By Boyejo A. Coker - Chief Editor
It was exactly eight years ago (to date) that a certain Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former Senator as well as former Executive Governor of Lagos State, stepped onto the scene at a campaign rally in Southwest Nigeria. The candidate at that time was the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Rtd. General Muhammadu Buhari, a failed presidential candidate who had lost his bid for the presidency on three prior attempts to win the plum job of running the affairs of Africa's largest economy and democracy.
Buhari's campaign was at best fledgling at the time, and needed some infusion of pizzazz, energy and inspiration. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu stepped to the plate and the rest, as they say, is history.
It was the same Asiwaju Bola Tinubu that sold Buhari to us as a reformed dictator (more or less a tyrant in actuality). Yes, the same Buhari that eight years later has essentially taken Nigeria back to the Stone Age.
Under Buhari and the current APC government, Nigeria overtook India in having the largest number of people in poverty, in the world. The certified disaster that has been the Buhari administration should in most political climates spell disaster for the ruling party, but in Nigerian politics, the ruling party always has the upper hand - as they use practically every instrument and organ of government at their disposal to hold on to power.
That last line is actually quite instructive, as it speaks to the arrogance exhibited by the APC hierarchy in presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket as its choice for President and Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. To understand the importance of this dynamic, Nigeria is a multi-religious nation with the two main religions, Christianity and Islam, roughly evenly split.
That is why it has always been the unwritten rule to balance the leadership ticket evenly between those two prominent religions, for the sake of national unity and peaceful co-existence.
Furthermore, the running mate to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC flag bearer, is a known sponsor of Boko Haram and other adjacent Islamic terrorist groups. Kashim Shettima, is a former governor of Borno State in the northern part of Nigeria, and it is a documented fact that a notorious terrorist, Kabiru Sokoto, years ago, was found and arrested in the home of the former Borno State governor turned vice presidential candidate.
The highly questionable background of Shettima fits right in with the equally questionable background of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate. Apart from Tinubu’s unverifiable education and birth records, he is also a well documented drug baron and money launderer.
The APC had the glorious opportunity to present Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo as its flag bearer for the presidency of the nation, and then balance it out with a credible running mate of Islamic persuasion from the north. That they chose these two men of highly questionable backgrounds and character for the top two offices in the nation, speaks to an acerbic dysfunction within the ruling party, and typifies either a lack of requisite foresight, or downright arrogance that has come to embody the brazen insensitivity of the ruling party, to the yearnings and desires of well meaning Nigerians.
A truly Democratic dispensation was bequeathed to President Muhammadu Buhari. Former President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat in 2015 to Buhari rather than shed a single drop of Nigerian blood. Under this APC government, the will of the people has been overturned repeatedly by kangaroo courts and tribunals, whose judges and officials have been compromised by the incendiary and inordinate ambitions of defeated APC candidates, with the acquiescence of the Buhari administration.
Things have undoubtedly fallen apart and it is clear that the center cannot hold. The die is indeed cast regarding the future of Nigeria’s corporate existence.
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