for this conversation, I want to say, “God bless his soul.”

If I were Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (having tasted top-level power and having acquired a tremendous estate in the process), I will leave the stage for younger actors and morph into a respected cardinal, teaming up with Tinubu, his long standing political associate.

By the way, the South-South and the South East peoples need to consider these things with sobriety, and begin to (wisely) shed their general political childishness. If you presently look around in these two otherwise powerful zones, you cannot find even one soul in the political space that looks anything like the cardinal we are talking about here.

Drop your stone, my friend. Don’t crucify me. On this matter, I am a proud South-South guy myself. Just like you. So don’t even go there.

For such an intensely fractious country like ours, maybe we should endure these cardinals. For now. As in, for the next three or four general election cycles.

It took America over two centuries to build their democratic space, and in the words of Barack Obama, “we are still perfecting our union.” Building democracy in our land will turn out to be a similar marathon. Let’s therefore keep the emotions down as we run this long race towards the Nigeria of our collective dreams.

‘Nough said.