Leadership at its most Challenging, Tiny by Aspiration, wide in the Nation’s Expectations -By Jimi Bickersteth

It appears from all indications that the nation has jump started the race to 2023 presidential polls by Bola Tinubu’s audacious and up-bottom visit to the seat of government and in the process announced to the hapless and taciturn host president his intentions to contest for the office of the president in the 2023 polls, of course, without breaking ground rules and extant laws.

One cannot but agree with the view that these are not times for tentativeness or timidity on the part of any serious and prepared contender who seeks to make an impact in an election some fourteen months away. Interestingly, some of the most strident criticisms that followed on the heels of that novel move have come majorly from BAT’s own kindred.

After the declaration so to speak, BAT’s own kith and kin have resorted to looking for a long lost Lamidi Amuda Omoboriowo Sangodele, not necessarily in that order. The character unknown to most of those his archenemies who have been touted as the ‘ageless’ Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose real age has become a subject of conjectures, as if one’s biological age was one and the same as one’s mind, maturity, ability, agility, mental capacity and physical presence. Let me add here as a rider, the age at which judges retired, if you gerrit.

The Afenifere that was supposed to be the pan-Yoruba ‘clearing house’ was not left out of the tirades in their self induced debacle with the person of BAT, and short of declaring BAT as a Yoruba man, have consequently, issued and declared him a persona non grata status. I shrugged at this. What and who constitutes the group, a bunch of hangers on that had at one time or the other benefited immensely from the generosity, hospitality of the man.

Tinubu’s declaration of intent criticisms from the Southeast was understandably political and on this BAT is well grounded. He must be ready for the brickbats, character assassination, unverifiable vilification and attendant backlashes. That’s putting it mildly but without flattery.

To BAT and the other political gladiators from anywhere in the country that would be involved in the process, by process, I mean the primary and election proper, it behoves them to know that, one great sign of a cemetery is silence, when silence reigns, breakthrough is buried. For Tinubu, whatever his ‘offences’ and ‘crimes’ were, it appeared it was providence that has really kept him relevance since he forayed into national politics.

The Yoruba’s angle of the ‘demystify Tinubu’ campaign alluded to earlier is the object of the discourse here in the next few paragraphs. Let me start first with the Yorubas common sense saying, “Ọmọ ẹní ò ṣè’dí rẹ̀bẹ̀tẹ̀, ká wá f’ìlẹ̀kẹ̀
s’idi ọmọ ẹlomi.Teni teni, àkísà ni t’àtàn. Hopefully, the naysayers and gangups and their chief orchestras have not forgotten that. So far so good, the race have again shown their fangs and are prepared to fight dirty as usual. Not necessarily because it is Tinubu, they are ready to take on other aspiring contenders to the cleaners. Indeed, a man’s enemies are truly among his own kith and kin.

If you remember how the tribe frustrated, demeaned and truncated Awolowo and MKO’s political ambition, it was gracious for OBJ (himself, one of the champions of the demystify Awo and MKO), that he belonged to the nation’s ruling cabal and one of their most dreaded mafiosi. You will recall that in spite of that, the old general was himself maligned and almost frustrated, but was saved because, he had abinitio been gifted the presidential slot by the ‘owners and landlords of Nigeria,’ to assuage the Yorubas on the ugly and undue treatment meted out to MKO and the ”HOPE ’93 CRUSADE.”

Now the tribe have picked on BAT, just as the ‘owners and landlords of Nigeria’ have correctly envisaged. You will notice more as events leading to 2023 unfolds and how they intend to worst the best and show the world how overrated the Yorubas claims to education and political sophistication is. The Mafia sure know how and when to fly the kites. The correct colours would soon be on display, when it would be too late to effect any changes or even proffered effective solutions.

At the moment, the minds of every of the combatants against a Tinubu presidency have been tilted towards accountability, integrity and honesty. Who is a saint?. Who is? Not even PMB. The nation have just been auspiciously forgiving and allow things ride. The BAT that I know (and who leaders of the ‘say no to Tinubu aspirations’) has his excesses and shortcomings mitigated by several strong and positive mien, a stupendous resources, excessive networks, public service, experience and achievement, and who appeared to be the only one among his people that looks ready and prepared for the presidency. Must the Yorubas allow its best to be wasted! Could this be the aftermath of the ‘Aole’s ‘curse!¿’

The reverred Rev. Samuel Johnson in his book ‘The History of Yoruba,’ on how a mutinous army led by Afonja against Alafin Aole, the then Yoruba nation’s supremo uno, and the ensuing calabash death drama. That was local history you’ll say, yes, you realize that all politics are local. You may even affirmed it was a myth of creation, you may not be far from being wrong, all myths are designed to teach sense and wisdom from which intelligence is grown.

