Iwo ko lokan: How Obasanjo’s endorsement of Peter Obi is threatening Tinubu’s long term presidential dream
“I am the front runner”, Bola Ahmed Tinubu confidently declared in his BBC interview aired on December 11, 2022. That confidence would suffer a huge dent less than one month later when former president Olusegun Obasanjo released a six-paged New Year’s Day letter to Nigerian youths. In it, Obasanjo put a pin in Tinubu’s ‘Emi lokan’ ballon which may tilt the political scale towards Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party……..CONTINUE READING
The writing appeared to be on the wall that Obasanjo would not support Tinubu. After all, when Obasanjo and Tinubu were President and governor respectively from 1999 to 2007, the two political leaders rarely agreed on the same subject and their perceived animosity seemed to be more than mere political difference. Obasanjo flatly rejected the creation of additional 37 local government areas in Lagos by Tinubu in 2004 and ordered the seizure of funds to the state. While other states that had initially expanded the number of their local government areas retracted, Tinubu stood his ground, instead restructuring them as local council development areas.
In the period after they both left office, their perception of each other did not seem to change with Tinubu calling Obasanjo the greatest election rigger in Nigeria’s history.
Although Tinubu went with Muhammadu Buhari in 2014 to visit Obasanjo ahead of the 2015 presidential election under the umbrella of the newly-formed All Progressives Congress to seek his support, and even visited him in 2022 shortly after he won the APC presidential ticket, political commentators noted that the former president’s body language was tilting towards supporting Obi. At an event in October 2022, Obasanjo gave up his seat for Obi and said: “My work is done.” Labour Party also appointed Akin Osuntokun, Obasanjo’s ex-aide as the party’s campaign director-general.
Obasanjo’s letter did not only endorse Obi; in fact, it explicitly highlighted why Nigerian youths should not vote for Tinubu. He rightfully argued that the work of the presidency is “taxing and tasking” and thus needs a younger person to be in charge. He reminded Nigerians that he became head of state at 39 and president at 62 while “others like General Gowon and Enahoro became national leaders at 33 and 27 respectively and General Gowon at the helms of the leadership of Nigeria at the highest level. The vigour, energy, agility, dynamism and outreach that the job of leadership of Nigeria requires at the very top may not be provided as a septuagenarian or older. I know that from personal experience. And it is glaring out of our current experiences.”
To show that he was not mincing words on who he was focusing his condemnation, Obasanjo attacked Tinubu’s mantra of “emi lokan”, a statement which has transcended from Tinubu’s self-declaration of the presidency being his turn as though the country owes him the seat to now be seen as an ethnic campaign for a Yoruba person (Tinubu) to occupy the presidential seat.
Obasanjo instead shifted the tide of the statement encouraging the youths to embrace it as their slogan for reclaiming power. He centred Obi as the likeliest candidate to steer Nigeria in the right direction while also providing hard-hitting condemnation of Tinubu and why he must be kept as far away from the presidency as possible.
He wrote: “Youth of Nigeria, your time has come, and it is now and please grasp it. If not now, it will be never. I appeal to you to turn the tide on its head and march forward chanting ‘Awa Lokan’ (Our turn) not with a sense of entitlement, but with a demonstrable ideological commitment to unity and transformation of Nigeria.”
Although Tinubu’s spokesperson and the APC have been swift in dismissing Obasanjo’s endorsement of Obi going as far as to say the former president has lost political relevance. Tinubu, in the secrecy of his room, will disagree. Obasanjo remains an elder statesman who is respected not just in Nigeria but in Africa and the rest of the world. In a country like Nigeria, no president loses electoral value, especially a two-term
In November 2022, he brokered a ceasefire between warring Ethiopia and Tigray which is a testament to the respect he is being accorded in the continent.
A former general, Obasanjo commands respect in the military and his ties to the northern part of the country remain strong; a region that has strong political participation. He also won the 1999 presidency largely because of the support from the north than from the south west. Thus, Obasanjo’s endorsement of Obi is a clear message to the north, a region many political observers feel Obi has had difficulty making inroads into.
Youth participation in the 2023 election is expected to be record-high after it has been declining for years. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, of the 10,487,972 fresh registrants, 8,784,677 were young people. With Obasanjo’s explicit analysis of the three major candidates and providing tangible reasons why the youths should see Obi as the pathway to their being in charge of the governance of the country, Tinubu ‘s front-running emi lokan ship might just sink.
