President Nnamdi Azikiwe was certain that the 1964 federal elections were a farce and should not produce a legitimate government. By hook and by crook, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) party got (about) 200 of its candidates elected into a parliament of 312/313 members. The winners wrote the election results and gave themselves plaques of victory. They damned the consequences..
The law empowered the ceremonial president to appoint as the prime minister “the person most likely to command a majority in the lower House.” But President Azikiwe, who led a counter alliance of parties (UPGA), knew Balewa’s ‘majority’ was a product of fraud. He was determined not to allow Balewa and his people to profit from their larceny. He quietly vowed that Balewa would not come back as prime minister.
Now, if Balewa wouldn’t be called to form the government, who and what would fill the void? Zik’s think tank asked him to appoint a caretaker federal government with him assuming executive powers. He liked that. He thought the constitution gave him the power to do it, and he would do it, and he was about doing it.
But, to successfully do that he realized that he needed the backing of the security forces. President Azikiwe invited the heads of the Army, the Navy and the Police to a meeting. He reminded them that he was their Commander-in-Chief, and that their allegiance should be with him. The officers exchanged glances. The head of the police pointed at the constitution: the prime minister was his boss. That of the navy told the president that under the relevant Acts, he took orders from the parliament which had enacted Acts that created the army and the navy councils. Those councils, he told Zik, were the bosses. The head of the army, Major-General Sir Welby-Everard, a Briton, had no time for the inanities of that moment. He knew operational orders could only get to him from the Prime Minister but did not bother to tell Zik. He just saluted the president and left Azikiwe with his plans in tatters. What else was left for the president to do? He turned to the labour movement which promised to back him with street protests.
As Zik was plotting, Balewa’s party was plotting too. It was a North versus South Game of Thrones. The cast wore those colours. Balewa’s advisers said with his party having officially won a majority of the seats, he automatically remained prime minister with or without the president’s endorsement. And who said Azikiwe himself was not vulnerable? They called his attention to a clause in the 1963 constitution which empowered him to sack Zik as president. The clause stated that the office of the President became vacant if “the President is absent from Nigeria or is, in the opinion of the Prime Minister, unable to perform the functions of his office by reason of his illness.” But was Zik ill? Someone asked, and someone responded that he was. Did Azikiwe not recently announce that he stayed back longer than usual in Nsukka, his hometown, where he went for Christmas, because he wasn’t feeling fine? That was all that was needed by Balewa’s kitchen cabinet to prove that the president was ill and incapable of performing the functions of his office.
So, late on the night of 3 January, 1965, it was decided by Balewa’s people that the clause be activated in full. “But, it remains one leg: the president is not absent from the country, and must be absent.” One of the plotters reminded the others. They needed to get him outside the country first. How would they do that? That should not be difficult to do. A genius among them whispered a solution: Anyone who strayed beyond the nation’s land and sea borders had left the country. They had the police and the armed forces on their side. There is a “Nigerian Navy frigate anchored just opposite State House (in Marina, Lagos);” put ‘sick’ Zik in that boat and get him “removed outside the three-mile limit so that he would be both ill and ‘absent from Nigeria.’” Audacious!
Did the Balewa people carry out the plot? They didn’t have to. The plotters themselves deliberately leaked the plot to Zik, and with that leak, they got him sufficiently frightened so much that “shortly after 1 a.m. on Monday morning (January 4), the State House issued a bulletin that “the President had benefitted from his rest, following the strain of the Yuletide season, and that he was fit to resume his normal engagements.” Zik surrendered. He announced the end to the stalemate, asked Balewa to form the government, and Nigeria began its journey of fate to January 15, 1966. You can read all the above in J. P. Mackintosh’s ‘The Struggle for Power in Nigeria’ published in 1965. There are six pages of the intrigues there.
We do not learn, and we should learn – at least from our own history and experiences. The First Republic took off in turbulence, cruised and crashed in turbulence. But it didn’t just crash without some cockpit drama like the above. Note the extent both sides planned to go in their determination to rule Nigeria. That was 60 years ago. Today, the tap root of demons has reached the crust of the earth. Nothing scares or frightens anyone again. The next election is two clear years away, yet it suffocates as if it is holding this moment. The name for what we feel is desperation.
