BY ABRAHAM OGBODO .
The one that is already in and seated is called APC. The one that is outside and itching to be admitted to unseat the one that is seated is called ADC. The difference is in the displacement and replacement of letters P and D. On the surface, this distinction lacks the firmness to affect a clear choice. This means that either of the entities can go or stay, and nothing significant will be lost in content. It is the same as saying that if, per adventure, ADC replaces APC in 2027, it will look like replacing six with half a dozen. Or like the national team, the Super Eagles, breaking into two sides of 11 players each, to compete for the same trophy. Either way, Nigerians are going to suffer. That is the devil’s alternative.
This perception is gradually strengthening into a national consensus. The good thing is that it is not the only consensus regarding 2027 that is building up in the country. There is another that is equally high-pitch. It is somehow close to what people said in 2014 when Dr. Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan was President. Then, these same perennial issues of nation-building were carefully and deliberately orchestrated to practically turn Goodluck to Badluck Jonathan. The last name was actually compressed to Jonah to lay a better context as to why, even as the captain, Jonathan, needed to be cast overboard to save the sinking Nigerian ship. His traducers said there was so much between him and Prophet Jonah, who, against the clear directive of God, had followed a sea route that did not lead to Nineveh or salvation. Jonathan, too, was alleged to have followed a path that did not lead to national development. He was therefore good for nothing and needed to be thrown into the raging sea like Prophet Jonah to calm the national turbulence.
No room was left for long debates. The campaign messaging was clinically effective. It was done to affirm and not to interrogate the charges against Jonathan. He was denied fair hearing, so to say. The mantra was just anything and any person, but Goodluck Jonathan, was good to come as President. Reasons took flight as emotions surged. And so, when a Muhammadu Buhari was resuscitated from sustained electoral injuries and repackaged as the most resourceful Nigerian that had ever lived, the focus was not on the pretentious challenger. Rather, the intensive gaze was on President Jonathan, who was recreated into a negative benchmark against whom Buhari shone like a million stars. Hard facts on Buhari’s deficits that adequately sign-posted what was to come upon Nigeria and Nigerians were ignored because Goodluck had become badluck and people were desperate to try their luck with someone else.
Amid that flow of extreme emotionality and illogicality, evidence of Buhari’s unfitness conveniently dissolved into the stream of providence that gratuitously propelled him into power. His ill health and narrow-mindedness, which manifested in an unacceptable level of ethno-religious bigotry, did not count against him or counted for Jonathan. Even his lack of resourcefulness that made him the poorest among his class of retired army general and former military heads of state of Nigeria was recorded for him as an advantage. The story was that Buhari was poor because he was not corrupt. He was poor because he did not steal money to become rich like others. It was not because he couldn’t combine the necessary factors to create value. With him, poverty got a new definition. It was elevated to a virtue.
Meanwhile, the entire process followed as schemed and orchestrated. On May 29, 2015, while Goodluck Jonathan was leaving Aso Rock Villa Abuja crestfallen for his village, Otueke, in Bayelsa State, having lost the 2015 presidential election, Mohammadu Buhari, the winner, was leaving Daura in absolute triumphalism to become a democratically elected president of Nigeria, 30 years after he was overthrown as a military head of state.
In all of this, one man was solidly in the background, directing and coordinating. He advanced all the alternate viewpoints to design a new reality through which Buhari became revalidated as a messiah, nationalist, high performer and rescuer of the Nigerian state ship. His name was Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu. That name has not changed. It has only gained more strength with a change of the title. He is now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT). He remains the Jagaban Borgu also. Tinubu relishes his Jagaban title. The name is heavier in sound than it is in substance. It makes BAT feel like a conqueror. For instance, BAT was not President, but just Jagabgan , when he crowned the serial electoral failures of Muhammadu Buhari with the presidency. Jagaban is an onomatopoeia that sums up the Tinubu’s essence. The man is at his best when the paths are jagged and the rules are perfect freedom. He is stronger when nothing appears straightforward. He has the capacity to ride rough waives. The name was given to him by the late Emir of Borgu, Alhaji Haliru Dantoro III. It means leader of warriors.
Today is July 11, 2025. The next presidential election is less than two years away. The elements have recreated themselves, albeit in a reverse order. The hunter is now the hunted. The one being hunted in the current hunt does not want the guidelines applied previously to apply in 2027. I am out today to say that why the plots in 2015 and 2027 may have the same material trappings, the central characters are different. Very different, that is. Tinubu is not Jonathan. They are different individuals defined by different value systems. While the strength of one lies in defying rules and conventions to reach results, the other gladly yields to circumscription and even sees failure in some instances as a triumph.
