2023 Presidency
OpenLife Nigeria reports that for the second time within seven months, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2023 general elections, had reasons to give President Muhammadu Buhari the full length of his tongue.
And on each occasion, the former governor of Lagos State found Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State to tongue lash and dresses down President Buhari who he subtly accuses of being a clog on his presidential aspiration.
First was an exultant, auspicious gathering of the APC party members in Abeokuta on June 3, 2022, with Tinubu on the campaign trail to garner support from the delegates in the party’s primary.
He, without reservations, decided to publicly share some truths with the audience about his role in the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as President. It was a gathering of his kinsmen; an arena of maximum comfort for him. He threw away all pretensions to decorum and political correctness and went ‘native’.
He deployed the best of Yoruba idioms laced with biting sarcasm in a way that even Wole Soyinka, the Master of the English language universe, would have found impossible to translate adequately. Tinubu did not only want his kith and kin to hear him, he wanted them to feel him from their underbellies with nothing lost in translation. He made revelations after revelations concerning the jostling for positions in APC, going back to its roots in the defunct Alliance for Democracy, and how he made personal sacrifices to help nurture and grow the party to become the juggernaut that it is today.
So vexatious were the outpourings of Tinubu that Senator Abdullahi Adamu, the national chairman of APC, cautioned and warned him to be careful or face the wrath of the party.
Subsequently, Tinubu won the primary election and became the party’s candidate.
However, the campaigns, as observed by public affairs analysts, are not enjoying the robust contributions of President Buhari, who seems to be cold and slow in making public affirmative statements to support his party’s candidates.
On one occasion, he told an APC gathering in Adamawa State not to vote for anyone with fraudulent antecedence.
But given that lots of individuals, especially from the opposition camps, have variously accused Tinubu of fraudulent past, Buhari’s statement was interpreted to mean a campaign against Tinubu.
Expectedly, Tinubu ,on Wednesday, found another opportunity to publicly accuse President Buhari of conniving with his opponents to cause his failure on February 25.
He alleged that there are plans to scuttle the 2023 general elections through fuel scarcity and naira redesign.
Tinubu spoke in Abeokuta, Ogun State, during the APC presidential campaign.
“They don’t want this election to hold. They want to sabotage it. Will you allow them?”, Tinubu asked the teeming supporters at the MKO Abiola stadium, Kuto, Abeokuta.
The former Lagos Governor said: “They have started coming up with the issue of ‘no fuel.’
“If you like increase price of fuel, hide the fuel or change the ink on the naira notes, we will win the election,” he said.
These outbursts, according to an APC stalwart, Dr. Douglas Paul who spoke to OpenLife Thursday afternoon, are direct attacks on President Buhari.
“Who ordered and approved Naira redesign? Was it not President Buhari? Who is the Minister of Petroleum? Is it not President Buhari? As Tinubu was making the statement in Abeokuta, was he not aware that Buhari had set up a team headed by himself to address the issue of scarcity? Therefore, you can understand that his Abeokuta attack was a direct attack on Buhari because the issues he raised are issues that have Buhari’s signature,” he stated.
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