Tinubu Is Beatable: The Question Is ” Who Can?” By Mark Adebayo
“Every reelection campaign is a referendum on the incumbent. Every. Single. One.” – Rick Wilson
IN every election in Nigeria, presidential, et al, contenders, pretenders, quacksalvers, and feigners are constant denominators. Some are even outright cozeners. Politics is a potpourri of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The ridiculous don’t also miss the list.
The contenders are the real deals. They act and move proactively leaving no stones unturned and always applying sophisticated sociopolitical stratagems to destabilize their opponents. They invest considerable energy and means, taking nothing for granted and refusing to be limited to ‘a circle of certainty’ by being essentially exploratory. They are outside-the-box thinkers and extremely pushy towards the prize. They build effective networks of people who commit themselves to the one project of winning the election at hand, of course with some motivation. They understand that elections, especially a presidential election, is time sensitive, demanding, and expensive. It requires a minimum of twenty-four months of 2/47 dedicated duty and undivided service. It’s a lot of hard and smart work. No room for distraction whatsoever. Considering Nigeria’s population, a minimum of an initial one hundred thousand trained, dedicated workers, volunteers, and canvassers across the country are required to take the candidate’s message to Nigerians from the grassroots to the cities through online and traditional means.
The one hundred thousand could reproduce one million of their type and the one million could reproduce in geometric multiplication . By this, the whole country is saturated with his or her image and message. Election is hard work and resource demanding. The way you administer your campaign says a lot about your leadership skills or lack of it.
For the pretenders, quacksalvers, and the others in the same boat, they are just in the race to waste everyone’s time. Some are a mere distraction and irritants. Others are not much better than failed comedians looking for cheap attention. A few are broke blokes desperate for a relevance of survival and financial redemption. The pretenders and others on the same page contesting the office of the president can’t win a Councilorship election in their immediate communities. Some can’t even win the polling unit next to their house. There was the case of a presidential candidate in the 2019 presidential election who voted at the same polling unit together with his entire household – wife, children, domestic staff and all, yet he only got one vote at that polling unit. Meaning that no member of his entire household voted for him. He was the only one who voted for himself. How can such even contemplate vying for any electoral office talk less of the presidency? Charity, they say, begins at home.
There are many presidential aspirants that would like to defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election. At least, most Nigerians would also like to see this happen because this president has performed woefully so far. On all indices of governance, Tinubu is a comprehensive failure and Nigerians are suffering terribly for that. The man doesn’t behave as if he cares about how many people are being killed everyday across Nigeria or how many go to bed hungry or how many out-of-school children out there. Nigerians in their majority are so disappointed by his poor leadership and policies that impoverish them. To them, a return of Tinubu in 2027 amounts to a double jeopardy of national disaster. We need a presidential candidate who can stop Tinubu from returning and we need him/her fast!
But my fear is that Tinubu is not a political namby-pamby to be so easily vanquished The man is an experienced pugilist inside the ring of political hostility. He is a deadly political tactician with a track record of winning all the elections he ever contested in.
When it comes to planning, scheming, and strategizing to win elections, especially the one in which he is a candidate, Tinubu has a disciplined and pedantic devotion to devising winning formulae. It is said that he planned to be president about twenty years before contesting. He had earlier applied strategic patience by supporting and sponsoring presidential candidates to contest against incumbent Presidents. In 2011, he sponsored the candidature of his current National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu against President Goodluck Jonathan on the platform of Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. Earlier, in 2007, he had supported former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on the platform of the Action Congress, AC. On both occasions, he could have personally contested, but he chose to wait. In 2015, he was instrumental to bringing General Muhammadu Buhari out of political retirement to contest because that was the only man who could defeat incumbent President Jonathan at the time with his massive cult-like followership, especially in the North where the majority of the votes would come from. Tinubu bided his time as a master strategist that he is, like a lion stalking its prey, he pounced at the auspicious moment and brought the prey down. Against overwhelming odds, he mobilized formidable forces around his now infamous “Emi l’o kàn” battle cry and took the presidency. Some insist he rigged it. Well, he became president. End of story.
