TINUBU’S ENDORSEMENT

Oru Leonard

Our beloved country, Nigeria, must stand out in the boldest relief as a supreme irony and a study in the surreal. Its capacity for droll and inverted logic, verging on the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage sometimes develops a psychological bond with his captor(s), played out last week.

Governors who were elected on the platform of the governing All Progressives Congress(APC) endorsed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a second term. This endorsement occurred a week shy of two years since he assumed office. Prior to that, APC Governors from the geopolitical North West had endorsed the President for a second term.

By these ringing endorsements, the APC Governors have set a precedent that is most likely to frame our politics for the bad. In a country where premium is laid on precedent – witness the skewed appointments of the Tinubu administration in favor of his clan, which mimicked the incredibly nepotistic ones of the Muhammadu Buhari administration – successive governments are most likely to embrace, if not perpetuate it, as the new normal. And this unsavory new normal will only foster a huge distraction from governance and the delivery of democracy dividends.

But what is grotesque about this clanging endorsement is that it is not predicated on any concrete accomplishments. On security, massive poverty and economic hardship, the Tinubu administration has not moved the needle even by one inch. Rather than for heightened insecurity to abate, it has intensified. Poverty stalks the land like some ghoul, visiting despair and hopelessness. Harmful policies and suffocating taxes, often fashioned out with profusion and without forethought, have decimated small businesses across the country. The informal sector, which used to drive the economy, has been driven recklessly to the margins. This has in turn increased destitution in the country.

The APC Governors from the North West, who began this bizarre and preposterous endorsement, must either be suffering from the Stockholm syndrome or are guilty of opportunism of the most egregious variety. Here is the North West, a geopolitical zone, which in spite of desperate attempts to ramp up Internally Generated Revenue(IGR) and monthly allocations from the federal account, keeps the rear in terms of prosperity. Here is a geopolitical zone which boasts of the severest poverty and the highest out of school children in the country.
And here is a geopolitical zone riven and afflicted with insurgency, kidnappings and killings of the vilest kind. The Lakurawas continue to lay siege to Kebbi State, killing and maiming with recklessness. In Sokoto State, not less than three local governments are under the control of bandits and terrorists. In Zamfara State, Bello Turji is the Supremo. He and his mendacious minions exact tributes and taxes with vicious abandon. In Katsina, insurgents and kidnappers have since overrun the State, making life a nightmare for its citizens.

These traumatic challenges, with slight modifications, can be extrapolated to other geopolitical zones. The North East and the North Central are witnessing, on the watch of President Tinubu, a resurgence of insurgency and genocidal killings. This terrible state of affair has grave consequences for farming, and by extension, the country’s food security.

To thus endorse President Tinubu for a second term, and in these most inauspicious of circumstances, and when the country is mired in deep despair, is to shortchange and betray the people. How do you shower blandishments and encomium on a person, whose performance is at best, and by all parameters, less than mediocre? What these Governors have done is akin to promoting to the next class a student who has failed his examination with distinction.

Yet, Nigeria is greater than a class, whether literally or metaphorically. This is why we should appreciate the disaster these thoughtless Governors are courting for the country. The temptation, for President Tinubu, who has been endorsed for a second term by these Governors, is to assume that he is doing well, contrary to the prevailing reality. Based on that false premise, rather than put his hand to the plough, he will, at best rest on his oars.
Apart from setting a bad precedent and spurring the President to lapse into complacency, these hasty endorsements go against the grain of our electoral laws.

By virtue of Section 94(1) of the Electoral Act 2022, campaigns in public by political parties are expected to commence 150 days before polling day. By the same token, Section 28(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 stipulates that Notice for elections shall be issued by the Election Management Body(EMB), namely, the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), 360 days before the date of the elections. Meanwhile, here are we, two years to the conduct of the elections in 2027 and we are captured in the throes and frenzies of defections and endorsements. For good measure, campaigns are in full swing.

One’s surmise is that theses endorsements were informed by a self-seeking quid-pro-quod, namely that in endorsing the President, the Governors would in turn secure or be granted automatic tickets for the 2027 elections. In so doing, and in their desperation to secure automatic tickets, the Governors have visited considerable violence both to their party and our democracy: They have whimsically foreclosed the possibility of other candidates to contest the space they occupy. Thus, rather than expand the frontiers of our democracy, they have, by their selfishness narrowed it and diminished its ardor.