By Rotimi Fasan
THE kwata between former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, and the Code of Conduct Bureau appears to be taking a messy turn with the reported snubbing of the VP, Namadi Sambo, who had been on official visit to Osun by Rauf Aregbesola over the PDP’s alleged failure to allow Tinubu’s supporters into the venue of his trial last week. It’s a big fight the ACN insists the PDP is stage-managing for purely political reasons.

The ex-governor and his supporters believe firmly that his arraignment before the CCB is actually an indirect attempt by the PDP to cut off the arrowhead of the ACN reclamation of the West. In order words, the trial of Tinubu is viewed by the ACN as a mortal struggle initiated by the PDP against the ACN for the soul of the West.

The last local government election in Lagos State in which the ACN retained its domination of the politics of the trophy state might have added oil to the raging fire. The whole matter started anew a few weeks back when Tinubu, accused of violating Section 7 of the Code of Conduct Bureau Tribunal Act, by operating at least 10 foreign bank accounts as governor between 1999 and 2007, contrary to the provision of the law which prohibits ownership of foreign account by public office holders. Among the responses provided by the defence, including their supporters in and out of government, is the fact that some of these accounts, opened while the ex-governor was a student and/or in the private sector, are no longer active and are as dead as a leper’s toe nail.

Others make reference to the fact that the total amount in these accounts amount to nothing in relation to the assumed wealth of Tinubu. In other words, they believe a man of Tinubu’s status would own far more than the accounts proudly display had they been opened for purposes of siphoning public funds which is actually the unstated reason behind the embargo placed on public officers’ ownership of foreign accounts.

Whatever the merit or demerit of the defence claims, the laws of Nigeria clearly forbid public officers owning foreign accounts. Tinubu was, therefore, hauled before the Code of Conduct Tribunal- not in Lagos as you might expect and where the ACN leader had been governor but Abuja, the FCT. This seemingly unimportant point is now a serious bone of contention. For what the CCT did was tantamount to taking a person accused of stealing a goat in Akure for trial in Zamfara where, if unlucky, they might be amputated were Sanni Ahmed Yerima still governor.

At his first appearance before the tribunal Tinubu, in what seemed like a defiant pose, crossed his legs in the dock. While that pose might have been amusing to some, it was definitely not a laughing matter for the ACN who had mobilised many of their members to the venue of the trial to view what looked like the humbling of the voodoo-loving, Haitian-born Papa Doc Duvalier. No less than three of the ACN governors were in Abuja to give moral support to the man, an authentic Papa Doc figure, who stood by them when their hope of becoming governor seemed totally forlorn. Tinubu had a formidable team of senior lawyers to plead his case. All told, therefore, the man fondly called Asiwaju/Jagaban Borgu was in safe hands. Or so it seemed. But in the intervening weeks before last Wednesday appearance a lot of fireworks had been set in motion and in the light of the trial of other PDP stalwarts, ex-governors Gbenga Daniel and Alao-Akala among others, and not forgetting the jailing of Bode George, the ACN must have come to the realisation that the future could be more ominous than they imagined.

Even if the entire proceeding of trial of PDP men was meant to justify the trial of Tinubu, the ACN must have come to believe that if dogs could eat other dogs’ intestines in this manner there is nothing they wouldn’t do to the entrails of a chicken. This perhaps explained the event that played out so dramatically in Abuja last Wednesday when Tinubu refused to enter the dock to be ‘docked’ once more. It must have all looked humiliating for him. But he had what seemed sufficient legal cover for his action. He had questioned the territorial jurisdiction of the Code of Conduct Tribunal to try him in Abuja rather than in Lagos where he had been governor when he, allegedly, violated Section 7 of the Bureau’s Act.

Was Tinubu’s action unnecessary stonewalling on his part or is it the case that the Tribunal deliberately overlooked such legal loophole in order to provide technical ground for Tinubu to slip away which would appear to strengthen the impression that the entire trial was a non-starter, liable to be bogged in legal technicalities, right from the beginning. Indeed, was the entire trial an attempt to rattle and ultimately puncture Tinubu’s growing stature in the West’s politics? The only Alliance for Democracy governor that survived the Obasanjo-PDP-led take-over of the West in 2003, Tinubu successfully repulsed the PDP from Lagos, earning him the ‘Last Man Standing’ sobriquet. In due course, he would rid the entire West of the PDP menace and assume the status of, perhaps, the most influential politician from the region minus Obasanjo whose hands the ACN appears to see around the Jagaban Borgu’s present travail.

Tinubu has come a long way from 1993 through the struggles for the June 12 period. On assuming position as governor of Lagos during which time Lagos seemed poised to be swallowed by heaps of waste, he struggled to fight off the buck-passing act of the PDP in Abuja. Obasanjo’s bully tactics did little to rattle him. He fought back courageously and eventually triumphed, though not entirely, over the menace of dirt and bad roads which the ‘federal’ centre had abandoned. He laid a good foundation that his anointed candidate as governor, Raji Fasola, has since built upon and, perhaps, surpassed.

The rise of Tinubu has certainly boosted his profile, justifiably too, but he would need to cut down on what appears to be an increasingly messianic aura, a sense that he has the divine right to lead the West. His ambition seems to be drawing him into collision with some of those whose political success he promoted highly. Such thinking might have led to his impatience with the obviously misplaced and ill-thought decision of the Conduct Tribunal to try him in Abuja rather than Lagos.

But Tinubu ought to have exhausted the legal opportunities available to him and, in fact, demonstrated the kind of forbearance Awolowo showed before those who jailed him shortly after they all won independence for Nigeria.