Story by Razaq Adedeji JImoh & Ololade Barakat
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THIS ONLINE VERSION IS SPONSORED BY A LAGOS BASED AWORI BUSINESSMAN IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
Many times he had proclaimed his forgiveness for them even at the point of extreme contempt of terminal prejudice they had wished him. But now he declares: I am ready to fight and get dirty even if my adversaries’ dwelling is a pig's pen and by no means they have resolved that my path to the presidency must be blocked. According to him, they are doing this in order to keep Nigeria at the pyramid base of poverty – to remain poorest of the poor in the global rating of human economic indices. This was described to be the implication of what the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was set to deal with; the unprovoked assaults he would encounter from his traducers as he finally declared to pursue his “life ambition” to be President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The original statement was made at the Alarere residence of then new Olubadan of Ibadan land, Oba Lekan Balogun, when he visited the monarch in part of his consultations with the traditional rulers and political leaders in Yoruba Land. He said: “We (the Yoruba) are at the crossroads, people are volunteering to confront me when they were asked that who would confront the Lion of Bourdillon? “I'm contesting for President of Nigeria. I will not succumb to intimidation and blackmail. I have read about a Greek philosopher that if you want to wrestle with the pig, you must be ready to roll in the mud and deal with the poopoo. I'm ready to be dirty. All that it requires is that afterwards you wash up and become clean again”.
It could as well be established that Tinubu has continued to harp on this anticipated onslaught from his traducers and the opposition camp. While at the National Assembly to intimate the legislators of his ambition, having previously visited Head of the Executive arm, President Buhari, he told his host that “I am not going to do the Olympics. The Olympics that I know is politics and strategy to win”. This was believed to be a reference to what many observers have described as the criminalization of his age as impediment to his qualification to be the President, particularly given his recent medical journey abroad. Followers of unfolding political events along the trend of this Fourth Republic of Nigerian democracy might be apt at connecting the bases of these comments coming from this aspirants with ease of understanding. But many might yet want to query to what extent of good intention would it serve when a presidential aspirants would feel his ambition worth the anticipation of a war?
Besides the popular axiomatic knowledge of politics being a struggle for power, election as the fulcrum of that struggle has been described as a kind of war by political pundits. That Tinubu had been a serial victim of election war with established assaultive bruises in Nigeria is a common knowledge. What may not be a common knowledge to all is the degree of, psychological impacts the assaults have always had on him at each cycle of election year and time. As late as about the month of July, 2019 soon after President Buhari was inaugurated for his second term of office, The Nation newspaper claimed to have gathered investigations on the plot by some group of politicians to commence early a needful “prolonged smear campaign "against Tinubu”. It posited that the mission was a set battle against Tinubu's ambition to contest the 2023 presidential election.
With a bold headline that read: “2023: Osinbanjo, Tinubu Face Smear Campaign”, the story went thus: “An agenda for a prolonged smear campaign has being put in place, beginning with the printing of posters in Dubai by a Kaduna-based Politician against Tinubu”. The publication went further to describe the plotted campaign in quoted words of its sources thus: “The war that has now assumed a media assaults dimension will spread for two years... (in) a mission to prevent southward shift of the presidential power in 2023”. A related publication of this magazine then under the brand name
Civics Journal in the edition of August 26, 2019, Vol 2, No.3, was the cover story entitled
Certificated Quackery. The story had a concurrent theme with The Nation's mentioned above. It however revealed that its own source described the purported anti-Tinubu campaign in the offing with a given codename as “Mission to kill it”.
With clarity of facts to come as vindication for these two publications, the strive to “assassinate the political life of Asiwaju Tinubu has been ceaseless and protracted. It came to the climax with the baying for his real blood at the anarchy of #ENDSARS protest, which sources close to him revealed that he, indeed, contemplated giving up his presidential ambition on account of the psychological torture he suffered therefrom. Leveraging on the idiocy of gullible minds in majority of Nigerians for a start, some clashes of ENDSARS protesters with some innocent public resisting the threat of the protest to their means of economic livelihood in the cities of Abuja, Lagos and Benin were blamed on Tinubu. Sponsors of the ENDSARS group shouted on top of their voices to claim that Tinubu was behind the attacks on their procession. That was to be in early October when responsible Nigerians began to get tired of the protest that was now about two weeks old. This particularly took note of the fact that the Federal Government had actually yielded to their five demands.
But in drawing strength from the yet ongoing #BLACKLIVESMATTER that was about two months old, #ENDSARS rather recalcitrantly endured too and it was already recording casualties of innocent lives from the direction of impunity of beast colony it was heading. At this time, the ENDSARS protesters had left no one in doubt that they were set for a mother of all wars. They had devised a propaganda machine to garner sentimental public sympathy and support for a barrage of assaultive attacks on Asiwaju Tinubu. They claimed Tinubu owned the Lekki Toll Gate (LTG) and that by their occupation of the place for weeks running, they were making him to lose billions of naira. They also alleged that he had vast economic interest like the Redinson Blue Hotel around LTG corridor, which had been grounded for almost one months the territory had been occupied by the protesters.