In 2027, they will seek to write the results. When you marry a man bigger than you can carry, you endure him. We hear that very often now – in universities, in newsrooms and at motor parks. People speak the language of surrender; they lament the futility of contesting against the president in 2027. They point at the mock exam in Lagos, the dress rehearsal in Osun, the warning shots in Rivers, the emirate injunction in Kano, the strategic posting of police chiefs to states of interest. The noise in town is no longer of wars and rumours of wars. The song is of tomorrow as the day of battle, the next the victor’s dance. “They will write their victory.” And you wonder who the ‘they’ that would “write the results” are. INEC, or who? Foot soldiers of the president are not hiding matters. They boast of his reelection two clear years before the polls. They may be right. What can his enemies and all the unhappy do? The old man has all the ingredients needed to cook what he wants cooked.
Last week, Nasir el-Rufai, man of small chassis, very big engine, ported out of the president’s party. Regime supporters laughed at his folly. Was that a dummy he sold to Tinubu’s party? If it was, that is a familiar terrain to the president, master of subterfuge. Or could it be that the tempestuous Kaduna man just walked into an ambush? If I were him, I would ask if the new haven was actually not one of Tinubu’s other rooms. But the former governor is angry, and bitter. And if you combine anger with ‘beef’, you won’t see what is clearly visible. The ex-Gov has been active, doing Mark Anthony, rousing the rabble. Regime people say he deserves this Yoruba drum called bàtá, and they would give him. When a Tinubu voter heard what El Rufai did, he laughed and sneered: “Òjò á pa bàtá, á pa janwon janwon etí è.” When an enemy is seen fretting and kicking and threatening as El-Rufai is doing, my people would simply sing for him Majek Fashek. They would send down the rain and get his bàtá drum and all its small, noisy gongs thoroughly drenched.
Whatever El Rufai is doing, he is not a lone wolf. The whole country knows that the North is not smiling at all. The Muhammadu Buhari people, complete with their Mallams and marabouts, even with their sermons, are said to have moved their cattle to new pastures. The General himself has abandoned sleep in provincial Daura; he recently relocated to Kaduna, capital of the North. Watch the skies over Bayajidda II’s North-West and North-East. The former president may not be a darling of the elites of the North, but he is the commander of the over 20 million street kids there. A simple, innocent walk to the mosque one critical Friday afternoon will rekindle their candle – father and children.
What does it mean to write the results of an election years before they are held? In December 2017, Muhammadu Buhari paid a two-day official visit to Kano. He was just two and a half years in power. At the end of that visit, Buhari promised to overwhelm whoever opposed his reelection in 2019. “I will win,” he vowed. Again, in August 2018, Buhari repeated the vow in Daura, his hometown. He said he would win no matter what anyone did: “For those who are discerning, those who have ears and eyes they will see, hear and understand. Those who don’t understand are entitled to their assumptions.” The Election Day eventually came on 23 February, 2019 and the man voted for himself in Daura. He was thereafter asked by a reporter if he would congratulate the winner if he lost the election. The General looked at the audacity (and possible idiocy) of the reporter and responded: “I will congratulate myself; I am going to be the winner.” And super-efficient INEC said he won, although the voting and the votes were very inelegant.
Asking a Buhari in 2019 if he would congratulate his victorious opponent truly sounded stupid. He would dictate how many votes he wanted. Suggesting that Tinubu may have electoral problems in 2027 will sound even stupider. He may not have Buhari’s Almajirai but he has money and all the appurtenances of power. He would look at himself and tell himself: I had no power, no authority in 2023, yet I overran them. Now that I have all – man and material – under my foot, who will dare glare down my tiger’s visage? I am sure Tinubu’s answer to the Buhari question above will be exactly what Buhari said: “I will congratulate myself; I am going to be the winner.” And he is working hard at it, meeting this group today, moving against that group tomorrow.
Two years to 2027 elections, we read of plots and counter-plots; movements and coalitions against Bola Tinubu. Watch him; the law respects him at all times. Tinubu did not become president by merely wishing it. What his enemies desire is the head of an elephant. They need more than tender, untoughened necks to carry the load. Whoever wants to enjoy as Adegboro does at Ojaaba, Ibadan, must be ready to do what the man did at Oyingbo market in Lagos – he was a beast of burden. Tinubu climbed mountains, crushed rocks and fell trees to get to where he is. I recommend his model to those plotting his defeat.
