Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu was elected a senator under the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party during general Ibrahim Babangida's political transition program, which ended in a fiasco because of the annulment of the June 1993 presidential election widely believed to have been won by businessman Chief MKO Abiola.
The political tsunami triggered in the country by the annulment of the election adjudged to be transparent, free, and fair by local and international observers led General Babangida to hurriedly enact Decree setting up an interim national government to douse national tension and assuaged frayed nerves.
An Interim Head of State, Chief Ernest Shonekan, was appointed to lead the interim national government leading to the resignation from Military President General Babangida. He was in office from 2 January 1992 to 17 November 1993. The interim national government called transitional council was the final phase leading to a scheduled handover to a democratic government.
The constitutionality of the interim national government was challenged in the Lagos High Court by pro-democracy activists, and the court declared that the interim national government was illegitimate.
The declaration of the interim national government illegal by the court caused national consternation, stir, and constitutional crisis is leading to its toppling in a coup on 26 November 1993 by General Sani Abacha.
Asiwaju TInubu was one of the pro-democracy activists.
They vehemently refused to support the military government constituted by General Abacha but rather insisted that the annulled election of Chief Abiola must be validated, and he was sworn into office as President. Asiwaju Tinubu was among the pro-democracy activists and leaders that founded the National Democratic Coalition (NEDCO) to mobilize national and international support for the restoration of democracy and restoration of Chief Abiola as the winner of the 12 June 1993 presidential election.
The government of General Abacha was rattled and perturbed by the intransigence of NEDCO and other pro-democracy groups, and activists declared war against them. Scores were arrested and clamped into prolonged detention without trial. Senator Tinubu was a marked man, and he had to go to political exile abroad.
General Abacha died suddenly on 8 June 1998. General Abdulsalam Abubakar took over as Head of State and announced a political transition program to hand over political governance to a democratically elected government. Meanwhile, plans were discussed to release Chief Abiola under detention without trial for several years for purported declaration of himself as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Lagos in 1994. However, dramatically a shocked nation was told that Chief Abiola had died in detention on 7 July 1998 while meeting with diplomats from the United States of America led by Thomas Pickering and Susan Rice.
Asiwaju Tinubu returned from exile to take part in the political transition program announced by the military government of General Abubakar. He was one of the founders of the Alliance for Democracy, AD. He contested and won the gubernatorial seat of Lagos State. Asiwaju Tinubu, a perceptible and visionary politician, never gave a quarter to President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had looked forward to having the entire Southwestern geopolitical zone under his political grip, having failed to make a major political impression and garnered expected support in the 1999 presidential election.
Asiwaju Tinubu soon clashed with President Obasanjo over his creation of new local government areas in Lagos State. President Obasanjo was peeved by the decision directed that allocations from the federation account to Lagos State be withheld. Governor Tinubu, a dogged fighter, decided to challenge the legality of President Obasanjo's directive in the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Even though President Obasanjo was indisputably hostile to the government of Lagos State, Governor Tinubu refused to bug and adroitly and doggedly managed the affairs of the State seamlessly.
In the 2003 general election, the Peoples Democratic Party of President Obasanjo swept the entire Southwestern geopolitical and routed a badly fractured AD. The leadership of AD had secretly entered into a dubious alliance with PDP to support the re-election of President Obasanjo in return for support by his government for the support of its candidates. Governor Tinubu, as politically wise, backed out of the arrangement.
He was the only Governors elected under AD that survived the political onslaught of PDP in the Southwest when the dust of the 2003 general election settled.
Asiwaju Tinubu fell out with the leadership of AD over its compromise with the PDP, founded the Action Congress, AC, and pulled out of AD. The last straw left AD permanently decapitated, politically comatose, and eventual demise in the firmament of Nigerian politics. Asiwaju Tinubu, despite forming AC, magnanimously supported Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to have its presidential ticket to slug it out with late President Umaru Musa Yaradua of the PDP in the 2007 general election.
Later, AC merged with a motley of political parties to form the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria. Again, Asiwaju Tinubu selflessly allowed Malam Nuhu Ribadu to be its presidential candidate for the 2011 general election.
In the 2011 general election, Asiwaju Tinubu tried to broker an alliance with the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, CPC, to support its candidate, the then General Muhammadu Buhari, to fight the PDP.
But the alliance failed at the last minute. The failure of the alliance and victory of President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP served as the impetus for the agreement in 2012 between President Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Tinubu to merge the defunct ACN and CPC to found a progressive broad national party to fight PDP.
Initially, the defunct ANPP was not part of the plan. But the defunct ACN Merger Committee on the 2 February 2013 in the house of Chief Tom Ikimi (he was the Chairman of ACN Merger Committee) with the CPC Merger Committee pointedly said the merger of ACN and CPC would only take place if ANPP and other progressives platforms in the country are allowed to take part in the talks.
The CPC merger Committee, led by late Senator Mohammed Garba Gadi, reluctantly but shrewdly agreed to the ACN proposal because it saw it as a trap. After that, the CPC Committee unanimously approved that Senator Gadi should travel to Kaduna to brief General Buhari on the development and its acceptance that ANPP should be part of the merger talks that resulted in the formation of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Asiwaju Tinubu and President Buhari are undoubtedly Nigeria democracy icons and pantheons. History will undeniably be kind to them for the noble part they played in the political evolution of Nigeria in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Asiwaju Tinubu is a political generalissimo who has greatly paid his political dues and groomed a generation of national leaders. I doff my hat for Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, love or hate him; he is a great man.
Okoi Obono-Obla
Obono-Obla was pioneer National Legal Adviser and member Board of Trustees, CPC, 2009 to 2010, National Deputy Secretary, CPC, 2011-2013, Secretary and Member CPC merger Committee and Co-Secretary Joint Inter-Party Merger Committee, February-July 2013.
Publisher: Don Martyn L.O
Ikeduru APC Media Hub
08032950897
Ikeduruapcmediahub@gmail.com
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