TINUBU’S WRONG BETS FOR 2027.

Basil Okoh

Tinubu’s daring plan to dislodge all other parties, leaving APC as the only party in the election of 2027, appears far more politically disruptive than he can possibly handle. He has no capacity that we can see, to have the entire Nigerian opposition establishment removed from participating in the national election of 2027. 

Pundits believe that he does not have the capacity to overwhelm the entire polity and cannot muster the strategic and security capacity to manage the ensuing outcome. The push-back will be too overwhelming and the consequences contain the potential to unravel the country itself. The matter appears too explosive and any possible outcome has the clear potential of impacting all of Africa. 

His strategy to use the judiciary as both bait and attack dog to disrupt the opposition parties and remove them from presenting candidates for elections is audacious but will be defeated by the judges refusal to be scapegoated in a plan for Tinubu’s self-perpetuation. The judicial establishment will be riven down the middle and the opposing sides will be forced to be loud on their positions and the traditional reticence of the judiciary will be lost and take ugly ethnic dimensions.

Candidate Peter Obi is seen by the public now as both victim of Tinubu’s high-handedness and his nemesis, just as Mandela was to the Boer establishment in South Africa. The entire project of Tinubu’s onslaught on Obi is now generally seen as desperation to cover the historically guilt of inviting and sponsoring banditry into the country and to cover the unprecedented losses in the nations finances. Not a single years budget has been implemented in the fourth year of his presidency and the World Bank insists that 40% of inflows into the national coffers have been diverted without explanation. 

Bola Tinubu, everyone now knows, is using presidential powers to remove the more popular candidates who can defeat him from the 2027 election. It’s an old practice in Africa where ruling leaders have been known to throw opposition figures in jail before elections. It is the standard practice of Yoweri Miseveni of Uganda.

There can be no way to unite the entire judiciary to help Tinubu achieve his goal of being the only candidate in the presidential election of 2027. No matter how big the bribes he presents to them, there will be disagreement within the legal establishment and among the judges, because the final consequence of Tinubu’s gambit will be the dismemberment of the country and not many judicial officers will accept that as an outcome of their own actions. The ensuing cracks must sever the plan and cause a big rift in the polity.

Nigeria’s ethnocentric and religious dissensions are too deeply embedded in the political system and practices and the nation too ruptured for Tinubu’s political gambit to have any chance of working. The nation, no matter how hard he tries, or how well he manipulates the institutions, cannot be cajoled to unite behind him to destroy the country. And then the armed forces may appear complacent now until it finally blows.

It does appear that Tinubu and his lieutenants do not fully grasp the multifarious dimensions of Nigeria political, ethnic and religious challenges. Tinubu is about to awaken the hydra-headed monster that overwhelmed better endowed politicians and generals who dared to try to divide Nigeria. In order to cover a previous evil with the importation of bandits who have now overwhelmed the country, Tinubu is about to unleash a greater malevolence by going for broke on the misuse and abuse of power. 

He is throwing down his gauntlet for a full blown dictatorship, using the judges and daring anyone to do anything about it. We are left to see if really anyone or group will do anything about his gung-ho politics.

@basilokoh.