For instance, under an unfair bombardment by enemies in 2015, Jonathan refused to reach for a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) to liquidate his attackers and re-establish a life-line for himself. This he could have done without causing heavens to fall. But he didn’t. Instead, he maintained this lame line that his ambition to remain the President of Nigeria was not worth the blood of the least Nigerian. He didn’t want to break eggs to prepare omelette. But nobody does without breaking eggs.
The man from Otueke did not talk like a typical Nigerian President. He had talked like an underdog in a contest where he was the champion. Jonathan sounded like any other good man in the street who believes in live and let live. He loved telling true life stories to explain why he detested vaulting ambition. He went to school without sandals. While growing up, nothing in his circumstances betrayed great promises. He was the son of a fisherman. During the civil war, he had thought every truck was a military truck loaded with armed soldiers, looking for people to shoot. When he saw one approaching on one occasion, he quickly escaped into the surrounding mangrove vegetation with his elder sister to avoid being killed. If being President was going to take blood in addition to cash to erase his essence, he was ready to let go.
In truth, Jonathan might have calculated to teach and retire before the twist that saw him soaring. He had started as a Deputy Governor in Bayelsa State and later moved to become Governor. He was Vice President and then the very ultimate, President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for a whole six years. This is the same position that Buhari fought tooth and nail, including going into forced alliances to achieve. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who will be 80 years in November next year, has been fighting to become president since 1993 when he was only 47 years old. He is still in the trenches fighting.
Evidently, Goodluck Jonathan meant to stop at the mountain top, but providence took him to the moon. He was wise enough to understand that maiming and killing to shoot higher would amount to over-reaching himself and challenging God in God’s own game. He backed down, and that singular act has made him a refreshing reference point in good conduct in national politics.
So much on Goodluck Jonathan. Tinubu, the Jagagban, operates differently. He yields to an existentialist interpretation that assigns no role to any outsider in the determination of the great issues of life. To him, victory is always won and not awarded. Success or failure is a consequence of effort. He believes the gods do not help as such in the many battles of life. The gods may come in to align with victors or vanquished after the battle has been won and lost. He relies on his ingenuity to create all the advantages. And every move is war where all is fine and fair. He preaches that in situations where victory is not certain in the perennial struggles against opposing forces, the rules of engagement should be breached to reverse the tide. That is, when it is not willingly or easily yielded, one is permitted, under the Jagagban school of power, to “grab it and run away with it.”
Unlike Jonathan, Tinubu does not have any true or original story to tell. He creates his own stories to fit all purposes. If the narration, for instance, fits Ibadan Grammar School, fine. If it fits Government College, Surulere, Lagos, all fine and good too. He is most deliberate in approach. He takes action and moves on, leaving others to bother about the reactions or consequences. He is focused on the end, not the means. Once motivated, he lacks the temperament to wait for a turnaround. Instead, he turns things around himself. He does not fear a superior force. When he declared Emilokon , he was not taken too seriously. As it turned out, it truly became his turn to be president of Nigeria. He talks as if he controls tomorrow.
On the whole, while Jonathan followed a path, Tinubu created one. That is the difference. Jonathan had power thrust upon him. Tinubu had been working and is still working for power. He is not like Jonathan who looked everywhere for power to save himself while power was in his hands. Tinubu projected so much power even when he didn’t have enough of it. Now that he has power and so much of it and also understands how to convert power to brute force to serve his purpose, he is close in description to a drunken king cobra. This is why I fear for the coalition.
In 2015, the coalition against Jonathan operated on propaganda and won. This time, the coalition against Tinubu is different. It is running largely on facts. But facts may be secondary or even prove inconsequential in the current calculation. The reality today is harsh. It is as harsh as taking a battle to a lion in his den. I advise therefore that in addition to facts of the campaign against Tinubu, the coalition should stretch a little more to invent ways to kill a lion in his den.
This is also saying that the coalition should be prepared to match Tinubu in all departments of the game. Power for power. Cash for cash. And propaganda for propaganda. When a stolen property is re-stolen or a thief steals from another thief, the town crier is left out of the equation. He is not contacted to announce the stolen property. The thieves know what has happened. It is also good to add that the currency of war business is blood. If blood is required in the proposed venture, the coalition would be justified by the new ethics to spill some. You act like a monkey to catch a monkey.
