Analysis I Fashola and his Gimmick on 2023

By Fred Doc Nwaozor

 

        

Penultimate week – precisely on Thursday, 25^th October 2018 – the erstwhile Lagos State governor and the present Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola enjoined the people of the Nigeria’s South-West to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming 2019 elections towards guaranteeing a return of power to the zone in 2023.

        

The minister tendered this in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital at a special town hall meeting on infrastructure organized by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture headed by Alhaji Lai Mohammed in collaboration with the National Orientation Agency (NOA).

         

Alhaji Lai led three other ministers including Fashola as well as Ministers of Transportation and Water Resources in the persons of Messrs Rotimi Amaechi and Suleiman Adamu, respectively, to the meeting which had in attendance key stakeholders from the area.

          

Mr. Fashola opined that besides the massive investment by the Buhari-led government on infrastructure across the country, South-West in particular, the zone would benefit politically by re-electing Buhari come 2019.

          

He stated in Yoruba language “Do you know that power is rotating to the South-West after the completion of Buhari’s tenure if you vote for him in 2019? A vote for Buhari in 2019 means a return of power to the South-West in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely.”

         

It’s not anymore news that on several occasions, some leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-East had boasted that President Buhari would be handing over power to the zone in 2023 if he gets votes from the people of the area come 2019. How then do we reconcile these contradicting gimmicks?

          

By this statement, Mr. Fashola has inadvertently concurred with the line of action of his predecessor, Chief Bola Tinubu. In recent times, the latter has been putting up behaviours that indicate he is aspiring to take over power from President Buhari. His body language suggests he’s warming up to succeed the sitting president whenever his service expires.

          

It’s quite intriguing that Mr. Fashola never minded the political implications of such an utterance before letting it out. This implies that the people of the South-West under the auspices of the APC cannot afford to allow any other zone or region succeeds Buhari when he bows out from Aso Rock.

         

If my thought is as good as yours, then you would agree with me that the APC’s gladiators of the South-East extraction have been deceiving themselves by going about telling their kinsmen and beyond that power would freely return to them after the tenure of Buhari.

         

One may even assert that the aforementioned set of people isn’t only deceiving but making ‘fool’ of itself. This is so, because, the way and manner they parade themselves as regards who, or which zone, succeeds Buhari appear as if a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) had already been reached and duly signed by the overall leadership of the APC.

         

This categorically informs that the Igbos need to wake up from slumber. It’s indeed high time they began thinking of how to become more politically aware in the Nigeria’s sphere. It’s obvious that overtime the people from the Igbo nation have been used as sacrificial lamb whenever it calls for acquiring power within the country’s political terrain.

         

They must realize to the fullness that power is taken, not given. No rational politician ought to expect power, no matter how lowly placed, to be granted or released to him/her on a platter of gold. Everyone is expected to ‘fight’ towards acquiring power or assuming any political post. Thus, one who believes that such position would willingly and freely be ceded to him is simply daydreaming.

         

However, Mr. Fashola would have at least considered the consequences of such announcement especially at this era when the ruling party is making frantic effort to remain in power come 2019. And acknowledging that the major opposition party – the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – is damn prepared to reclaim the country’s seat of power, which they regrettably vacated in 2015.

        

Mr. Fashola, therefore, ought to have understood that such an avowal is liable to make the APC massively lose its prospective voters, particularly from the South-East. He should have realized that it is a sentence that has the tendency of causing the ruling party a grievous harm in the nearest future.

        

Having made the statement in vernacular, he might had thought that outsiders wouldn’t take note of it, forgetting the country at large is at the moment in a heat period regarding politics, hence an average Nigerian is currently far more socio-politically aware than he/she was just few months ago.

         

The utterance in question may have been erroneously and carelessly tendered by the honourable minister, but the point remains that it ought to be considered as an eye-opener by the members of the APC of the Igbo extraction. Even if it’s eventually retracted, it has already sent the message being required by the Igbos at such a critical time like this.

          

Notwithstanding, whatever the case might be, it’s time our politicians started being very mindful of what they utter in the public domain especially when campaigning for votes. Think about it!

-Comrade Nwaozor, policy analyst & rights activist,

could be reached via frednwaozor@gmail.com

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