Tinubu, The 2023 Election, Ethnic Politics And Xenophobia -By Gozie Irogboli

The charade that is the Nigeria 2023 general election has come and gone but the unsavory effects will linger for a very long time and may alter irretrievably the conduct of future elections in Nigeria. The All Progressives Congress (APC) and the people of Lagos took electoral malfeasance and violence to egregious level with the deployment of hooligans to disenfranchise voters. There were gory tales of arson, blood-letting and mayhem unleashed on the hapless citizens who heeded the patriotic call to perform their civic duties. It is worrisome and heart-rending that during the March 18 Gubernatorial and State House of Assembly elections, hell was let loose as the area-boys and the motor park touts known as agberos  in Lagos were mobilized and armed to attack Ndigbo to prevent them from exercising their franchise under the full glare of security officers in a country they call their own without any official reprimand and INEC went ahead to announce the said election result despite the widely reported cases of voters’ suppression.

Prior to the election, Nigerians saw, read and heard of the numerous incidences of attack on the Igbo people in Lagos; first from the area boys who harassed the Igbo who trooped out for their PVCs which was interpreted to mean a move against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who had emerged as the APC presidential candidate. Tinubu’s daughter, Mrs Folashade Tinubu-Ojo who was appointed by Tinubu as the Mama-loja of the Lagos markets took it upon herself to harass traders, closing different markets indiscriminately, coercing the traders to contribute and participate in Tinubu’s campaign rallies against their will. Tinubu’s wife, Oluremi was caught on tape insulting the Igbo calling them ingrates and Tinubu’s allies and stooges took turns to denigrate the Igbo all in a bid to intimidate and blackmail them to vote Tinubu. After the presidential election, hell was let loose again as Ndigbo were attacked in different parts of Lagos, markets were burnt down, goods and markets stalls destroyed, shops looted and property of Ndigbo worth billions of Naira at Ikate, Oshodi, Olodi Apapa and many other places destroyed without compensation. It was reported that in some locations, the Baale and the community heads spearheaded and supervised the attack on Ndigbo. The notorious leader of Lagos Motor Park touts, Musiliu Akinsanya alias M. C. Oluomo issued an open threat warning Ndigbo in Lagos not to come out to vote on the day of election except they are coming out to vote the APC.

From the onset, Tinubu left no one in doubt as to what his intention was, going into the election. He declared that it is his turn to rule and that he was prepared to fight dirty to make it happen and anyone that thinks otherwise should shut up. He was caught on tape instructing his people thusly: “power is not served a la carte; fight for it at all costs, snatch it, grab it and run with it.”  And shortly before the election Tinubu stoked the fire of xenophobia when he accused the Igbo this way: “these are people who left their villages, came into Lagos from childhood, 12 years of age. We accommodated and took care of them. Now they want to bite the fingers that fed them…” Does it therefore surprise anyone that there was no official statement from Tinubu’s camp condemning the xenophobic attack on the Igbo in Lagos during the election? Those who spoke notably Bayo Onanuga one of the Tinubu’s henchmen justified the actions, regaled in their pyrrhic victory, celebrated the criminality and failure of democracy and the triumph of hooliganism and brigandage in Lagos without any official reprimand. Yet, these are people that claimed to have fought for democracy; those who claim to be progressives and pro-democrats. Tufia kwa!

The ugly phenomenon of vote suppression started in Lagos when Tinubu was voted in as the governor of Lagos State in 1999 and ever since he has perfected and adopted the unorthodox method of using hoodlums to intimidate voters in areas considered the stronghold of his political opponents. This ugly criminal trend has continued unabatedly. Aside from the high incidences of extortion and exploitation, the experiences of Ndigbo in Lagos have been unbearably burdensome and asphyxiating since the Tinubu’s era began in 1999. In 2013, Governor Raji Fashola Tinubu’s protégé and successor authorized the arrest of some Igbo people in Lagos, kept them in sub-human conditions that claimed the lives of some of the victims and then dump them under the Upper Iweka Bridge in the wee hours of the morning in Onitsha Anambra State ostensibly in a bid to decongest Lagos. The victims were never compensated. They only received half-hearted apology from the erring governor. But some Yoruba as is characteristic of them to show blind solidarity tried to justify this heinous crime. In particular, Femi Fani-Kayode wrote a fallacious, ridiculous and ad nauseam essay attacking the Igbo in his futile bid to justify this illegality and a breach of the constitution. Also the Oba of Lagos contributed to the xenophobic tension when he declared in 2015 that Ndigbo would be drowned in the Lagos Lagoon if they failed to vote his preferred candidate in the 2015 gubernatorial election. And the xenophobic tension has been brewing unchecked reaching a crescendo in the just concluded gubernatorial election.