The man is consistent and deliberate. At a book launch in Lagos in 2018, he launched his philosophy of politics with a declaration that: “power is not served a la carte. You have to struggle for power.”
He is consistent. In December 2022, Tinubu in London told his supporters that “political power is not going to be served in a restaurant. It is not served a la carte. At all costs, fight for it, grab it, snatch it and run with it.”
On Wednesday 25 January, 2023, Tinubu was in Abeokuta where he fed our politics with a potent brew of poisonous proverbs and incantations; imprecations and curses. The theatrics of that outing was the focus of my column of 30 January, 2023. If you don’t mind, I can reproduce parts of my report of that esoteric outing the way I saw it.
Listen to Tinubu: “If you want to eat palm kernel, put a stone on the ground; put a palm nut on it, take another stone and smash it on the palm nut. The nut will be cracked and the kernel will come out. You can see that it is not easy to get palm kernel to eat.” The Yoruba who watched how he strung his words together and the histrionics while saying what I translated above would say I have not done enough justice to how he said it. They should just forgive me.
The man spoke with so much courage. He staked his all for what he wanted…And, like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he was (and is) more than one person; he is not an ‘I’ but a ‘we’ with an intelligence superior to his enemies’. Listen to him: “We are too smart. We are brilliant. We are courageous. We are sharp. This is a superior revolution and when I tell you, you know what I mean. You know me. We are going there to win.” And he wrapped up everything with the defiant refrain: “A maa d’ìbò, a maa wo’lé (we will vote, we will win)”. I have not heard any of his would-be challengers coming out half this forcefully.
Our fathers have several other ways of saying what Tinubu said with that imagery of force and devotion. They say also that a palm seed that would become palm oil must have a taste of fire. They also say that the man who would eat honey nestled deep inside a rock would not pity his axe. I think I heard that too that day from Tinubu.
The man employed the imagery of palm nuts and two unfriendly, conspiring stones to describe his engagement with the last election. I do not think he has changed a bit from his hardline position on power and its politics. Elections are a palm nut-cracking process; only the diligent profits from it.
Cracking palm nuts is a very deep Yoruba way of coding wars and snatching victory from the jaws of hard labour. They say Ojúbòrò kó ni a fi ngba omo l’ówó èkùró (You don’t snatch the seed from the palm nut by being gentlemanly). Tinubu’s imagery of one stone down, one stone up and a stubborn palm nut between them reinforces the Area Boy character of politics. His enemies need to be so schooled too.
The Abeokuta outing was not just about stones and palm nuts. Tinubu went spiritual. He publicly ordered his war bard, Wasiu Ayinde alias K1, to sing spell against his enemies. He bellowed: “K1, bèrè ìlù; ìlù òtè (start to beat drums, drums of war/intrigue/rebellion); pèlú àyájó nlá; àyájó nlá ni kóo gbé lé won l’órí (Seal it with a heavy, strong spell, place it on their heads). What Tinubu asked of his Wasiu Ayinde was invocatory; he asked for an invocation, a summoning of the elemental principalities to come and fight his foes. He did that that time and it worked for him. He will do it again.
If you plan to do heist in elections, work to have some popularity in your constituency. Rigging won’t work where more than 70 percent loathe you. But, can’t somebody win without stealing? I do not think it is too late for Tinubu to be born again and win clean and clear. Someone, however, said he is too powerful to see how naked he is. Everyone around him holds his magical hem which makes them become wealthy and powerful. It is therefore suicidal to tell the king that he is unclad. They are not showing him the narrowing (narrowed) pathway to a happy 2027. And it is there in plain sight: His APC is shrinking and wearing the sunken eyes of his closet Action Congress. The North appears off; the South-East and the South-South are aloof. His South-West thinks he has been using the bread of Lagos to lap up the Yoruba stew. In his geography book, Lagos is Yorubaland. And that is costly.
Is it too late for him? Two years have enough months to kill the pain of poverty in the land, to be fair to all, to contest and win a reelection. But does that not appear too tortuous and expensive a route to take, especially if you are the custodian of all monies and powers in the land? Only the unwise get hungry and thirsty in seasons of fasting. Why plant crops when you can simply conjure cash, get rich and buy the throne? We saw all these not once, not twice before. It is cheaper, faster and safer. The consequences? People without power are the ones who bother about consequences.
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