About two months ago, I received a surprise call from a loyalist of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC). The caller, an old acquaintance, asked if I could advise on how Tinubu could secure a meeting with the new British monarch, King Charles III. I was flabbergasted, stunned!
Okay, I was a UK Government adviser but advising on how a foreign politician could meet the monarch was well above my paygrade. Besides, was he not reading my columns? Did he not know my view that a Tinubu presidency would be catastrophically disastrous for Nigeria? Why me?
“That’s not the point,” he said dismissively. “Please, tell me if you know how Asiwaju can meet King Charles.” He sounded as if he badly needed an answer that he could pass on to someone. I told him the King would never interfere in the internal politics of a foreign country, especially in an election season, by meeting any presidential candidate. “What about the Prime Minister?” he asked, refusing to give up. I sighed in annoyance.
The encounter showed Tinubu’s eagerness to meet foreign leaders to create the impression he was president-in-waiting. Indeed, he’s already acting as if he’s the in-coming president.
He refuses to engage with critical audiences in Nigeria, rejects live TV interviews and debates, rebuffs media-organised Town Hall events and even declines personally to sign the peace accord. Yet, while shunning critical engagements at home, Tinubu is keen to attend international events.
Tinubu is the most controversial presidential candidate in Nigeria’s history. The absurdity of his Chatham House performance and his attack on free press shows he’s deliberately ignoring the controversies
So, I wasn’t surprised when I heard he was giving a lecture at Chatham House, the renowned, London-based international affairs think-tank.
But, despite the hype, Tinubu’s presence at Chatham House on December 5 was a damp squib, indeed a farce; it was anything but “superlative, fantastic, invigorating, inviting, riveting, arresting”, as Dele Alake, an overzealous Tinubu aide, gushingly described it on Channels Television!
First, Tinubu didn’t address the “international community”; he addressed APC supporters. The packed room of about 200 people had fewer than seven white faces, many of them journalists from media outlets like Arise News, African Confidential and Agence France-Presse; others, employees of Chatham House, including Alex Vines, Director, Africa Programme, who moderated the event.
For a lecture titled “Nigeria’s 2023 elections: Security, economy and foreign policy perspectives”, and promoted by Chatham House, one would expect a truly international audience.
Rather, it was predominantly a black audience; indeed, it was an audience of APC hyper-partisans. Nothing showed this more than the theatrical and indecorous shouting of “Jagaban” and singing of “Bola, on your mandate we shall stand”, which prompted the moderator’s repeated admonishment: “Please, please, can we sit down?”
Truth be told, it’s utterly shameful that Tinubu took a large entourage, including sitting and former governors, to London, wasting scarce foreign exchange that businesses badly need, just to talk to his supporters, when he refuses to engage with Nigerians at home. Even worse, they went, self-congratulatorily, to dance “Buga” at a restaurant afterwards!
But what about the event itself? Well, Tinubu gave a passable speech, speaking to an autocue. After the speech, the moderator said: “We should have some proper conversation now, including some questions.”
Customarily, after a speech, speakers field questions directly themselves. But Tinubu departed from the norm. He said he wanted to demonstrate “team-ship” and off-shored the questions to his acolytes: “The first question to Dele Alake; the second to Nasiru el-Rufai; the third to Ben Ayade …”
In one of many embarrassing moments, Tinubu assigned a question on “diaspora voting” to Wale Edun. In a flash, former Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State jumped up to raise an objection.
He said the question should be directed to the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who would speak at Chatham House in January. Puzzled by Fayemi’s intervention, Tinubu muttered: “But, but …” It was an utter demonstration of poor judgment.
Of course, a president could ask ministers to answer questions about their ministries at public events. But it’s presumptuous, even disrespectful to the audience, for a presidential candidate to dole out questions about his plans for government to subordinates instead of answering them himself.
One journalist, a Nigerian, remarked that Tinubu had been speaking through surrogates, adding: “However, sir, you’re running for President, we would like to hear from you …” But Tinubu insisted on others speaking for him!
Well, Tinubu’s use of acolytes to answer questions brings us to his use of surrogates to fight dirty and silence critics, particularly the media.
First, there are the incorrigible sophists, Festus Keyamo and Femi Fani-Kayode, who act aggressively as Tinubu’s character witnesses, but lack credibility because of their own behaviours and past damaging words and actions against Tinubu. Keyamo took a certificate forgery case against Tinubu up to the Supreme Court, and a Google search would show the terrible things Fani-Kayode said about Tinubu’s age, health, identity, etc.
Yet, they are now Tinubu’s ferocious defenders. They are character witnesses without character. In any court, their own character would be impeached, and their character evidence would be inadmissible. Their motives are utterly selfish, self-serving!
Then, there’s the duo of Bayo Onanuga and Dele Alake, supposedly journalists for several decades, who supposedly fought for press freedom under military dictatorships.
But now they’re muzzling the media to help Tinubu actualise his “lifelong ambition” to become president, in the self-interested expectations of plum jobs in his administration. So, for them, the end justifies the dirty means!
I align myself with the bold statement of the Board of Editors of ThisDay and Arise News, titled “Tinubu and THISDAY/ARISE Media Group and the attack on free speech” (ThisDay, December 12, 2022), which rightly called out Onanuga and Alake for “attempting to silence independent media, cower and bully free press, ahead of the 2023 general elections.”
But why? Well, Tinubu hates media scrutiny of his past. He wants to rule Nigeria and control the destinies of over 200 million people, but he doesn’t want Nigerians to know his true age, educational qualifications, origins, source of wealth, etc. When he provides “answers”, they can’t bear scrutiny.
Take his identity, Tinubu said in response to a question at Chatham House: “I’m not claiming another father. I’m Tinubu, Tinubu proper.” But that’s not the view of most people who know him.
For instance, in a recent interview on a Yoruba station, Alaroye TV, Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, Tinubu’s deputy-governor for four years, said: “We all know that Tinubu is not Lagosian. He’s from Iragbiji. His name is not Tinubu. He adopted the name.” Last week, on Arise News, Chief Bode George said: “I know for real that Bola is not Lagosian. You can quote me.”
This raises critical questions about Tinubu’s real identity, who was he before becoming a Tinubu? And if he’s “Tinubu proper”, then why was a child of the famous Tinubu family so poor he couldn’t attend primary and secondary schools, as he now claims?
Read also: Tinubu campaign-Arise TV spat raises fear of media repression
There are also discrepancies regarding his age. A few months ago, the famous flutist Tee Mac Omotsola-Iseli, who called Tinubu his in-law, said he’s “86 years old”. Tinubu says he’s 70.
Well, he looks haggard, unhealthy, for a 70-year-old, especially given his wealth. And talking about Tinubu’s wealth, does anyone buy his story that he became a multi-billionaire through “real estate”? That he did not enrich himself with the resources of Lagos State?
Tinubu is the most controversial presidential candidate in Nigeria’s history. The absurdity of his Chatham House performance and his attack on free press shows he’s deliberately ignoring the controversies. But he can’t mute himself, or bully his way, to Nigeria’s presidency. He must come clean about his past!
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