The mercurial environment that conditions the Nigerian political phemament not one that leaves her citizens, ordinary mortals, with the option of adopting any established political philosophy or using the footsteps of mentoring icons as guiding milestones on their chequered journeys on the nation’s political terrain. The preponderance of those who call the shots on the various political party platforms are products of their immediate and fast changing environment. What they cannot excape from and cannot be denied them, however, is that they have continued to remain the agents of socio-economic development for the bewildered geographical regions that throw them up. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the former executive governor of Lagos State and presidential flag bearer of the All Progressive Congress In the 2023 elections and governor Simon Bako Lalong, incumbent governor of Plateau State, Chairman of Northern Governors Forum and recently announced Director-General of the former’s Presidential Campaign Council are not just two different ‘kettles of fishes’, as politicians, their known geographical cum political benefactor-bases do not cross paths. While Tinubu’s Lagos is Nigeria’s former capital city and seaport, with its skylines bedecked with sky crappers whose foundations are embedded on one of the world’s most expensive plots of estates harboring boardrooms and corporate headquarters of internationally reputable corporate Conglomerates whose combined tax returns run into hundreds of billions of naira every month for the State and Local Governments,, the exact opposite is the case for Lalong. The politically informed publics Asiwaju Tinubu has to deal with in Lagos and the one governor Lalong has to contend with on the Plateau are worlds apart. Lagos’ indigenous Yoruba and commerce-attracted populations on which the Tinubu family maintains a steely grip through the Markets Unions is a unique geopolitical contraption.
Bola-Ahmed Asiwaju Tinubu, Former Governor of Lagos State & Presidential flag bearer of APC for the 2023 General Elections
On the Plateau, where Lalong is governor, majestic rock formations that stired the hearts of Tourism investors in past years but now provide impregnable hideaways for marauding bandits and Ak47 bearing killer herdsmen is the most popular inherited ‘possesion’ the governor has to contend with. Significantly, in contrast to Tinubus’ mono Yoruba Lagos population, governor Lalong has volatile multiple polities in the state who look up to him for their socio-econimic emancipation. This is the background to the main issue – Tinubu’s recently announced choice of governor Lalong as D.G of his Campaign Council.
In a caledioscopic turn of events at the Presidentia Candidates Selection Delegates Convention of the All Progressive Party in June, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who curiously appeared not to be the prefered candidate for the ticket amongst the party leaders, judgdging by their initial body and even oral languages, emerged as the triumphant candidate. That turn of events made quite a good number of discinable minded Nigerians to conclude that a well shrouded deal had been strucked between the party’s Northern Governors and Tinubu’s ambition arrow heads. Dispassionate minded observers concluded that the combination of that deal and the candidate’s popularly bottomless money bag swung victory in his direction.
Gov. Simon Bako Lalong,
Executive Governor, Plateau State.
Tinubu’s triumph at the Delegates Conference kick–started an era of public debate that can be discribed as second only to the issue of President Buhari’s place on the issue of tackling corruption in Nigeria’s history book. The virulent debate was on the choice of a running mate to the candidate in view of his being of the Islamic fait from Southern Nigeria. The virulence of the debate arose from the fact that the issue is the very one that differed Tinubu’s vice presidential ambition in. 2015 when president Buhari had resolutely refused to select him as his running mate on account of the. volatility of a Muslim-Muslim ticket in a multi religious nation. As a fact of history, president Mohammadu Buhari, as a patriotic leader of a nation and ruling political party as conveyed by the party’s propaganda machines in 2019, made the issue of a one-fait president/vice-presidential candidature a major national security one when he put his foot down on the unadvertised vice presidential ambition of Tinubu, the ruling party’s arguably highest financial backer.
Arising from this existing fact of history, when, in the middle of a stormy national debate, Tinubu rose, in perplexing rejection of Buhari’s antecedence on the issue, the undeniable religious content of prevailing national security crisis and announced a Muslim–Muslim pairing, it was obvious to almost all that there are much more to the debacle than have met the eyes. Not unexpectedly, political crystal gazers went to town with a number of permutations as to why the acclaimed leader of the party had acted in blatant spurning of the sensitivities of the preponderance of Nigerians and the incumbent president albeit his personal discipline-imposed silence. Some pundits were convinced that it was all an elitist conspiracy to present Tinubu to the voting masses of northern Nigerian extraction as the Yoruba version of Islamic hero Utman Danfodio for financially gainful reasons. Others said the APC Northern governors were left with no other choice than to cease the best opportunity they would ever have to obtain from the Jagaban the best price they can ever get from him for queuing behind him during the Presidential Delegates Convention against all odds.in order to save their own faces in front of their presently highly sensitized voters. As it is with all issues relevant to people’s histories, time will tell, OR it has actually begun to tell.