When contesting in an election, Tinubu spares no energy, reach, consensus, or resources. He overdoes everything in an overdose to win – fair and fowl. He works nights while his opponents are snoring. He works years ahead while his would-be opponents are still undecided. As an aspirant in 2023, he didn’t seem to have the support of the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari, who had the power at the time to determine who emerged as his Party’s presidential candidate. Somehow, Tinubu steamrolled his way through and picked the Party’s ticket. A year, or thereabouts, before the All Progressives Congress presidential primary, Chief Dele Momodu, a renowned media mogul, rightly predicted that the only way Tinubu could be stopped from emerging as president was if he didn’t win his Party’s ticket. Once he won that, it was a forgone conclusion. With the support of Governors from the North on his Party’s platform led by equally tactically endowed Malam Nasir El-Rufai, he secured his Party’s ticket. He was later to pull a Judas’s fast one on the latter by shutting him out of his administration completely. A terrible act of betrayal and cruel ingratitude. He is rumored to be a master in use-and-dump ‘politicking’. How much this would cost him in terms of political assets going into 2027 is left to be seen because El-Rufai is not a pushover when it comes to political relevance and stratagems. Take him for granted at your own peril. The guy never runs away from picking a gauntlet irrespective of who the thrower is.
Give it to Tinubu, he sure knows how to win elections, but he is zero in governance capacity. Despite heavy baggage in credibility and integrity, somehow, he has won up to this point. But can the winning streak be disrupted now? I mean, in 2027? I strongly believe it can.
This country urgently needs a new Sherriff in town. Another four years of Tinubu’s atrocious policies and disastrous leadership is absolutely intolerable. Because, should Tinubu be allowed to win the 2027 presidential election, he will also win the 2031 election either by pulling off a third term agenda or by handpicking his successor. Either way, Tinubu is already looking beyond 2027. This brutal reality must not be lost on the opposition at all.
Whoever will defeat Tinubu has institutional conspiracy/compromise and the all-pervasive prebendal politics to contend with, inter alia. The neutrality of the election management body, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the security agencies cannot be guaranteed as they all seem have been compromised. But this can be effectively mitigated by robust surveillance and creative propaganda of international dimension to expose the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that can force those critical institutions to play according to the rules of the game.
Moreover, the candidate to defeat Tinubu must forge a strong bond with regular Nigerians nationwide. Tinubu is touted to have formidable structures across the country. These are his Party’s foot soldiers who are mere political jobbers. These structures can be countered by the real structures of the people who believe in the candidate’s vision for the country having been convinced through robust engagements by the candidate or his field agents. Once these are organized into working support groups from the Ward to local government, state and zonal levels with sufficient indoctrination and training and modest support, they have the potential to be turned into an indomitable army of grassroots vote canvassers sufficiently strong enough to actuate a landslide electoral victory against Tinubu.
Furthermore, there is the intimidating factor of money politics in which Tinubu is a world class champion. This is an unfortunate reality of Nigeria’s politics which is highly prebendalized. It is a retrogressive electoral culture which guarantees that victory in an election goes to the highest bidder who has enough or has stolen enough to criminally compromise the voters.
Where they refuse to be bought, security agents or dangerously armed thugs might be unleashed on voters to do the bidding of whoever. A targeted, consistent, but massive political education of the masses is sine qua non to roll this menace back. I am for voters collecting their money and going ahead to vote against them as we witnessed in some places in Ghana in that country’s last election. The hard work is on the opposition to do with some energetic devotion. It’s a huge assignment that requires a minimum of two years’ ceaseless public engagements.
Whosoever will beat Tinubu must devise the strategic affront to poach political assets from around the country faster and better than Tinubu. That some high prize politically exposed individuals are decamping en mas to his Party, the APC, is not fortuitous at all. Many more are already lining up to fall prey to the magnetic pull of the Tinubu magic. The opposition must quickly identify new political giants in the making, NGO leaders with integrity, and cross-generational intellectual power houses who daily interrogate the Nigerian Question on and offline, students, social media influencers locally and internationally, celebrities, and thousands of civil society organizations and attract them into an organic national movement to rescue Nigeria from degenerate leadership that has held it hostage for decades.
Whoever can pull all of these off, can beat Tinubu in the next election.
No doubt it’s a lot of hard work, but it’s doable. It is a duty that has to be done in the overall interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. The extremely unfavorable policies of this government must be effectively exploited by the opposition to campaign against Tinubu in 2027. His government is massively unpopular with Nigerians but if the opposition doesn’t push it hard in the public space, Tinubu has the capacity to turn the tide with relentless and ferocious propaganda. There are more than enough professional rogues around in the service of filthy lucre to do the dirty jobs. But, Tinubu is beatable and we must make it happen!
Mark Adebayo is a published author, civil rights activist, columnist, organizational development expert, and political consultant. He is the current national publicity secretary of the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP.
