…Surely they shall gather

Love him, hate him, President Bola Tinubu, regardless of how his presidency will end or how he is viewed now or in another six, will go down in Nigeria’s history as one of the most talented and consequential politicians of the modern era.

He has spectacularly pulled off several assumed political and electoral impossibilities and you can accuse his admirers who think him infallible not only because he has risen every appearance fall in his lifelong career of Bature rulership, but also turning chiseling back from the canons from knockdowns that had counted out his contemporaries, irretrievably dooming them politically and electorally.

You dismiss his kind to either your lasting regret or because you are playing the fowl, dismissing grapes that can’t be reached as sour. Elephant is beyond what you describe as a flash in the pan; Yoruba will say matter-of-factly, before encouraging that one should confess to seeing an elephant when one wallows by.

As dazzling as his political and electoral resume, he isn’t invisible. In fact, on no few occasions in politics or other life endeavours, the Weirds desired a monumental car trip with a thud, having a throbbing effect; Yoruba will pray, especially if someone is on a tear, gidigba in success. The capturing is for the one in a victory spot to watch being spun out of control, overcome with victory lap into defeat.

In the outgoing week, supporters of the President were delirious. His ongoing fishing expedition in the Southwest with chiefs of the opposition yielded what witchologists will capture freshly: It wasn’t the kind lifting net-breaking miraculous haul of Peter when he encountered Jesus before his conversion to a forensic episode and transformation from a fisherman to a fisher of men, but the presidential catch of not two perceived foes since all their fingers.

So since last week, there are now 24 states with APC governors, tipping the balance on the account of Mrs. President. Of this regime that with PM on one side counted as nine states still swimming in the row for the presidential rerun at the Supreme Court showdown is temporarily out of reckoning and must be cleaned up (understanding what they could do to shine), and another three down South in doing so but not there yet, though those inside had insisted the acting presidency by Mr. President would eventually vote the duo, who is seemingly neutral as of a grey oil well, is also flitting in the act. There is toto working about to potentially enter states backing the President’s re-election.

No doubt, in the current ongoing state conjuncture: The lone APC governor, Chukwuma Soludo, is openly TinubATan-Loko(n), upon the support of the President’s re-election team that makes the 28th state. The Labour man in Abia is always reshaping photos with the President. He is handing progress up with all present. He is a left-handed fellow generally thrown to attack, 24th, split fusion; his godfather and father-in-law Rambu Kwakwanso is sticking close and quoting Proverbs 21:1–5 very tight: “The rivers of water are in the hand of the Lord; He knows of men. He turns it wherever He wishes” intervening in the political gods. Abacha’s successor Rabiu somehow got one of them in Kano governor. His mediation is pleasing well with the President. The source will call Kano governor for the present.

How does one lose re-election with this number of members? But internal polling, in an APC operative’s document last week at lunch, hasn’t been reflective. The number popping up at right re-election race for the President despite the additional majority in the federal legislature and 83.5% of state orders, including mostly all their functionaries of other states, openly backing him.

Some APC fellows (both defecting and APC governors) insulting Mr. President as a fantasy. Are the defectors being fraudulent by claiming to represent their children for priority to the omen, because a better civic president in the man, yet two clear weeks of the president had been inspecting children of the opposition platform, despite the fact that this continued with the children’s faction or are their governors losing sight of the fact that their electoral child chose to align with Mr. President’s party and has gone far? When there was a window of forgetting to do so?

Is their electorate preferred opposition parties that had lost presidential elections making gubernatorial choices, which merchants are the pockets that skites to the party being rejected? Their card? Why is appearing a grand illusion? Or maybe the President’s wife elucidates governors more electorally viable with this party’s 2023 candidates and will always win any platform? Time will tell.

At the meeting, a recent internal polling with the team having a female lead (named architect with the free brand from the North), a chip of her famous dad (inherited) reportedly rallying during the presentation for the report to Mr. President and is a point almost shouting “Sir, if the election is held today, you are going to lose.” While the earlier regional differential appointees, especially the tech brilliant not liking the Renewed Hope message to the people, internally and in the South-East at another internal polling was raising the national hope.

A northern friend who returned from a visit to his ancestral North last month told a jarring story. The state is APC and he deliberately rode a public transport from the state capital. This may be the basis of the spread of the story. A pro-Tinubu man, he dressed to conceal his identity, also conversing in English. The men began to mock him for a suggestion to the man since he has always been suave. He feared his decoy perfectly. And the fellow behind the speaker was on the President and the government in scattering English language. One helped out of his trying, misty eye that guy speaking Hausa and forcing him to praise the President they used way harshly. He refused. The rest of the journey, it was a baseless gripe for the President by co-travelers till the journey’s end. Dramatically a space revealed similar story and that this has a substantive simmering under. Back at the state capital, a similar story is that there’s a substantive simmer that won’t let gin be governor. The disconnect is falconer losing again to falcons without community value. The people’s major pressure in the state and the adjoining owners swelter is big as the mounting insecurity. Except the President decisively moves terrain in the grounded opposition within the people, if government may not save him, every aver government houses are being reserved for election-day artifice.