When government resolved to take back its authority to maintain law and order, it is now a history how the ENDSARS promoters equally resorted to war and anarchy complemented and enhanced with the arsenal of propaganda. It is now a known fact that fallacy of “Massacre at Lekki Toll Gate” was proclaimed to being in magnitude of the permissive abuse of social media. The falsehoods were churned out with creative graphics of fake everything for anything that could help them make Tinubu a condemned man by the court of public opinion. There were faked videos as much as manipulated photographic images that trended in viral. There was even voice cloning – call it a forgery of voice if you like – in a faked audio interview of a fleeing Tinubu begging the anarchists not to kill his abducted son. But as this magazine gathered, the innocent Seyi purported to be in the captivity of the hoodlums was at the time engaging in charity gift to the vulnerable caught in the web of the anarchy with paralytic impoverishment of killing hunger in the remote corridors of Lagos.
This particular artifice was believed in some quaters to have come as a case study in the creativity of the Sowore's SaharaReporters in merchandising of falsehoods. Its versions of the anti-Tinubu propaganda succeeded because he had earlier published it on its online news medium that it was Tinubu who deployed soldiers to kill protesters at LTG. As an analyst described the implication of this, “many useful idiots that best describe the gullible – the zombies in human flesh – fell for it, when common sense holds that only the President and Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces could deploy any military force to duty”. Curiously, no iota of blame went to Buhari, the President, because there was no true massacre but a propaganda meant to assassin the political life of Tinubu. Hence the CNN conclusions that it was only in Nigeria a history of “massacre without blood” would be made.
Further to be the belief in some quarters on the matter of the ENDSARS anarchy, Tinubu’s ubiquitous traducers replete in both the APC and PDP elite class sought more than his political life. They bayed for his blood and flight of his soul from his body. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader, then a Nigerian fugitive resident in UK, proclaimed him an enemy and demanded Igbo residents in Lagos to go for his life and properties whereever they could identify one. Consequent upon all this, many vulnerable economic and social assets linked or remotely connected to Tinubu suffered malicious damages. In actual fact, it must be said that the total sum of it all touched on his morale, lowering it profoundly. As this author gathered in authority of a reliable source, “the ENDSARS assaults caught him in the groin and almost weakened his morale to the point of considering the idea of abandoning his presidential ambition”.
Giving the demoralizing impact of all this to connect with the basis of Tinubu's resolve to fight back, Idowu Akinlotan made this observation soon after the APC National Leader made the declaration of his presidential ambition public through his first consultations with President Buhari sometimes in January, 2022. Akinlotan, a media columnist of note wrote: “The coming months will be fretful for Asiwaju Tinubu, seeing he is the first aspirant to publicly declare his interest in the top position. Except he discloses his private contemplations, the public will not know whether his natural stoicism can withstand the ensuing withering media attacks, or for how long. During and after the ENDSARS protests, when he was puzzlingly made the target of the protests in Lagos, he was said to have briefly considered dropping out of the race. Abandoned by the Villa, despised by the presidential cabal and roundly hated and pilloried by Lagos-dominated social media influencers, it seemed he had come to the end of his tether. But a few months down the road (to presidential election), he had bounced back; more determined than ever to try his fortune” (
TheNation, 16/01/2022, Back pageg.
While Akinlotan seems to have given insight to the fact of Tinubu being a man with conscious feelings of his human environment as a matter of sociological imperatives, he also appears to have given other sources by which Tinubu's adversaries have sought to engage him in muddy brawl. And given the ENDSARS origin as the verity of the social media assaultive link, the mainstream media attacks are not a matter of recent project either, but simply the more protracted in evidence. It dates back to the early years of this Fourth Republic, when his name had become a metonymy with electoral victory since his mystery of 'last man standing' manifested in 2003.
Giving his own insight to media attacks on Tinubu, Dr. Tunji Bello, a recurring face in the Cabinet of Lagos State Government since 2003 said: “What I sometimes find most ironic is the vicious campaign of calumny and sponsored attacks against Tinubu today by latter-day 'democrats' or activists, who yet were either barefoot errand boys of the military in the 90s or willing tools to reactionary forces. Among them will be found journalists using intemperate language against Tinubu today, mouthing 'high principle' but unashamed to take jobs in a media organization owned by those known to have been paid by military to justify June 12 annulment in the international media in the 90s or were known to be on Abacha's payroll. I guess such characters flourish today because we are a nation afflicted by amnesia”.
