“He who slings mud, usually
loses ground.” Adlai Stevenson 1954
Some years ago,
a song by Tony Tetuila lamenting a road incident involving a poor man’s car
ruled the air waves and was a must at all parties. It captured a drama
involving one of our innumerable wrecks on four wheels being hit by another
wreck and the chaotic spectacles which they provide as drivers, police and
members of the public all raise voices over what should be done by which party.
The song also celebrated the joy of a driver of a wreck who is hit by a
well-off member of society. I do not know whether it was intended to get the
attention of the then Governor Bola Tinubu, but the singer called such
privileged God-sent driver Tinubu. He made an exception to being hit by Tinubu,
because unlike other incidents where only noise is made, a Tinubu will roll out
money.
I was reminded of that song a few days ago when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu arrived the country after a long absence, and went straight for President Jonathan’s jugular. Guns ablaze and shooting from the hips, the leader from the part of the nation you would ordinarily expect to see a red carpet laid for Jonathan’s Dialogue gambit, approached Jonathan’s contraption on the road with such apparent abandon that you can only believe that he hit it deliberately to clear it off the road. For a man whose political career was shaped largely by challenging received wisdom on seemingly settled issues in Nigerian politics, he took a monumental risk in his denunciation of the initiative. Unlike the Tinubu in the song whose ‘bashing’ of the poor man’s car was welcome, this Tinubu’s brush with Jonathan’s car was unlikely to be celebrated by the President.
The President’s men took a few days to let Tinubu’s audacious assault sink in. Perhaps they hoped the Asiwaju will be drowned in a torrent of abuse and muck from his immediate constituency, particularly from those elements who earned their stripes from pursuing the Sovereign National Conference (SNC) agenda as the holy grail of the Yoruba nation. They were wrong. The reactions to his bellicose provocations were muted and timid. Prolonged silence was likely to win his position wider credibility. He wasn’t alone in the first wave of repudiations of the Dialogue idea, and it was becoming clear that further silence will confer on the Asiwaju the status of the mouthpiece of the South West.
So the Presidency rolled out its fairly-used guns and aimed them at the Asiwaju’s derision of the Dialogue idea as a diversion, a half-baked, fully deceptive Greek gift. “The APC leader”, thundered Doyin Okupe, “as usual, is completely off target...” To Tinubu’s question, “where is the capability, where is the sincerity...” Okupe said Tinubu cannot see them because his politics is all about his personal ambition, capital accumulation and 2015.
The problem, however, was that Dr Okupe’s salvos risked having the unintended effect of reinforcing the carefully-cultivated image sought by Tinubu as the leader of the national opposition. So the President himself ambled in with his characteristic take on complex issues. Last week, he lampooned the cynics and nay-sayers of the dialogue idea. “Those who continue to say that our initiative is diversionary or aimed at promoting certain political agenda are in error”.
Like the big man who hits a poor man’s car, Tinubu should be sitting smugly, daring the owner of the jalopy to do his worst. Clearly, Jonathan had veered off his lane into Tinubu’s, when he did a drammatic summersault over the idea of a conference. Tinubu could see the crass opportunism of Jonathan’s ploy, being a permanent driver or front seat occupant of everything remotely related to Conferencing, rebelling, dissenting or otherwise generally resisting. He knows the traffic police will be on his side. The public will also likely beg Jonathan to “dobale” for his blatant disregard for road etiquette, and being witnesses, are unlikely to join in begging Tinubu to repair or replace Jonathan’s car.
President Jonathan will be hard put to prove lack of faith or trust on the part of Tinubu, or any of his critics over the dialogue idea. To complete the car bashing analogy, Jonathan would be advised to tone down his hysteria over the state of his car and plead with Tinubu to drive on and not press charges.
But Tinubu hit more than Jonathan’s car when he rushed to denounce the dialogue idea. He has taken a calculated risk, and in his own interest, one will only hope that he had looked at his odds very carefully. To turn his back on the dialogue offer so emphatically, even with good reasons, is to assume a number of givens. One of these is that he has such control or influence over mainstream political opinion in the southwest [South West] or among Yoruba people that he can predict that hostility to his position will not harm him, or polarize his constituency. If critical segments of opinion in the southwest [South West] do not rise up against Tinubu, he would have pulled off an expensive gamble, and his image as the architect of Yoruba fortune today would have been strengthened.
