Will a Muslim-Muslim Ticket Sink Tinubu’s ‘Life-long Ambition’?

FOCUS

In a seeming dilemma that speaks to a larger nationhood quandary, the All Progressives Congress presidential standard-bearer Bola Ahmed Tinubu mulls a Muslim-Muslim ticket – projected to generate a high-octane controversy that may derail his “life-long ambition,” writes Louis Achi

In 48 hours or so, the presidential candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in consultation with relevant party hierarchs, is expected to name his running mate for the 2023 presidential election. The Friday deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for this purpose leaves little wiggle room. Tinubu’s emergence as APC presidential standard-bearer has an important backstory.

It could be recalled that Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State was a key arrowhead – alongside Governor Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa State – of the 14 Northern governors of All Progressive Congress (APC) extraction who insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor must come from the South. Governor Yahya Bello of Kogi State had excused himself from this pressure group’s meeting with the President because he rejected the resolution made by the governors – reducing their rank to 13.

Those in attendance include Abubakar Bagudu of Kebbi, Simon Lalong of Plateau, Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa, Aminu Masari of Katsina, Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa, Bello Matawalle of Zamfara, Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Abubakar Bello of Niger, Yahaya Inuwa of Gombe, Babagana Zulum of Borno, Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna and AbdulRahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara.

Significantly, Governor Nasir El-Rufai is perceived to revel in strategic ambiguity. According to organizational communication expert Eric Eisenberg strategic ambiguity enables an executive, individual or organisation to express itself – its mission and goals – in a way that allows “the freedom to alter operations which have become maladaptive over time.” It helps operatives understand the need to find balance between being highly specific or overly vague in what they stand for and how they want to be perceived.

An astute as well as cerebral politician, El-Rufai knows the difference between being ambiguous and being strategic about his ambiguity. By nimbly guiding the crucial Northern pressure group to fundamentally birth the Tinubu candidacy and which has deservedly drawn plaudits from important stakeholders, El-Rufai has apparently moved to part two of his sophisticated script. And this is a Muslism-Muslim ticket push for APC’s presidential contest – which he is on the shortlist!

With eyes locked on winning his last-ditch effort at clinching the presidency, Tinubu’s dilemma in choosing a running mate flow from the nation’s combustible ethno-religious configuration. More, a critical fact that is hardly a secret is that for Northern Nigeria, life without political power represents an existential threat – rightly or wrongly. This quirky belief has largely shaped the national journey and troubled history right down to the operative constitution. Tinged with religion, this fundamentally flawed concept again looms very large in the impending 2023 general elections.

At a very critical period in the nation’s history, the choice before Tinubu is stark. But many believe that the APC presidential candidate as well as the party’s priority is how it could defeat PDP’s lurking Atiku Abubakar and win the presidency next year. What are the implications of Tinubu picking a fellow Muslim as a running mate, a scenario MKO Abiola successfully pulled in 1993?

The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has cautioned the All Progressives Congress, APC presidenital candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu against heeding to pressures on a Muslim-Muslim ticket saying it won’t fly. CAN National President Dr Samson Ayokunle, who gave the warning on Sunday in Abuja, said such a step would be disastrous for the nation.

According to him, “While I congratulate the candidates, I must sound this warning, please do not fly a Muslim-Muslim ticket. It would not fly. It will not stand. Rather, it would set the nation against each other. If you embrace equity, fairness and justice, the Nigerian electorate will reward you with their votes at the polls and they will give you their support.”

For the Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Yola, Most Reverend Stephen Mamza, the APC should be cautioned against adopting a defective Muslim-Muslim ticket in the forthcoming presidential election. Mamza said besides such a presidential ticket being dead on arrival, it would serve to further widen current divisions in the country along religious lines.

The Catholic priest also said he was compelled, out of patriotic zeal, to wade into the debate over the dilemma Tinubu had found himself and described the arguments being advanced from some quarters in support of the idea of a Muslim-Muslim ticket, for the APC presidential standard bearer as “disheartening.”

In his view, the “Nigeria of 1993, during the time of Abiola and Kingibe, was completely different from Nigeria of today, heading into the 2023 elections,” adding that a Muslim-Muslim ticket was discriminatory and that it would further fuel exclusion, which was unhelpful, because everybody needs to be carried along.

