Like former Russian Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu! One of President Obasanjo’s favourite songs is Sonny Neji (face me I face you oo… Oyaa, Na mi and you today.. oyaa!! Face me I go face you… Do me I go do you… OBJ is also reputable for using the remarks; Iron jam Iron one must bend when he’s in a battle mode. It is now Tinubu vs the military Generals and not Peter Obi and the OBIdient movement as he may have erroneously believed. Peter Obi and the Labour party have been tried and proven and may have been positioned to become the prime beneficiary of the outcome of the impending face-off between the military constituency and some of their former cronies they allowed to play the Nigeria chase game with them and the citizens of Nigeria as pawns.
I don’t see Asiwaju Tinubu winning this battle and winning the election. I see them taking Atiku with them into permanent retirement as they do not trust him a penny. They should know. They are privy to so much classified information and security reports. So the odds as it is clearly tilt towards Peter Obi in the final analysis. Call him “Nwa Chinemere Oko’okpa na eyiri akwa”. It is not by our might. The die is now cast. The final chapter on Tinubu political machine and dynasty has begun to unfold. Lagos is now about to witness the D-day battle of Normandy.
Nigeria is too big, too complex and way too complicated for any one single individual to approach this country with the extreme hubris and sense of indispensability as Asiwaju and his idle worshipers have demonstrated in the past few years. Everybody tends to be a boy and he’s the only man in the house. No former Governor or anybody achieved anything in Lagos but he alone built Lagos, and hence he’s the owner of Lagos PLC. Twice he went to Abeokuta in Ogun state, twice he insulted the former Military General and former head of state with his Emi’lokan speech and the F9 condescending remarks of President Buhari. Granted, some of us are not PMB fans. But he still occupies the office of the President, and if weird characters like Gov. El. Rufai and that of Kogi state and Asiwaju loyalists are allowed to set the tone and pace of governance in this country, and then we are finished.
Let’s not go into the money coup Asiwaju unleashed on the primary of the APC that gave him the presidential ticket. Should we talk of how he has infiltrated every institution of governance and destroyed the dissenting civil liberties he once used as tools to score some kind of political uppercut against his political rivals. Everyone that watched that APC charades saw a lame duck president Buhari totally embarrassed by what unfolded in that APC convention that Asiwaju hijacked with his deep pockets. Obviously, PMB seems to have lost control of his party, the government and now the country to an idle bloody civilian (as the military people call non-military others like us regardless of how highly placed you are). Indeed, we are all bloody civilians. A simple reality that Tinubu in his naivete failed to realize or pretend not to understand even with the benefit of hindsight and experience of how Chief MKO Abiola and some others ended up.
How about the closed circle council of former heads of state and presidents dominated by military Generals? What do they think of Asiwaju at this moment as he’s poised to also acquire entire Nigeria and turn it into his private estate like Lagos PLC? One can only guess as we see the handwriting on the walls. So is it now possible that Asiwaju will survive this onslaught and succeed in becoming the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in this February 2023 presidential election? If you ask me, na who I go ask??
Well, there’s a precedent with the Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of the beneficiaries of Russian cronyism and late Boris Yeltsin’s voodoo privatization that handed over a chunk of Russian oil wealth to a few Kremlin Oligarchs and loyalists such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and oil Magnet just like Nigeria with Atiku, Asiwaju and others in Nigeria today. And now some of the prime beneficiaries of the fleecing of Nigeria are now insisting that they must purchase Nigeria wholesale with the same Nigerian wealth they were allowed to corner. The likes of Asiwaju Tinubu have grown so rich and so complacent if not naive to the point that they failed to follow the story of power play around the world, especially the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and how he ended up in prison in Siberia’s cold region when he started nursing the ambition to take over the Kremlin.
Many may not recall, but one of PMB’s major speeches shortly after winning the elections pointed to the fact that some individuals have cornered so much of our commonwealth to the point they think they can purchase Nigeria. What’s more? The military boys have a mindset about Nigeria, especially the Nigerian war Veterans. It is an unwritten rule, but if you know, you know. They can forgive their fellow war veterans who saw the battle as they risked their lives, but they will never forgive anyone else, be you from North East or West to play the game they played, or to be placed on the same pedestal as the owners of Nigeria as Dele Momodu captured it. This is one reality the presidential Candidates of PDP AND APC have not faced and may realize this too late. We are all eyes and ears and must not once again become pawns in the final battle of Normandy and the D day. Why??… We must ignore the instigation to go out there to become the inquisitive monkeys that often receive more bullets. To borrow from former US secretary of state, James Baker, We simply do not have a dog in that fight.
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