If, on the other hand, elements outside his suffocating political control of the southwest [South West] rebel and create a momentum in support of even the tepid dialogue offer by Jonathan, Tinubu will have a battle in his hands. Certainly his formidable APC structures and governments will resist this, but his enemies are by no means dead and buried. Jonathan’s people and the remants of the PDP in the South West may rally behind an idea of sustaining the flame of a National Conference, and could damage Tinubu by asking what he has to offer in its place. Tinubu is likely to find out that it is easier to kick Jonathan’s idea than to extinguish the long-held idea that Yoruba people, or to borrow Professor Nwabueze’s caricature, all southerners, will only find peace in Nigeria if they engage other Nigerians (read: Northerners) in a no-holds-barred conference at the end of which, they will create a nation after their own image.
There is also the risky gamble of speaking conclusively over a matter of great sensitivity when you are not in possession of all the aces. Tinubu is a co-leader with General Muhammadu Buhari and others in the APC. The latter have not said what they think about the dialogue, but a large part of their constituency, the North, is carefully evaluating what it all means. At this stage, all it knows is that it represents a potential danger to its interests, but it is divided over how to approach it. Some northerners want to take it on for what it is worth, and avoid the trap of being seen as cowardly scavengers. Others see some good in it, but only if it is rid of its damaging trappings, such as the ambition of President Jonathan, or the wholesale appropriation of the nation’s oil and gas resources by less than 20% of the population. Many more, however, see it exactly as Tinubu does: a deceptive diversion which should be rejected in totality.
What is the position of the APC on the dialogue? Has Tinubu spoken for it? Can the party or other leaders within it offer differing views? Is there the possibility that the bulk of the North and the Southwest will take two different positions on the dialogue? Has Tinubu exposed the APC to potential manipulation, or are we finally being reminded of the real leader of the APC? Will Tinubu’s position on the dialogue strengthen his hands or expose his weaknesses in the South West?
Tinubu’s repudiation of the dialogue initiative has damaged it rather badly. It will be difficult to gather a genuine momentum behind it in that part of the country where Jonathan must have hoped it will win him a standing ovation. But these are early days yet. Tinubu and Jonathan will both need to work harder to convince Nigerians that they represent all our interests in their positions on the proposed dialogue. Both have taken expensive gambles, and it is Nigerians outside their firm political grips that will decide who wins this round.
I was reminded of that song a few days ago when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu arrived the country after a long absence, and went straight for President Jonathan’s jugular. Guns ablaze and shooting from the hips, the leader from the part of the nation you would ordinarily expect to see a red carpet laid for Jonathan’s Dialogue gambit, approached Jonathan’s contraption on the road with such apparent abandon that you can only believe that he hit it deliberately to clear it off the road. For a man whose political career was shaped largely by challenging received wisdom on seemingly settled issues in Nigerian politics, he took a monumental risk in his denunciation of the initiative. Unlike the Tinubu in the song whose ‘bashing’ of the poor man’s car was welcome, this Tinubu’s brush with Jonathan’s car was unlikely to be celebrated by the President.
The President’s men took a few days to let Tinubu’s audacious assault sink in. Perhaps they hoped the Asiwaju will be drowned in a torrent of abuse and muck from his immediate constituency, particularly from those elements who earned their stripes from pursuing the Sovereign National Conference (SNC) agenda as the holy grail of the Yoruba nation. They were wrong. The reactions to his bellicose provocations were muted and timid. Prolonged silence was likely to win his position wider credibility. He wasn’t alone in the first wave of repudiations of the Dialogue idea, and it was becoming clear that further silence will confer on the Asiwaju the status of the mouthpiece of the South West.
So the Presidency rolled out its fairly-used guns and aimed them at the Asiwaju’s derision of the Dialogue idea as a diversion, a half-baked, fully deceptive Greek gift. “The APC leader”, thundered Doyin Okupe, “as usual, is completely off target...” To Tinubu’s question, “where is the capability, where is the sincerity...” Okupe said Tinubu cannot see them because his politics is all about his personal ambition, capital accumulation and 2015.