Clearly, all these are because of the skewed, adverse and ruinous political philosophy prevalent in the Yoruba Southwest Nigeria. The Yoruba man may pretend to be a progressive, a pro-democrat, a patriot, a nationalist or even a human rights activist but in reality he is not. When S. G. Ikoku of blessed memory said that the Yoruba man cannot rise above regional politics, he was speaking from a vantage position having worked closely with the Yoruba in his Action Group days. From Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, we learnt that politics to the Yoruba man is a do-or-die affair. And to Tinubu it is war that you have to win at all costs, fighting dirty, using unorthodox method. Politics is a zero-sum game to the Yoruba man; a game of bitterness and rancor. It is about blind solidarity. Seyi Makinde and Ayo Fayose abandoned the party that made them because of the emergence of Tinubu and so did other PDP members in the Yoruba Southwest who worked underground for Tinubu.

The Yoruba man believes in micro-nationalism; his loyalty is first to Yoruba nation before anything. And he makes no secret about this tribal instinct that tends to make him show blind solidarity and most times becloud his sense of justice. To the Yoruba man a government is good if he is part of it otherwise it bad. I have said it openly that the Yoruba man is not significantly different from those he malign in the press. In fact politically, he is worse than any other Nigerian group in the country. The only different is that Nigerians have not told them the truth about who they really are. That is why they can grandstand on some national issues to distract the gullible public. Undoubtedly, the Yoruba man biggest tool has been the press and now that he is losing dominance in the media due to the emergence of the new media platforms, he has resorted to violence.

The Yoruba man does not believe in sharing power; he believes in politics of exclusion and winner-takes-all. The Yoruba man is in unrepentantly clannish and culture-trapped. His loyalty is to the Yoruba Empire and the Yoruba culture and whoever is the custodian of it. But over the years, the Yoruba in his bid to belie his true intention has pretended to be what he is not while he tries to obfuscate others through ethnic profiling using the negative Yoruba Press. The Yoruba man will nitpick, vilify and demonize others and but in truth, he is worse than those that he denigrates.

Thus, the worst mistake and the worst disservice Buhari and his people give to this country that is already battered and factionalized along ethnic and religious line is to subvert the will of the people and hand over power to an ethnic demagogue like Tinubu. Tinubu said it before that he does not believe in one Nigeria and he has not refuted that assertion. Nigerian has seen a foretaste of what Tinubu presidency will look like. Make no mistake about it, what is happening in Lagos will be replicated everywhere in the country if we are unfortunate to have Tinubu as president. Nigeria will see the metempsychosis of a full blown dictator in Tinubu if the electoral fraud of February 25, 2023 is not corrected. Tinubu is a desperate ethnic jingoist and a war monger. And it is extremely dangerous to have somebody like that in power at the national level. Tinubu might move the capital or key federal agencies back to Lagos in order to maintain his stranglehold on the nation. He and his cohorts will claim as they have always done spuriously that Abuja is built with revenue from Lagos. And it is delusional for anyone to think that given Tinubu’s background and antecedents that he can effectively manage a multi-cultural entity like Nigeria. The South should not be deceived about the deception of power shift. What he is doing to the Ndigbo of Southeast is an indication that he cannot be trusted to cater for the interest of the South. The North should not be deceived by the phony-baloney of Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket into thinking that he can be tamed. If the North thinks that Tinubu will hand over to Shettima, they will be disappointed by the turn of events when Tinubu will transmogrify into a tyrant. Today, it is the Igbo that are receiving the butt of Tinubu’s hegemony in Lagos. Tomorrow, it will be the whole country. He believes in simony. He bought his party, bought INEC, pocketed the judiciary and you can be sure that the NASS will be at his becks and call. And what is more? The making of a maximum ruler is loading.

