Much ado about Osinbajo’s pitch

As next year’s presidential race gathers momentum, political parties are intensifying their mobilisation. Idowu Abiodun examines the signicance of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s admonition to the Southwest to vote wisely.

On the campaign swing, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo just made a pitch that rattled many; and sent not a few drooling.

Talking at the palace of the Alaafin, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, Iku Baba Yeye, the Vice President let it out that if the Yoruba worked very hard for a Muhammadu Buhari presidential encore, they just might be paving the way for a Yoruba presidency by 2023!

That pitch has sent not a few foaming in the mouth; and sizzling with ethnic tar — surely, a sitting Vice President ought to be a Nigerian nationalist, and not a sectional campaigner?

It’s the classic Nigerian national hypocrisy — any reference to Nigerian federating units must be viewed as the most unpardonable national high crime!  But then, what makes Nigeria a federation?  Obasanjo’s holy plasticity of being Nigerian without first being a Yoruba man?

Obasanjo!  Ironically, the Ebora Owu is why I don’t personally agree with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on the prospect of a Yoruba presidency by 2023.

Obasanjo is the most annoying pretender, an irredeemable narcissist, an unfazed megalomaniac and an unrepentant prodigal, when the matter is Yoruba interest; with his annoying illogic, which fires his umpteenth grandstanding, that other people’s gains must be a Yoruba loss; so long as he takes personal glory, to claim he loves Nigeria more than any other person, living, dead or even unborn.

Still, Obasanjo is a Yoruba man, and he only quit the Presidency in 2007.  I sincerely feel other ethnics from Nigeria’s South, should get it, after the Buhari encore.

But then, that’s only an analyst’s view — an analyst’s view that may be logical; and almost everything considered, appears fair and equitable.  Still, when you factor in the dynamics of politics, that might not tell all of the story.

Indeed, in the all-crucial point of equity, even that logic could sound rather naive in the brutal context of real-politik, where everyone invests their best to grab power, in a federation with a history of fierce contestations for power.

So, logic and real-politik considered, the Vice Presdent’s pitch would appear not out of order, since his message, viewed less emotively, was really strong on equity, with absolutely no compromise to other ethnics’ right to treading that same path: work very hard for the re-election of the present order and get your due.  It just might be your swiftest path to the Nigerian presidency!

That, in my view, is as valid a counsel for a putative Yoruba presidency, as it is for a putative Igbo, or even an Ijaw, Itsekiri, Edo, Efik, or any of the slew of southern minorities for that matter — if they play their politics right; and build the requisite pan-Nigerian coalition to deliver on that not illegitimate dream.

In any case, before you slay the Vice President for applying practical equity to a possible Yoruba bid for a post-Buhari Nigerian presidency, why not juxtapose John Nwodo, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo president’s comments on Nigeria’s future power path, from the Igbo perspective?

Chief Nwodo was quoted to have said Nigeria would never surmount its present challenges — or something along that sentiment — until an Igboman became president.

Now, what was that?  A brag?  A dire prophecy?  Or just an explosive bluff, based on nothing but empty exceptionalism?  Empty exceptionalism, because what especial or exclusive trait does an Igbo person have, for being Igbo, that other ethnics don’t have, so much so that only an Igbo president would, open sesame, redeem Nigeria from all its past and present troubles?

With all due respect to the Ohanaeze chair, that statement is hardly logical.  But, it doesn’t make it any less democratic.  Indeed, in a federal Nigeria, the more passionate folks get about their ethnic pride, the better it perhaps is for everyone, if that pride powers everyone to put their best into the Nigerian project.

Which is why whereas on the logical plain you can fault the Ohanaeze chief, on the passionate path, you can’t.  His passion may have got the better of his reason — since such bluff could prove a tad annoying to other Nigerians outside the Igbo stock, and therefore short-circuit his message.  But who cares?  He pitches his people.  That is hardly a crime: to wish the best for your own, in a federal territory abuzz with power contestation.

At the end, it all depends on how you want to play your politics, the coalition you want to build and the goals you have in sight.

That is why the Vice President’s pitch, at Oyo, the heartland of the Yoruba homeland, should not be taken beyond the context of an electioneering pitch.  The sociology of federalism demands you voice different pitches to different regions, since local dreams and aspirations are never the same, even if all reside within the territory of a federal Nigeria.

So, let everyone work hard toward their own power aspirations, no matter where the eventual beneficiary comes from. What rather matters is that in power, a government’s policy should not be skewed towards or against anyone.  With equity and fairness, it wouldn’t matter where the president comes from.

Obasanjo enjoyed the Yoruba presidential slot.  But, Yoruba land tasted — perhaps most of — the pestilence of his presidency.  Aside from his scorched earth military invasion to rein in both Odi (Bayelsa State) and Zaki Biam (Benue State), where a few felons rudely challenged the might of the state, and landed their respective communities in hot soup, the Southwest, perhaps more than any other, felt the full weight of Obasanjo’s empty rhetoric.

Examples?  “Lagos is a jungle” — that, he proudly and arrogantly declared.  But for a forward-looking Tinubu governorship that did extensive urban renewal in infrastructure, made possible by a rare but brilliant financial re-engineering,  Lagos — and by extension the Nigerian economy — would by now have ground to a halt.

Add to that Obasanjo’s cruel seizure of the Lagos council funds; his South West regimental politics and do-or-die electoral temper, that climaxed in the grand heist masquerading as election in 2007; the wanton neglect of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, just to mention a few, and you’d see why presidential nativity could, in fact, be a blight.

Juxtapose that to the Buhari era developmental policies, physical and social, with its nationwide spread, despite the opposition’s ruthless media propaganda to spin the contrary.  There is no part of the country that has not got its fair share.

In strictly business terms, while the president has been chief executive officer (CEO) driving policies, the Vice President has been the chief implementor, as chief operations officer (COO); and as he goes on his blitz, the latest being the Tradermoni micro loans, the boisterous reception nationwide shows a pan-Nigerian fairness and equity, in pro-poor policy and other policy deliveries.

Vice President Osinbajo has been a vibrant implementing agent, of the PMB government’s equal opportunity investment, in the most vulnerable among Nigeria’s hard working masses.

That has clearly established his sense of fairness, equity and justice, where it matters most.  Telling his people, to put their votes where it would be most beneficial for them as a collective, is legit electioneering pitch, that can’t negate those golden traits.