The problem, however, was that Dr Okupe’s salvos risked having the unintended effect of reinforcing the carefully-cultivated image sought by Tinubu as the leader of the national opposition. So the President himself ambled in with his characteristic take on complex issues. Last week, he lampooned the cynics and nay-sayers of the dialogue idea. “Those who continue to say that our initiative is diversionary or aimed at promoting certain political agenda are in error”.
Like the big man who hits a poor man’s car, Tinubu should be sitting smugly, daring the owner of the jalopy to do his worst. Clearly, Jonathan had veered off his lane into Tinubu’s, when he did a drammatic summersault over the idea of a conference. Tinubu could see the crass opportunism of Jonathan’s ploy, being a permanent driver or front seat occupant of everything remotely related to Conferencing, rebelling, dissenting or otherwise generally resisting. He knows the traffic police will be on his side. The public will also likely beg Jonathan to “dobale” for his blatant disregard for road etiquette, and being witnesses, are unlikely to join in begging Tinubu to repair or replace Jonathan’s car.
President Jonathan will be hard put to prove lack of faith or trust on the part of Tinubu, or any of his critics over the dialogue idea. To complete the car bashing analogy, Jonathan would be advised to tone down his hysteria over the state of his car and plead with Tinubu to drive on and not press charges.
But Tinubu hit more than Jonathan’s car when he rushed to denounce the dialogue idea. He has taken a calculated risk, and in his own interest, one will only hope that he had looked at his odds very carefully. To turn his back on the dialogue offer so emphatically, even with good reasons, is to assume a number of givens. One of these is that he has such control or influence over mainstream political opinion in the southwest [South West] or among Yoruba people that he can predict that hostility to his position will not harm him, or polarize his constituency. If critical segments of opinion in the southwest [South West] do not rise up against Tinubu, he would have pulled off an expensive gamble, and his image as the architect of Yoruba fortune today would have been strengthened.
If, on the other hand, elements outside his suffocating political control of the southwest [South West] rebel and create a momentum in support of even the tepid dialogue offer by Jonathan, Tinubu will have a battle in his hands. Certainly his formidable APC structures and governments will resist this, but his enemies are by no means dead and buried. Jonathan’s people and the remants of the PDP in the South West may rally behind an idea of sustaining the flame of a National Conference, and could damage Tinubu by asking what he has to offer in its place. Tinubu is likely to find out that it is easier to kick Jonathan’s idea than to extinguish the long-held idea that Yoruba people, or to borrow Professor Nwabueze’s caricature, all southerners, will only find peace in Nigeria if they engage other Nigerians (read: Northerners) in a no-holds-barred conference at the end of which, they will create a nation after their own image.
There is also the risky gamble of speaking conclusively over a matter of great sensitivity when you are not in possession of all the aces. Tinubu is a co-leader with General Muhammadu Buhari and others in the APC. The latter have not said what they think about the dialogue, but a large part of their constituency, the North, is carefully evaluating what it all means. At this stage, all it knows is that it represents a potential danger to its interests, but it is divided over how to approach it. Some northerners want to take it on for what it is worth, and avoid the trap of being seen as cowardly scavengers. Others see some good in it, but only if it is rid of its damaging trappings, such as the ambition of President Jonathan, or the wholesale appropriation of the nation’s oil and gas resources by less than 20% of the population. Many more, however, see it exactly as Tinubu does: a deceptive diversion which should be rejected in totality.
What is the position of the APC on the dialogue? Has Tinubu spoken for it? Can the party or other leaders within it offer differing views? Is there the possibility that the bulk of the North and the Southwest will take two different positions on the dialogue? Has Tinubu exposed the APC to potential manipulation, or are we finally being reminded of the real leader of the APC? Will Tinubu’s position on the dialogue strengthen his hands or expose his weaknesses in the South West?
Tinubu’s repudiation of the dialogue initiative has damaged it rather badly. It will be difficult to gather a genuine momentum behind it in that part of the country where Jonathan must have hoped it will win him a standing ovation. But these are early days yet. Tinubu and Jonathan will both need to work harder to convince Nigerians that they represent all our interests in their positions on the proposed dialogue. Both have taken expensive gambles, and it is Nigerians outside their firm political grips that will decide who wins this round.
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