There is no gainsaying that a person with Tinubu’s mindset cannot govern a multi-cultural entity like Nigeria. Nigeria needs a statesman with liberal mindset, not a die-hard ethnic chauvinist. We are crying about Buhari’s divisive tendencies and revanchist policies; Tinubu’s will be worse. Tinubu will be the worst tyrant in the history of Nigeria. He has not hidden the fact that he brooks no opposition. Tinubu will kill opposition and appropriate Nigeria just as he did in Lagos. Those who worked with him in the past can attest to that. Tinubu’s presidency will finally sound the knell of democracy in Nigeria and usher in a reign of terror and kakistocrcay. He will stamp out opposition; suppress free speech and civil advocacy. We can see that already. While Tinubu and his gang are making hate speeches and inflammatory statements mocking and gloating at others, they are using the NCC to muffle comments on the electoral fraud they committed by threatening broadcast stations with proscription and revocation of their operating licenses. Today it is in Lagos that voters are suppressed. Tomorrow it will be replicated nationwide that if you are not coming to vote for the ruling party, don’t bother to come out. Is it any wonder that Tinubu has kept the touts and area-boys uneducated, untrained and undeveloped in Lagos despite the huge federal presence and obvious advantages for growth and human development? It is for political reasons. The area-boys and the social miscreants are his button boys who must be kept in perpetual state of ignorance and put in overdrive to kill and maim whenever the need arises. It is pathetic and unfortunate in the extreme!

I am indeed saddened by the state of affairs in the country at present and the looming danger of political instability. It is disheartening that after sixty-three years of Independence and twenty-four years of unbroken democratic rule that democracy has not taken any firm roots in Nigeria but rather it is deteriorating by day because of the antics of the ethnic irredentists and bigots that have hijacked the state political apparatus. The promotion of ethnic politics is shrinking our democratic space and brewing a culture of impunity and violence. The tribal politics of the Southwest is generating xenophobic tensions that may snowball into genocide if unchecked because Tinubu and his co-travelers in the Yoruba land have kept their people deliberately lazy and pauperized and then blamed their misfortune on the hardworking Igbo people whom they accused of coming to take over Lagos from them. And, if Bola Tinubu can instigate xenophobic attacks with his utterances and body language, he would organize genocide if given the state powers.

They have successfully executed the first phase of xenophobic attack on Ndigbo and they have issued further threat for 2027. And why not? There was no official reprimand and no arrest or prosecution and so the perpetrators are emboldened. The Igbo have a saying that a child whose father sent on a robbery operation will smash the door with his foot; meaning that anyone who has official backing for his misconduct will always act with impunity. You can be sure that those who spearhead this attack on Ndigbo in Lagos will get rewarded by those who sent them.

I am not a doomsday prophet or conflict instigator but I can see the telltale signs of impending genocide in the country especially in Lagos. It is palpably evident. Those versed in conflict management and anti-terrorism studies know about this. The first stage in the planning and execution of genocide and pogrom usually begins with false narratives and ethnic profiling and stereotyping intended to induce hatred. The second stage is xenophobia which is open exhibition of induced hatred through acts of accusation, discrimination and dehumanization. The third and the final stage is the execution or extermination which usually begins with threats and persecution.

On a final note, I must state that the Nigeria political future is hanging on a precipice. Although, I am not a disciple of Karl Max but I believe in the Marxian hypothesis that every thesis has its antithesis. Tinubu and his group have demonstrated to the world who they are and might have inadvertently set the stage for a revolution that would sweet them away. Besides, the xenophobic attack on Ndigbo in Lagos is a wake-up call and I trust that the Igbo will respond accordingly. Ndigbo will not be hoodwinked or distracted by the half-hearted plea for peace by the instigators and perpetrators of the xenophobic attack against them. It will be extremely foolish and dangerous to ignore these ominous signs of impending genocide. I believe and strongly too that the antics of Tinubu and his people will boomerang on them sooner than later. These hordes of miscreants they are brooding as political tool will turn against them some day when there will be no Igbo man available for them to extort and prey on.

Gozie Irogboli

An economist, a novelist and a public policy analyst

(goziei@yahoo.com)