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) on its part advised Tinubu to consult the ‘Noble Dozen’, before picking a running mate for the 2023 presidential election. The Islamic group explained that ‘Noble Dozen’ is the name it gave to the twelve Northern governors who insisted that the South should be given the opportunity to produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor. MURIC made the suggestion in a recent statement signed by its director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola.

“We will like to advise that apart from ensuring that the position of vice president in 2023 goes to the North, Senator Tinubu should consult the ‘Noble Dozen’,” the group said.

Although a Muslim-Muslim ticket will signal a major put-down for Nigeria’s Christians, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai who is interested in the vice president slot had said that the issue of religion would not be a criterium in determining the running mate of the APC’s presidential candidate. El-Rufai runs a Muslim-Muslim ticket in Kaduna State which is seen as having a half Christian and half Muslim demography.

Sources revealed that the APC governors and other stakeholders had agreed that the North-East zone should produce the vice-presidential candidate of the party. According to the report, those who are being tipped for the slot include the Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu; a former Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima; the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje and the Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong who is North-Central zone.

It was gleaned that while the North-East may produce the running mate, the position of the Senate President would go to the South-East and North-West would produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Cut to the bone, Tinubu presidential ambition hangs on a delicate balance and may pivot on the choice of deputy he makes ahead of the contest.

TRACKING BACK…

It could be recalled that Tinubu whose political career began in 1992 when he was elected to the Nigerian Senate, represented the Lagos West Constituency in the short-lived Third Republic. After the results of the June 12, 1993, presidential election were annulled, Tinubu became a founding member of the pro-democracy National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which mobilized support for the restoration of democracy and recognition of the June 12 results. He went into exile in 1994 and returned to the country in 1998 after the death of military dictator Sani Abacha, which ushered in a transition to civilian rule.

In the run-up to the 1999 elections, Tinubu was a protégé of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) leaders Abraham Adesanya and Ayo Adebanjo. He won the AD primaries for the Lagos State gubernatorial elections in competition with Funsho Williams and Dr. Wahab Dosunmu, a former Minister of Works and Housing. In April 1999, he stood for the governorship election on the AD ticket and won.

With the birth of the Fourth Republic, Tinubu was elected governor of Lagos State on the platform of the Action Congress. He remained governor between May 29, 1999 and May 29, 2007 and grew so much in influence to become the most influential member of the party and a prominent aristocrat as the Asiwaju of Lagos, a title given to him by HRM the Oba of Lagos.

Tinubu, alongside his new deputy, Femi Pedro, won re-election in April 2003. All other states in the South-West fell to the Peoples Democratic Party contrived political tsunami.

Through his tenacity and uncommon focus in guiding the reversal of electoral impunity across a wide swath of the nation’s political landscape at the period, he reaffirmed the enduring fact that, indeed, justice is the first condition of democracy. He revamped the progressives’ vanguard and compelled the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party to revise its gratuitous assumptions – especially in the Awoist enclave – and to ponder its future.

Tinubu patiently and resolutely choreographed the retrieval of the stolen gubernatorial mandates in Ekiti and Osun states, He demonstrated that injustice can only stand when stakeholders refuse to challenge it. His feat in no small way personified 2010 and will be recorded by history as having the most lasting significance. Is yesterday’s Tinubu same as today’s? Big question!

A NEW NIGERIA…

If Tinubu successfully demonstrated that justice is the first condition of democracy and construction of a new Nigeria years back, can he stand his ground and reaffirm that position by rejecting the party pressure to pick a same faith running mate?

Today, many Nigerians are uncertain of their values, their leadership and their safety. This diminished confidence and lack of certainty arguably flow from poor management of the nation’s diversity and negative perceptions spawned by the governance trajectory in the past almost eight years, vis-a-vis the promises.

Within this period, the social contract between the ruled and the rulers has been broken in many fundamental ways. Clearly, the stakes are extremely high, and the APC ought to be mindful that failure to achieve balance in its choice of a presidential running mate through a well-reasoned and faith-sensitive choice may imperil its chance of victory.

It is against this backdrop that Nigerians and APC stakeholders are taking more than a passing interest in the process playing out within the political party which must be concluded by Friday.