In what may be termed a coincidence of emanating facts from different quarters, another veteran columnist, Segun Ayobolu, former Press Secretary to Tinubu, would appear to be revealing one identity of “such characters” replete in the media industry as paid agents for the vein war and propaganda against Tinubu. Reacting to a piece entitled Why Tinubu Must Never Be President of Nigeria by Dr. Festus Adebayo, Ayobolu illuminated on the adversarial posture of this former Features Editor of Tribune as “hypocritical sense of moral integrity”. Adebayo, a political scientist, journalist, lawyer and now a columnist with the Tribune newspaper, had in January revisited a supposed judicially settled certificate scandal that rocked the early months of Tinubu's governorship tenure of Lagos State. He used it to question the character of Tinubu for fitness of his moral basis to aspire for the office of Nigerian President.
In effort to put the record straight by exposing the malicious motive of the writer, Ayobolu revealed how much Adebayo had actually profited from Tinubu's generosity and wondered why Adebayo, who was “in a position to know the truth” as a journalist with direct access to Tinubu at the time would rather now bring forth the issue, even despite his knowledge as a lawyer who ought to know that the issue had been legally addressed by both the judiciary up to the Supreme court level and the Lagos State House of Assembly. Ayobolu said: “As the Chief Press Secretary to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he was the Governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2005, Festus, who was then the features editor of Nigerian Tribune was one of the most frequent visitors to my office at the Lagos State Government Secretariat, Alausa. On a number of the several occasions that Festus visited my office from his base in Ibadan, I would ensure he met either the Commissioner for Information, Mr. Dele Alake or the Governor directly”.
Why would Ayobolu do this? He said: “It was our practice to bring leading journalists and columnist face to face with the governor so that they could debate him on issues and he could also have access to views from outside those of us serving in government”. And to what extent did Adebayo derive pecuniary gains from his visit to Lagos as a reflection of this robust relationship? Ayobolu added: “I must admit that because of our friendship, I was partial towards him in channeling most of the governor's office adverts meant for the Tribune titles through him rather than the newspaper's accredited correspondent at Alausa. And as was my practice then, I never deducted any commission from these adverts. If Festus will be honest, he will admit that he has profusely expressed his gratitude each time we have met”. Above all, but for additional impetus to this; Festus had at one time, been employed as Chairman, Editorial Board of The Nation, newspaper founded by Tinubu, for glowing three years.
While those with discernible mind might begin to search for a clue to the possible angst of Festus Adebayo to warrant his undeniably assaultive attack on Tinubu, it may be revealing from it past publications that the Tribune as a print medium would seem to be institutionally positioned as a veritable mainstream platform for the voices of Tinubu’s traducers. The fact soon came out that the AIT hitherto trusted for access to credible news would become the mainstream broadcasting station for the vein war against the presidential aspirant. The global community watched in late 2014 how it sold a voodoo of political propaganda to the Nigerian public and the global community. It had simply deceived the world with broadcast of lies and falsehoods, fallaciously packaged as factual documentary entitled Lion of Bourdillon It was soon revealed further that the Chairman of Darr Communications Limited, owners of the AIT and Ray power FM broadcasting stations, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi (of blessed memory now), was actually paid the sum of N2.1 billion by the Presidency of Goodluck Jonathan to do its own version of the character assassination. Dokpesi had since tendered a public apology to Tinubu before his demise with a three day prime time airing and retraction of the documentary content. But that did not happen until Tinubu fought back through a N150 billion suit he eventually instituted in a court against the AIT and its founder.
However, while he literally fought back against Dokpesi's AIT assaults, the prison term earned by Chief Bode George was described in some quarters as a case of mysterious backlash of his (George’s) sustained attacks on Tinubu. Up until the guilty verdict of two and half years jail term was pronounced on him for corruptly enriching himself as Chairman of the Board of Nigeria Port Authority (NPA), George had set his entire resourceful time for attacks of Tinubu at every opportunity of his access to media time. Some political observers have posited that the eventual Tinubu's trial by Code of Conduct Tribunal (CBT) in 2012 had been deemed a successful proof of the axiom that lies told repeatedly often tends to become truth, as facilitated by the 'Lagos Boy' – Chief George.
At the time it became clear that the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) under a former Police Commissioner Nuhu Ribadu had become 'the attack dog of presidency', Chief George, then National Vice-chairman of PDP (South), was known to have used this instrumentality against Tinubu copiously. This was well established in the inconsistency of Ribadu at his two-time appearances before the Senate, as noted in the February 19, 2007 edition of TheNews Magazine. It is needless bringing forth the interview here now. But it is worthy of note to say that in a complementary interview with Ribadu published there in, it showed that the allegation of operating foreign account for which Tinubu was arranged before the CBT was an afterthought by EFCC, which was later discovered to have been facilitated from desperation by Lagos PDP to assassinate his character.
Indeed, he fought dirty to become the President.As Civics Weekly had thoughtfully predicted, the cabals he defeated are not about to throw in the towel.That should be discernible from the current ongoing protest, believed to be politically motivated. Interestingly, he seemed to have won again. On the economic front, he has indeed won with the successful implementation of the two foremost surgery policies his predecessors have feared to attempt the operation. How far the cabal go from here now? Time will decide.
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