Now let us step forward with Governor Simon Bako Lalong, the incumbent governor of Plateau State who has also been the Chairman of Northern Governors’ Forum for years. He is a governor whose natural taciturnity has miraculously endeared him to his wary people perhaps without him and the vocal segment of the people knowing it. Any time the provoking ugly security challenges that have bestroden the entire length and breadth of the nation rears its head on the Plateau and he gets upset when he addresses the public from his natural emotional reserve, he talks from his heart without the usual political tongue bending habit of the average Ñigerian politician.. His listeners often find themselves believing what he tells them despite themselves because they are convinced that this one is not a politician but a leader thrust upon the people clothed in a strange gab. The circumstances of his ascension unto power as governor in 2015 and retaining it in 2019 are proofs that the extent to which this unusual strange talisman had elevated the governor are not accidental. Between the governor and his political publics, the hands of God have prevailed for the past eight years.
As a lawyer who has headed the legislative arm of the State for years, the governor has demonstrated unflinching reliance on the dictates of laws and order, some time to unacceptable level of impoliticality; such as referring to the Pontiff as an inactive witness to his being innocent of any spiritual offence by accepting a political party assignment He has a confessed disdain for anti party activities and in his demonstrable abstainance from this fàulibity, he has unwittingly set himself up as a fall guy on the chess board of Nigerian politics. The lions that prawl the jungles of the nation’s horizone have pleasurably preyed on him either to take advantage of his gaulibility or his winning ways.
The self ignited inferno that have raged on the Nigerian public space since the Muslim-Muslim pairing by APC’s presidential flag bearer occasioned the urgent need for another major pacification project for Nigeria’s topographic segment often derisively referred to as the “noncore” Northern population. This actually refers to the Christian nationalities that exist in all States in Norhern Nigeria, but in the main the Christian majority populated northern States of Plateau, Taraba, Benue and arguably Nasarawa. At a time the public outcry on the Muslim-Muslim paring by Tinubu threatens to overwhelm the party, the candidate came to role out his pacification project towards the “none core Northern voters by announcing Governor Simon Bako Lalong as Director General of his Presidential Campaign Council. While this act has triggered virulent outcries against the candidate for his derogatory offer against the backdrop of his disregard for Christian politicians of Northern extraction during his search for a running mate, Lalong has also harvested criticisms for his politically backbreaking acceptance of the “Greek gift” of an offer. The once-in-a-liife-time nature of umbrioglio the offer has brought down on Lalong’s head; and the manner he has deployed his gift of natural taciturnity to rice gallantly above the crisis by apologizing some times and calling the bluff at other time is going to be a major gift to a Presidential Campaign Council mandated to sell the most difficult candidate and party manifesto to a beleguared voting population in recent history, if he goes ahead to retain the job. In doing so,, two things need to happen in the interest of history, the party, the candidate, Governor Lalong and his people on the Plateau. Number one is that in view of the fact that apart from his confessed respect for president Buhari, the candidate and party constitution, his major political mission is the maintreaming of Plateau’s developmental ambitions. Taking into consideration the fact that Lalong as the politician is going to the Campaign Council Table with all he has and risks future political ostracization amongst his people, he deserves to be granted a very central place in the future government and hierrhachy of the party irrespective of whether the party wins the 2023 elections or not. Number two issue is the one of the historical dilemma of all fall guys. If Governor Lalong’s appointment is utilized as a mere public relations project and the power to run the campaign is wrestled out of his hands by cabals when “push comes to shove” during the campaign, it will be recorded in Nigeria’s political history book as the most devastating height of political conspiracy by the South West and the “core-North” to hang the most pandemic laden albatross on Lalong’s neck just to ridicule him and his people. When the study of history is restored back on Nigeria’s educational curricula, these facts will resurrect like the volcanoe. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine.
