Nothing is as sweet and inebriating as victory. Happiness is when you watch the river of life sweep away all your enemies. And when you look around in war and all you see are broken heads and limbs of otherwise powerful foes, you will think yourself the ultimate champion in all contests of life. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) people felt exactly like that too. They sat so comfortably in power because their Babalawo told them they would reign for 60 unbroken years — and they boasted about it. But it turned out that what the hard-hearing PDP heard was 16, not 60.
Neoliberal political economist, Francis Fukuyama, felt same way too. At the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he was sure the West had won the ultimate argument and humanity had reached the very end of its sociocultural destiny and destination. And truly, it looked so: Marxism is dead. Communism has collapsed. The second pole of a bipolar world has cracked and collapsed. Welcome to a unipolar world of free enterprise! What again has anyone outside the West’s liberal democracy to say? Never again will any other ideology compete with capitalism and its heart of gold. That was how Fukuyama reasoned — just as Tinubu the Conqueror did in Osogbo – and so Fukuyama wrote his famous book: The End of History and the Last Man.
But Fukuyama was wrong. History is non-linear. It has no starting point and no finishing line. Maybe it is safe to say it is a cycle, perfectly spherical like the world that shaped its course. The world would soon know that there might not be again a Marxism or a Communism or a monstrous Soviet Union with their troubles for the West to contend with, but a new world with new arguments and new struggles was possible. And truly, from the very trunk of western confidence sprouted the Occupy Movement, then the Arab Spring and the other springs of new narratives which challenged the West and its ugly capitalism. Soon after the Cold War, history appeared to be on the march again. And it didn’t take long for Fukuyama’s thesis to start melting. French philosopher, Alain Badiou, wrote his The Rebirth of History and interrogated the various new class contradictions and contestations for space. There also came Seumas Milne’s The Revenge of History, an acknowledgment of history’s resumption of its march against the ephemerally dominant cord that thought itself the only voice. Even Fukuyama himself later had to write on humanity’s “Posthuman future” to qualify his original thesis.
Bola Tinubu is a very confident, hard-to-break man – a political footballer who believes his every pass must reach its destination, and his every shot a goal. When a man’s can-do spirit sculpts his image on the granite of his people’s political history, he would princely price himself in pure diamond. Tinubu did that with the boast that his opponents are gone forever in the South-West. He has managed to foist his hegemonic ideology on a choosy, proud race, so far without consequences. That was why he was sure his tendency would prevail forever. But, is that what history teaches? History will not be history if what it says is that there are favoured empires which last forever. If you are a Tinubu believer, wait a little before you disagree with this view. The man himself agreed with this position a day before the Osogbo declaration. Tinubu, in his Bourdillon, Lagos residence, told us he is an ardent fan of floundering, drab Manchester United, a club that has seen better times like today’s struggling PDP.
Deep thinkers would insist that between politics and football, there is a common heritage. In a December 14, 2017 article, ace multimedia journalist, Shirsho Dasgupta, argued that “the football pitch is a microcosm of life itself.” So, can we please understand Tinubu’s politics from his football choices and standpoints? He said he is “always envious of Chelsea” and was always wishing that his bumbling Man-U beat Chelsea. But Tinubu’s Man United is not his APC. The club won’t always obey the command of his wish like the sophisticated rabble of his APC farm who would stand at attention at the snap of his fingers. Now his darling club’s fortune dwindles. Stoic Tinubu would go philosophical and ask haters not to sleep with their two eyes closed: “Whatever is happening to Man United, no one club can stay up forever. They’ve set a great record already and we would be back on top. I think we are around number seven in the English Premier League table now. It’s too early in the season to write us off; we will never say die.”
Man U fans are great optimists. Just two days ago, you saw how Man U went down within the first 20 minutes, bounced back later and ended the match drawing 2-2 with a club side that is as lowly as one of these fringe parties contesting the 2019 elections. A draw in politics is a stalemate – very unacceptable to great players anywhere and everywhere. A draw is a plain loss for a Capo who believes all wars must be fought and won. You saw it in recent elections where a rally-round in counter moves neutralized the other side.
But why would a clever Tinubu not see the turbulence of football as a hint for his politics? If the titanic Man U could flounder ceaselessly as it does, who says a political party can’t suffer same fate if it also has the wrong coach? And APC has an efficient, effective wrong coach now!
Every empire has an autumn — an end. Tinubu admitted that in Lagos on Monday but repudiated it on Tuesday in Osogbo. Tinubu leads a far-right orchestra which he would rather package as a progressive party. He is so effective acting Big Brother that he now thinks, seriously, that he would be the lord of this animal farm forever — whatever he does with the farm and its products.
There is a problem when an abusive husband boasts that the wife is stuck with his trauma forever. He has reasons to think so. And you all know you are the reasons. His party would rule the land forever even as vital institutions (including Ladoke Akintola University of Technology which he oversees as chancellor) remain forever comatose, altering destinies in their millions. His party would remain the darling of everyone, including striking university teachers whose salaries it has stopped. Because he has carefully spread his jeun soke ideology (like TraderMoni) across the physical space, penetrating all social categories, the victims now see themselves as privileged beneficiaries. And because he has been so successful doing these, his fingers are on every pie and his eyes on every friend to keep — and on every foe to buy or break.
So, has the future of the South-West (with its trophies) been sold wholesale and forever to this clever, smart, wily, even devastatingly foxy Man-United? The answer cannot be Yes unless the Tinubu club abandons its buccaneer ways and does good at all times. That is what can give the club any hope of a long-lasting reign on the league table. Even then, the Capo di tutti i capi, the Lion of Lagos, should rather see the football club called Manchester United, with its paradise lost, as a living proof that no champion reigns forever.
and then