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Thu. Apr 17th, 2025
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How long can Nigeria’s Fourth Republic last?

 

Perhaps it is over already.  In 2023, a heavily-flawed candidate won the presidency in a manipulated election, taking over the leadership from the hapless Muhammadu Buhari.

 

Nigerians have now spent one year in lamentation, wondering how they will get through four years of the Bola Tinubu administration, increasingly characterized by impunity and opportunism.

 

Last week, sadly, it turned out that in the 2023 election, the electoral commission sentenced the country not to four, but eight years of Tinubu.  Letting it slip was Senate President Godswill Akpabio, who said in Abuja:

 

“I have no doubt that by the time the president is through with his tenure in the country, seven years from today, many people will not recognize FCT,” he declared.  “They will not recognize Nigeria again.”

 

If you did not know that the event at which he was running his mouth was the opening of a bus station, you might have imagined that it was the commissioning of a 24-hour electricity system for the entire country; the launching of a Lagos-Maiduguri highway; or the flagging-off of the first Sokoto-Port Harcourt rail service.

 

But it was a local bus station, and Akpabio said of it: “This is for me another major wonder of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.”

 

 

A bus station.  Not an airport.  Not a library.  Not a playground capable of providing recreation for hundreds of thousands of citizens daily.  A bus stop.

 

It is for, and ata bus station that Akpabio declared that Tinubu would rule not only for his four disputed years, but for a second term of four that he has not yet to nominate himself for.

 

At the same time as Akpabio seemed to be disclosing that Tinubu will snatch an additional term in office, no matter what anyone thinks, Tinubu was appearing in a viral videoheaded EDO2024 GO ROUGH in which he declares that he would give Edo State tohis APC in the forthcoming governorship contest.

 

The video is clipped from a 2022 presidential campaign appearance in Benin City.  In it, Tinubu, now Nigeria leader, drives a stake in the soil:

 

“You know me well,” he tells his supporters.“You know (former Edo Governor)Adams Oshiomhole well.  We are still going to fight further. Don’t worry, we are with you, you will not walk alone.  One thing I can assure you is this: do you want Edo back?  As the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I will give Edo back to you.  With time…your beautiful, if not more beautiful than Lagos, [Edo] will be equal to Lagos.  Be assured of that.”

 

First, Lagos is not “beautiful.” Unless your standards are very low, it is aesthetically and practically one of the most unpleasant places in the world.  Most of all, it is politically dysfunctional, repugnantly known as the land of The Godfather.

 

As a result, it is completely unlike Edo, one of Nigeria’s most democratic and Godfather-loathing states.  Yes, Edo knows Oshiomhole well.  I summarized his story in this July 2020 essay.

 

So do ask Oshiomhole, who himself tried to play Godfather after he left the governorship in 2016 and was politically reprimandedby Edo State.  And while you are at it, ask Oshiomhole, who had himselfpolitically chastened “Mr. Fix-It” Tony Anenihto win that governorship in 2008.

 

No, “Edo No Be Lagos,” as her citizens declared when Tinubu tried to intervene in her election in 2020.  Edo citizensbelieve in true democracy and do not suffer Godfather figures gladly.Edo is won at the ballot box by the more deserving and qualified candidate andnot “snatched” or “taken” as has sadly become the fashion of “beautiful” Lagos.  It was in that light that I congratulated Governor Godwin Obaseki on his victory in 2020.

 

What Mr. Tinubu proposes, the annexation of Edo by something other than the votes earned by a candidate, is a dangerous warning being served to constitutional democracy in Nigeria: that the entire country has entered the “snatch-grab-run” era and could soon be owned by APC.  It is unbecoming of a true leader.

 

Mr. Tinubu knows that he did not walk into power to the applause of Nigerians.  But he can earntheir respectby demonstrating decency and effort in leadership.

 

Last week, for instance, Mr. Okoi Obono-Obla, who chaired Mr. Buhari’s Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property, appeared on Seun Okinbaloye’sMic On Podcastwhere he made several stunning revelations about Buhari having actively boosted corruption.

 

For the record, Mr. Obono-Obla was in 2019 suspended from his position by the government and subsequently declared wanted, the ICPC citing his“repeated failure” to show up to answer allegations of fraud and corruption against him by the public.

 

He was accused of not adhering to the guidelines governing his panel by investigating unauthorized petitions as well as prosecuting suspects without recourse to the office of the Attorney General of the Federation.

 

By Sonala Olumhense

 

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