Back Oba Aole, before he was killed, according to Rev. Samuel Johnson in his book, he reverently invoked the spirits of his forebears and shot three magical arrows into the three tripod (àrò mẹ́ta) on which from creation the Yoruba kingdom was believed to stand. “My curse be on you for your disloyalty (what the modern Yoruba man would call political sagacity, shrewdness, and sophistication) so …let them never return to bring you word again. To all the points I shot my arrows will ye be carried slaves. My curse will carry you to the sea and beyond the sea, slaves will rule over you and you their master will become slaves” he said. Thereafter, the kingdom never knew peace. It was not surprising today that the Yoruba’s are masters of PhD, pull him down sydrome, and a disoriented psychology and philosophy of leadership. Be that as may.

However, the object of this treatise is not in defence of Tinubu or his political ambition, but about what the peoples expectations are for 2023, whoever emerged as the President, as the nation’s real kingpins still have the king’s and Spade shrouded in utter darkness and mystery. You and I know that there are a thousand mysteries of right and wrong that have had the nation’s political class befuddled. One of which has always been the choice of leaders.

The limited numbers of the ‘real’ people that have a say in ‘poking and picking’ leaders have led to what many have come to see and recognised as leadership absence, which, in the nation’s national life today have consequently led to mild cries of honest hunger for truth. Truths that seek to pierce the conspiracy of silence around the leadership; a silence beyond the grave, but to them ever echoed back only a repetition of their unanswered cries.

To us all come, the great note of questioning despair that darkens our horizon and paralyses our efforts. Why should the nation be as it is? Why do some starve while others feast even as the maverick and talented VP as the chairman of the Economic Council, has he been outmuscled and or intimidated beyond reason; why does virtue often languish in the shadow, while vice triumphs in the sunshine, why does failure so often dog the footsteps of honest efforts, while the success that comes from trickery and dishonour is greeted with a grand applause, why is there so much unnecessary pain, sorrowing and suffering in the nation, when there indeed there should be any. It is at this point that whoever becomes the president in 2023 should breeze in and resolve that he would not permit the catalogue deluge of problems to plunge him into doubt and cloud him with vagueness and uncertainty. 2023 is for the nation to set things right.

It should not be about what’s wrong but about what the nation is putting right. In an attempt to create the Nigeria of our dreams. Times such as this triggers time to put the malaise all over the federation into right perspectives as the nation come to resolve resolutely that there must be a way out of all the ghastly nightmare around it; the web that was inexorably creeping round the nation and all of us floundering in a pit of doubt, blotting out the vision of hope, sustaining the reality of violence, kidnappings, maiming, killing and fantasies of psychedelic modernity and development which looked odd and somehow sinister against the background of peace.

Was it possible that all the dreams of Africa’s fantastically fastest growing economy had happened in the political elites and media deranged imagination? I asked myself. Then in the the heat and hush of the PHCN-less lonely room, in this dusty and lustreless Akute locale with a sizeable population and no motorable roads, above the drone of the bees and the rustle of willows against the voices of my inner mind, then I knew the verdict was that of a nation that had made neither here nor there its preferred destination. Thank goodness the nation was not making any serious fuss about its grief.

Therefore, in the quest for a suitable presidential material let us all respect logic, character, competences and capacity not ethnic or tribal allegiances. Being a president of a country Nigeria’s size (the highest, most prestigious and most powerful job in the world) should be one in which if you perform flawlessly you are seen as just doing your job, but if you make a mistake you are likely subjected to abuse by the people with too low a spirit for days of adversities in a pink slime in the nugget.

The nation would prefer who could make his people laugh, when they don’t feel like smiling. That would relieve and take the postures of people being tortured off their faces, at a time the world is spinning faster than anyone can keep up with. The president the nation desired for 2023 is one that would show by constant actions that he is capable of deploying his ability creatively and achieve results, not spending so much with little to show for it. Today, Nigerians are getting used to refusing to submit to any flat track bully syndrome or political jobbers without a dot of panic, remorse or regret.

The nation have neglected so much its future that its present is almost meaningless. Everything now is about finding the balance that gives a prosperous now with a thriving future then to come. That takes us to the issues around the connivance of the 9th NASS and the nation’s debts, a bear with a sore head the NASS and the presidency jointly created; a Whitlow the nation will need the heat and a measure of kinetic action to flush out.

In tackling its hydraheaded problems, the question for which verifiable answer must be sought is,
i. how the nation’s is going to repay and or manage its rising debts at a time 77% of income is now laid out on debt servicing in an import-dependent economy with an unstable currency.
ii. how the nation’s small businesses (enterprises within the value of about $2m which are the backbone of employment), are going to be stimulated or revived in the light of current unemployment realities and status.
iii. how do you tackle the issue of recruits for insurgency.
iv. On security, how do you restore morale of a tired, dishevelled and bleeding,
v. and how the bad things of the past would get to be good. These ‘little’ things have a lot more meaning than you think.

The people want tenacious and determined leadership only experience and exposure that symbolises strength, health, sound mind and passion could procure and offer.

#JimiBickersteth
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer.
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