Oped: Why I Am No Longer Supporting Bola Tinubu For 2023 Presidency – By Yusuf Omotayo
Before Bola Tinubu declared for presidency in January 2020, I was one of those who, following his antecedent as governor of Lagos state, wish he would one day govern Nigeria. But with what I have seen in the past couple of months, I strongly believe he would be doing the country and also himself a lot of good by not taking up the extremely challenging and demanding job of the president of the world’s most populous black nation. Age is not on his side and while we cannot diagnose him from the screen of our television, one can infer that his health needs attention.
Even the biggest detractors of Tinubu will admit albeit grudgingly that he was an exceptionally good governor. For eight years, he steadily grew the economy of the state from N600 million when he came into office in 1999 to N8 billion by the time he left in 2007. Many people appear to have forgotten the mountain of refuse that used to litter the state and how the metamorphosis of the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) from a board to an agency in 2007 helped to address this problem. The establishment of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) in 2000 has also been significant in the management of traffic in the state. Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) established in 2002 to address policies related to road management gave birth to the BRT and the Lagos Rail Mass Transit being developed.
Tinubu’s policies in Lagos have had enduring legacies and it has been rumoured that he developed the master plan for the city which his successors since 2007 till date have been working with. As someone who attended a public secondary school in the state, I benefitted from his free secondary school education while also writing my West African Examination Council for free.
As commendable as his performance as governor was, I have seen with dismay how Tinubu has been in competition with age and how ultimately, even the strongest of mankind will succumb. Even President Muhammadu Buhari admitted when he won in 2015 that he wish he was younger as “there is a limit to what I can do.”.
The role of the president is far from ceremonial and assembling the best team alone is not enough to make up for the lag and lapses age and ill health will likely bring. We have seen how he makes effort to stay awake in public functions, struggles to walk up or down stairs, and stumbles while walking numerous times. We have seen his aides make every effort possible to hide these things by helping him hoist up party flags, supporting him anytime he walks in public and even trying to explain some of the unintelligible things he sometimes says.
The presidency is probably one of the most difficult jobs in the world and no amount of good intention can make up for the demand the work requires. Tinubu has not shown convincingly that he is either in the right physical or mental state to take up this task and a vacuum created by an ailing president is dangerous to the kind of stability Nigeria’s political and economic space requires to thrive. President Buhari’s absence for about 100 days in 2017 due to ill health gave room for rumours about a cabal being in charge of government or an alleged plan of a military coup to fester. The leadership had to constantly assure the country that no coup was being planned.
Nigeria is at an economic crossroads where even all hands being on deck does not assure that the multitude of problems we are facing will fade away in a short time. Tinubu’s desire to be president which continues to look like the fulfilment of a long-time ambition rather than an altruistic wish to get down to work and fix Nigeria’s problems is not what the country needs at this critical time. He has been able to build a political empire that even his opponents will desire and has been a political mentor to other political office holders who have also done very well in office: eg Babatunde Fashola and Professor Yemi Osinbajo. Like El-Rufai, he deserves a rest and should be able to identify younger people who can also do the work well and throw his weight behind them.
