In a few days time, Nigerians will troop to the polls to elect a new President that will take over the baton of leadership from President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2023. This coming election, like every other election, promises to be exciting and has all the trappings of a historical referendum that would either consolidate or alter the trajectory of the country and its citizens; either for good or for ill. So the outcome would certainly justify the hype, the hoopla and the anxieties that have pockmarked the electoral process so far.
Going by all the indices of the election; the campaigns, the manifestos and other shades of preparation leading to the election, there is little doubt that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is the leading candidate and the projected winner of the coming election. This projection is structured on many props.
First, Asiwaju has the longest traceable history of preparation and training for the top job. From his antecedents as a pro-democracy fighter, Asiwaju has coursed through a thick labyrinth of political tutelage that stands him in good stead to become Nigeria's next President. He had been a third republic senator, a doyen of the anti-military struggle, a hugely successful former Governor of Lagos, the Leader of opposition and of course the catalyst that melded the rainbow coalition of legacy parties that morphed into APC to successfully dethrone the ruling PDP from power in 2015.
Also, in the area of competence in government, Asiwaju dwarfs all other candidates for the presidency. His glorious urn as Lagos governor is replete with so many reputable imprimaturs, policies and projects that stand Lagos apart from other states in Nigeria today. Lagos is such a huge success story that it leads a renaissant Nigerian economic revival in the face of the withering potentials of other states. Tinubu towers in governance competence, knowledge and depth that no other candidates comes near him and this remains the most vital requirement for governance of the country.
Again, his laudable succession template in Lagos is epic. This has leveraged Lagos with a stable succession plan and an array of competent governors that have carried on the famous Lagos Masterplan hewed by Asiwaju which itself has ensured the geometric growth of Lagos against the stunted growth in other states. His succession plan has ensured that policies, programs and projects embedded in the Lagos Masterplan are continuously carried out by ensuing successors and in the sequel, Lagos has tremendously gained from this orderly leadership sequence.
Tinubu has a performance record no other contestant can boast of. His superlative outing in Lagos still remains an unbeatable record in the country's governance annal. From a seedy, downturn, unplanned ghetto he met in 1999, Tinubu has,via deliberate and strategic policies, programmes and projects turned Lagos to the fourth biggest economy in Africa, a global economic hub with modern facilities and infrastructure that continue to drive its exponential growth. With such mega-infrastructure like the Eko Atlantic City, the Lekki free trade zone, modern, fast intra-city rail lines, Bus Rapid Transit, etc. Asiwaju has ensured that the economic growth of Lagos is perpetually cast on stone and this incredible turnaround is exactly what Nigeria needs today and Tinubu is the only candidate with capacity to do that.
Tinubu remains Nigeria's foremost talent hunter with that arcane and innate ability to identify, discover and poach the right talent and deploy same to the task of solving human existential problems, which governance is all about. This huge capacity is very scarce in Nigerian governance and accounts for the high failure rate that dogs Nigerian governance. But Asiwaju has this in abundance, as shown in the bountiful result he got in Lagos. Other candidates have nothing near this in their own woe-ridden records in the various positions they previously held.
Also, Asiwaju has the record of being the only two among the candidates (with Sowore Omoyele) who stood with Nigerians to fight and secure the present democratic order from a brutal military. Asiwaju forsook his comfort zone as a topmost corporate player and a senator to voluntarily go on exile and committed huge chunks of his personal wealth to the fight against the military. He sacrificed his safety, comfort and interests to bandy with ordinary Nigerians and played a frontal role in the battle to secure the present democratic order. Other candidates at display today, except Sowore, either formed illegal cahoots with the rampaging military for expedient ends or minded their selfish personal and business interests while that anti-military struggle lasted.
More than all other candidates on the ballot for the February 25 polls, Asiwaju has built more contacts and bridges across the nation. He has erected solid links of cross-country understanding that stands him in good stead to harvest the votes and goodwill of most Nigerians across religious, ethnic and tribal cleavages. His political network is incomparable. His reach is borderless. His acceptance is without bounds. His means is inexhaustible. This capacity to reach out, build bridges, and understanding finds implicit cogency in his policies as Lagos governor where he recruited bright minds from all over the country to the task of governing Lagos. No other candidate has a cosmopolitan worldview that nears Asiwaju's hence his electable chances are very huge.
Tinubu has the clearest, the most practical and most cadent blueprint on how to govern Nigeria. His Renewed Hope manifesto encompasses clear and verifiable action-plans that target virtually all issues confronting our troublous nationhood. Given his superlative performance as Lagos governor, Nigerians have come to build hope, trust and faith in his Renewed Hope manifesto enroute the February election. In contrast, his opponents have no clear idea of how to deal with issues that confront the country. Many of them have no manifesto and merely build their campaigns on muddling through Nigerian problems and making a litany of them with no faint impression of how to solve them.
In APC, Asiwaju has the backing of the greatest and most compact political machine in Nigeria today. What still astounds most opponents of the party is how it walks so easily through the many landmines and apocalyptic prophecies they invoke for it. From each speculated and anticipated crisis, APC emerges stronger than ever and threatens the other parties who go through waves of endless cyclical traumas they hardly survive from before another starts. Going into the election next week, Tinubu is solidly backed by a strong and compact APC, with the presidency and majority of the country's governors, elected and appointed officials. Conversely, while the main opposition PDP is deeply fractured down the lines, the other parties suffer inexorably from stunted strength and acute dwarfism.
With the electioneering campaigns tapering to the finish line, there is no doubt that Tinubu is the candidate to beat. Given the sheer number of attendees to his rallies across all the states of Nigeria, in contrast to the sparse, scanty and dispiriting outing of the other candidates, there is no doubt that Nigerians have already made the choice of who they would have to succeed Buhari. The rallies show indication of acceptance and there is no doubt that Nigerians will use February 25 to crown Asiwaju for his lengthy investment in democracy in Nigeria and in Nigeria as a country.
Today, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has the largest number of mentees in Nigeria today. These are those he has raised, those he has built from relative obscurity to something, those he has helped along the rungs of success and these men are straddling very powerful positions all over the country today. No Nigerian, least of all the other candidates jostling for the presidency today, nears this record. Asiwaju is a mentor par excellence and many success stories have been stringed from his legendary capacity to make others successful. In the words of the former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and current Minister for Niger Delta, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, "Asiwaju has the ability to turn boys into men" . The coming election is pay back time and with the men he made manning various fronts for him all over the country, Asiwaju's victory is assured.
One can't exhaust the many edges Tinubu has going to next week's election. In the process leading to the election, he had worked extraordinarily hard; indeed, he has put in more efforts and man hours than all the other candidates combined. His stuffed and heavily chocked campaign schedule is something beyond the ordinary. But that is vintage Asiwaju, the man who ingrained the art of setting forth at dawn on every journey. He takes all tasks seriously, even the easiest tasks. He ensures he inputs all the details in any task he takes up and gives such task his possible best. Even with the huge advantages he holds over other candidates in the coming election, he still works as if he is the minnow.
February 25 presidential election is surely Asiwaju's game. He is the game master. Indeed he is the game. We all await his predictable victory at the polls.
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