IN yorubaland, parents burying their children is a cultural abomination. There is even a prayer-line for children to outlive their parents; (gbogbo wa la o gbeyin arugbo wa). In that cultural sense, the heading of this piece will be a heartfelt prayer for the first son, Seyi. May the president also live long.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jnr is the 46th president of the United States and a one-term democrat. After a largely uncontested primary win, he was running on an outside chance of being re-elected last year before a brutal takedown by his party for becoming more of a liability. Cognitive decline due to advancing age was the overt impetus for the palace coup that toppled him from the top of the Democratic ticket but his chances of trumping Republican Donald Trump again in the almost-primed rematch had been largely ruined by his family scandals, with his out-of-control but beloved son; Hunter, at the centre of the most putrid of the sewer-stories of the father’s time as the number two in Obama White House. Hunter’s wild ways as the then-second son, (though technically he would be the first, since Barack as President had no known son(s), came back to hunt, haunt and hurt his father’s presidency as he moved from congressional probes to multiple indictment to courtroom trials, putting the old man and his presidency constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons despite attempts by the legacy media to shield him from public scrutiny and accountability.
In a damaging display of fatherly love, Biden risked his entire decades-long public service record by pardoning his serial felon of a son, after repeatedly vowed not to so do.
Dan Brown, in Angels & Demons famously said, “No love is greater than that of a father for his son”.
President Tinubu now doubt loves Seyi, his publicly known first son. Things do happen when famous, wealthy, influential and powerful people pass on. Stories of carbon-copy unclaimed sons and daughters can suddenly saturate everywhere. Wills become a tug of war. This is not assuming anything with the president and Seyi is Nigeria’s first son as of today and likely through his father’s presidency. Any claimant to his position today will be an asunderer and the Tinubu family has enough stories already to last a lifetime. That is why Seyi can’t be going about doing Hunter’s wild stuff, hunting down those who disagree with him like a desperate hunter seeking prey to assert his dominance of the forest.
Before presidency, just like Hunter, Seyi must have had his father’s heart and that possibly accounted for his illegal appearance at the inaugural FEC meeting of his dad. Following public disavowal, the president “banned” him, but not before the discerning had pointed out that there was no way he could have accessed a fort like that without the security and protocol briefing his dad. When Hunter went libido-crazy, including sleeping with his late brother, Beau’s wife, Biden reportedly looked the other way because of family tragedies that made the prodigal child, the only son. Then the drugs, booze, orgies, prostitutes, porn, child abandonment, selling access to father’s name, dodging tax, illegal purchase of arms, lying on oath, and those naked pictures of his, with sex workers doing numbers on him. The photos were displayed in Congress. What father would not lose both cognition and ignition watching that? How could he be lucid at debates when the heart had been shattered by a beloved son? The complications of Hunter’s recklessness were slowly killing the man; his literal jaw-dropping debate performance only nailed his political coffin. Now, not even fellow democrats want to listen to him as he tries to return to public space, seeking a redemption to his ruined image and legacy.
No doubt, only a miracle would make some of the happenings leading to Biden’s political burial, replicate same consequences in Nigeria. One, the government agency or the head thereof in Nigeria that will probe and recommend the president’s son for trial, has not been born. Ibrahim Magu of EFCC with his famed “madness”, which commendably upped the fear factor for the commission under him, looked away from all the alleged malfeasances of the Buhari family, especially his now-late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari and Sabir “Tunde” Yusuf, then-president’s nephew. And fighting corruption was the signature tune of the Buhari administration. Yoruba wil say even a mad dog recognises the destructive power of fire. When you have absolute power to hire and fire like Nigeria’s President with stupendous constitutional powers and little to zero functional guardrails, any public officer who loves his job will think twice before going for members of the first family. Please don’t ask about whistle-blowing. Practically everyone with some reach in the system would want to be in the good books of the one who calls the shots on the distribution of the national cake, and we don’t have an independent Congress.
To demonstrate the near-invisibility of Villa, that Magu fellow was kept on an acting job as EFCC chair for five years and four months and nobody could help him. Today, he remains in the acting column of the commission’s past heads, despite being one of the longest-serving. A system that runs that way can’t hold the main man or his own, accountable. So institutionally, Seyi unlike Hunter is insulated from open or even secret probe for his mounting alleged felonies. If anything, the state and its coercive power would rally behind him. He can shoot someone at Unity Fountain and just walk away without consequences.
But Seyi can hurt his father’s re-election, just like Hunter did to Biden, even without official public accountability mechanism. The younger Tinubu can also do greater damage to the already-controversial family name. His father’s presidential legacy is also at stake if he keeps being a bull in a China shop, as a way of rallying support for his father’s re-election and possibly his own rumoured gubernatorial agenda in Lagos. By human reasoning, truth is, only death or a disabling illness would stop the president from seeking re-election even if staring defeat in the face. But God has a million ways where man has none and men saw what He could do when Biden dared Him during an interview to come down and stop him from running again. Then God showed up as the One ruling in the affairs of men, responding to the dare and within days, turned all democrat’s fat cats and mega-donors against the Biden ticket, even after he had wrapped up nomination. What God can’t do, is yet to exist. Since the constitution says the president can seek re-election, he can’t be denied though it is the prerogative of voting Nigerians to vote one way or the other or cast support one way or the other.
Seyi too has the right to support his dad, but he can’t be doing the right thing the wrong way. Say what you will, Trump with all his seeming borderless rhetoric has managed to rein his three boys and two girls, from being fodder for his political enemies, despite having them with three different women. Not even Obama, touted as the modern-day symbol of black emancipation in America, has that success rate with his two daughters, Malia and Natasha (that name again?), especially the older girl who seems a bit more out of control of the duo.
Experts say the effective management of power and influence involves recognizing that power is not solely about position but also about personal attributes and relationships. In the Nigerian context, Seyi is an unelected powerbroker, a fact that critics playing ostrich may want to downplay. He is going to be for the period his father will remain president because he has obviously been given a roving pass by his loving dad. Sadly for the Yoruba race, it is the two presidents it has produced in this dispensation that have shown the predilection to unleash their children on the polity, ravaging everywhere. Nigerians remember Iyabo Obasanjo and how she reportedly vaulted over her Kado estate mansion’s fence to escape justice after she allegedly abused the “privileges” of being the first daughter during her father’s presidency. Gbenga Obasanjo’s engagements as then-first son even saw him weirdly swearing to an affidavit about his estranged wife and president-dad, in seeking judicial annulment of his troubled marriage.
Yusuf, Buhari’s son also had his power-bike crash moment and one of the sisters too, flying presidential jet for school project, which was no doubt, an abuse of presidential power. But none of the recklessness stated above, has come anywhere close to what Seyi is recording for posterity; and to think he is a trained lawyer. As a Christian he professes to be, the first son must have heard about Hophni and Phinehas, the infamous sons of Eli, also called sons of Belial (sons of worthlessness). Nothing in their story, including how they mismanaged access to influence and power, and in the process eternally denying their lineage the priesthood and inviting untimely death upon themselves and their dad, is worth commending to anyone save the powerful lessons therein.
Those lessons are worth more than gold.
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