Ganduje: When Politicians Play ‘god’ – By Kazeem Akintunde

EVEN before the ink with which Supreme Court Justices wrote the 2023 Presidential election judgment dried on the paper it was written, the National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, was already dreaming of a two-term tenure of eight years for his principal, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Like a young lad giddy with excitement after being given a lollipop, Ganduje ‘directed’ former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, not to contest the 2027 presidential election because according to him, Tinubu would seek a second term and would definitely win again.

The option left for both Atiku and Obi, Ganduje said, was for the duo to wait for another turn in 2031 to realise their presidential aspirations. Let me quote him verbatim: “Nigeria belongs to all of us, it is our responsibility as patriots to pool our resources together to move the country forward. I congratulate both Atiku and Obi for their dogged fight in extending the frontiers of our democracy and law. This is democracy. Tinubu’s victory is another victory for democratic rule in the country. There is still room for both Obi and Atiku to actualise their presidential aspiration after the second term tenure of President Tinubu in 2031.”

An oracle, preferably Octopus Paul, who was very good at predicting football matches during the World Cup Mundial must have told Ganduje that both he and Tinubu would still be around by 2027.

Paul had correctly predicted the winners of each of the seven 2010 FIFA World Cup matches that the German team played against Australia, Serbia, Ghana, England, Argentina, Spain and Uruguay – as well as the tournament’s Netherlands vs. Spain final.

Do not get me wrong, I am not wishing the duo dead, but for Ganduje to play God on a matter he has no control over is arrant nonsense. Recall that the former Chairman of the PDP, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor boasted the same way, that the then ruling PDP would rule Nigeria for 60 years, and we all saw how that prediction went south. Ganduje is not God, and politicians must remember that they can never play God. Even in Islam, the faith Ganduje professes, it is wrong for him to project about what will happen tomorrow, not to talk of the next four years, without a qualifier – if God Wishes.

American Minister, theologian and author, James Freeman Clarke, who was born in April 4, 1810 and died June 8, 1888, had noted that while politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation. It is not rocket science for one to decipher where the likes of Ganduje belongs in his political scheming.

While Ganduje is already adding another four years to the mandate given to his boss by Nigerians and by extension the apex court following his victory in the February 25, 2023 polls, Tinubu’s first reaction when aides rushed to his office in Aso Rock to greet him after the Supreme Court judgement was to tell them that their jobs are now secured. That statement alone shows the thinking of a man who knows that victory could have gone either way, and having just escaped a bitterly fought contest, was more contrite in victory.

In his victory speech which he personally signed, Tinubu actually recognised the role played by Atiku and Obi in deepening our democracy and invited the duo to team up with him in rescuing the country from imminent collapse. Or what remains in a country where more than 80 per cent of its people can no longer afford to eat three square meals in a day? Of what benefit are leaders whose citizens suffer want and depredation? Where is the joy in presiding over a country a section of which is embittered and are looking for ways of existing the union? The likes of Ganduje is one of the reasons many of our youths no longer have hope on our soil and are desperate to leave Nigeria for greener pastures.

Should we remind Ganduje that the Supreme Court never ruled on whether Tinubu forged the certificate he presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from the Chicago State University? What the seven-man Justices did was to let Atiku Abubakar know that he wasted more than a year before approaching the Chicago State University and the Court in the United States of America before getting the evidence with which he could have nailed Tinubu. If those ‘evidences’ had been tendered and pleaded at the Court of Appeal, perhaps, we would have been singing a different song today.

Now that the Apex Court has ruled in his favour, it is time for the President to take a breather and reflect on his life’s journey. He has dreamt of becoming the number one citizen of this great country since the day he was sworn -in as the Governor of Lagos State in 1999. God has crowned him and his wish has become a reality. He has the mandate of Nigerians for the next four years and should make good his promise of renewed hope for the people. One way he can do that is by thinking and looking beyond his ‘Lagos Boys’ in finding lasting solutions to some of the problems plaguing the nation.

Nigeria is far, far bigger than Lagos State. The economic indices and dynamics of those periods are not what is at play now. He should think outside the box and look for capable hands across Nigeria in his quest for the transformation of the country.

Most of his appointments since he assumed office tends to favour only his old team from Lagos; the Finance Minister, Wale Edun and the Governor of the Central Bank, Yemi Cardoso are two of his aides in Lagos now holding very critical positions at the Federal level, among several others. Fine, if he says that he has worked with them in the past and that he has implicit confidence in their capacity, but there are others who are equally intelligent that could be of added value to his administration. It is time for him to fish them out and bring them on board.

His government clocked five months in office yesterday, but the standards of living of average Nigerians have worsened since he took over. This is due to the removal of fuel subsidy and the unification of the dual exchange rate regime of the naira in the forex market. In spite of the unification, the gap between the official exchange rate and the black-market rate keeps widening. When he came on board, the naira exchanged for N760/$. It became progressively worse and reached N1,310/$ before the Supreme Court judgment, which seems to inject some confidence into the market, making the naira to quickly regain some strength.

Will it last or will it be just a flash in the pan? Many Nigerians are now speculators, buying and hoarding dollars, believing that it would continue to rise so that they can sell at a premium. I wish them luck. But they should remember that they are also contributing to the economic downfall of the country for which we are all going to reap the reward.

If we are not producing goods that could earn us more dollars, the value of the naira will continue to depreciate. If we do not refine our own fuel in Nigeria, we would continue to use scarce dollars earned from crude oil sale for the importation of refined petroleum products into the country. Once we put our act together in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, and the moribund refineries are put back on stream, these should give us some leeway in getting dollars to fund other things.

Again, hawking dollars on the streets without any form of regulations is akin to disaster. There is nowhere in the world that you will get forex without the buyer providing some form of identification. We need to regulate and put some sanity in place in Nigeria in this regard.

Most Nigerians are aware of those issues that brought the nation to its knees and we are also not short of solutions that could get us out of our present quagmire, but whether our political leaders have the will to take tough decisions remain the bane of the country.

President Tinubu has said that those two decisions had to be taken and that there would be light at the end of the tunnel. Some of his compatriots have hope that he would get things done and turn the fortune of the country around in a very short time. He should do all within his power not to disappoint them.

It is when he delivers that Nigerians would troop out in large numbers to campaign for him again and gift him a second term tenure if he so desires and if God spares his life beyond 2027. Even if Atiku and Obi decide and rightfully too, to still contest in four years’ time, Nigerians may then ask them to wait for another four years to give Tinubu a second term tenure.

It is not for the Gandujes of this world and other Abobakus to shut out others from the contest. Deliver on your promise this time around, improve the standards of living of Nigerians, and sit back and watch whether another four-year tenure won’t be added onto thee. I wish Tinubu well in his mission at turning the fortunes of Nigerians around for the better.

See you next week.

Akintunde is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Glittersonline newspaper. His syndicated column, Monday Discourse, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.