On Thursday, 25th October, 2018, the erstwhile Lagos State Governor and present Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola enjoined his people of the Nigeria’s South-West Zone to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 elections towards guaranteeing a return of power to their 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 the then 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.
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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 at the 2019 polls.
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 wasn’t 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 at the 2019 Presidential election.
By the statement from Mr. Fashola, he had inadvertently concurred with the line of action of his predecessor, Chief Bola Tinubu. Prior to the outing, the latter had been putting up behaviours that indicated he was aspiring to take over power from President Buhari. His body language suggested 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 implied that the people of the South-West under the auspices of the APC cannot afford to allow any other zone or region to succeed Buhari when he bows out from Aso Rock after the expiration of his second term in office.
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 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 a position would willingly and freely be ceded to him is simply daydreaming.
However, Mr. Fashola would have at least considered the consequences of such an announcement especially at the era when the ruling party was making frantic efforts to remain in power. Also, acknowledging that the major opposition party – the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – had been 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 was 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 had 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.
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 had 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.