Dr. Kingsley Moghalu (June 2021) and Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu (January 2022) are the first Nigerian politicians to openly say that they are interested in becoming the president of Nigeria after the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2023. Unlike many aspirants, Senator Tinubu has not made a formal declaration of that intent till now. He only told newsmen, after a visit to President Buhari in Aso Rock Villa in Abuja, that he had informed the president of his desire to fulfil his lifelong ambition – to be the president of Nigeria. The announcement by Tinubu triggered a lot of actions and reactions in the polity, given his political weight and stature. It subsumed whatever Dr Moghalu had done and is doing.
Moghalu was an early bird who had the limelight when he did his declaration. However, he has also become the masquerader that danced first. He is now watching proceedings as led by the other political parties.
Since Bola Tinubu took the lead in the APC, the Nigerian political circuit has not been the same again. It has now become a kind of circus. All kinds of players have littered the political turf in obviously diversionary declarations for the presidency and which is confusing the beleaguered polity. Most of the politicians running helter-skelter around the Nigerian political field and are stomping the grounds in morally abstentious manner, have no sincere cause to do so. Some of them are an assault on the sensibilities of Nigerians because their mere appearance for the purpose of talking presidency is simply un-presidential and they lack everything required to be our president except their constitutional right to aspire to that position.
The declaration ceremonies by politicians to contest the Nigerian presidency are worrying in their degree, intent and quality. This is when we turn a blind eye to the morality of the debacle. They are simply rash on the part of many of these waning gladiators. For instance, what is a man like Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba actually trying to tell Nigerians with his race to buy the APC presidential nomination ticket? Is he saying that the whole jamboree of declaration of interest and desire to rule Nigeria after Buhari has become a mockery? Could it be that he is just flaunting his monetary wealth? His age and education are about the only charming credentials. Apart from these, Nigerians should just look away. He is currently serving as the Minister of State for Education but his performance in that ministry holds no allure, especially when viewed from the prism of the ongoing indefinite strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Not many moves to improve education in Nigeria through his ministry can be traced to him, otherwise they would have been highlighted the most now that he is in a faceoff with ASUU. Well, ASUU might not be the one-size-fits-all garb to dress the activities or inactivity of Nwajiuba, but there is hardly anything else to attribute to him in that office. If other labour centres in the country go on strike in solidarity with the university teachers, then the enormity of what calamity has befallen our tertiary education sector would become more vivid.
It won’t be a difficult decision to tar Dr Chris Nwabueze Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Productivity in the same brush with Nwajiuba. Ngige has been a labour minister with a worrying difference, looking at the steps he had taken in that ministry since his tenure. Ngige as the Minister of Labour, when the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) called out its members to protest numerous unfulfilled promises and bungled agreements by his government, said we had more than enough doctors. He acted like the brute that refused to reflect on his impulses when labour matters involving the doctors were the vogue. He has not changed his style. He is handling the trade dispute with university lecturers in the same tardy way. Workers in research institutes in the country have been on strike, some for about one year. Yet he wants us to trust him with the reins of power in Nigeria? This does not appear right on many fronts. It looks more like an affront on Nigerians than an offer to serve them.
Also think of an Adams Oshiomhole as the president of Nigeria. He is supposed to be recuperating from the wounds he received as he was being dragged out of office as his party’s head honcho. Apart from this, no one knows if he had been readmitted into the party by his political ward which suspended him and paved the way for his removal from office as the APC national chairman. He should get those sorted before he throws N100 million into the drain as he throws his hat in the ring. Pastor Tunde Bakare is another diversion in the polity. The preacher has largely been more of a political bother than asset to a wide variety of Nigerians. He should face his flock. Are Udom Emmanuel, Rotimi Amaechi, Olawepo-Hashim, Nyesom Wike, Godswill Akpabio not distractions? Isn’t it awkward, diversionary and unbecoming for a sitting Central Bank Governor to carry the card of a political party?
Senator Bukola Saraki is from the North Central, the same zone as Iyorchia Ayu, the national chairman of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Does Saraki genuinely think that this would be overlooked by his co-players on the political turf? He might as well declare his real intentions and save Nigerians the trouble of everyday conjecture. In the same vein is Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto State, who is also angling for the top prize. Is it Tambuwal’s wish that we erase the fact that the Buhari he wants to succeed hails from the same North West zone as himself? Is he not pressing our mumu button by his intent? Perhaps, as is normal with political games, there is more to his interest in the presidency. It is always a case of the more you look, the less you see.
There are quality individuals on the turf too. There are many worthy aspirants and Nigerians know them but they are at the mercy of a socio-political system that ruins the best of intentions and ideas. Such people who would not be totally tied to the apron strings of power brokers might not make headway. That is our lot, our undoing… The year 2023 is now like the new threshold of hope. It was like that in 2015 until the hope and belief turned to despair. In our desolation at the abysmal performance of the Buhari administration, the same people who told us that Buhari and APC would transform the country through “change” are here again telling us that they would undo the bad APC has visited us with. It is self-indicting on the part of APC to be repeating the promises of 2015. It is sad.
They are said to be playing games. They are playing games with Nigerians. They are also said to be raising money for their political parties since the new electoral law has placed a ceiling on how much individual politician can spend to prosecute election.
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