By Ochereome Nnanna

IN exactly one week from today, the open campaigns and soap-boxing towards the 2023 general elections will start, in line with the timetable of the electoral umpire – the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. For the next five months, the nation is going to be enveloped in electioneering frenzy which, even in the most advanced of democracies, evokes extreme emotions that could claim lives and property if mishandled.

I feel compelled to sound this alert because of the new face of our party system and the major contenders. Between 1999 and 2019, we operated a multiparty system with two dominant parties which have tasted power at the federal level – the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC. But this time, the Labour Party, LP, has become the proverbial “Third Force” that people who want a new direction for Nigeria have clamoured for. Somewhere in the shadows lurking around like the proverbial “dark horse” is the New Nigerian People’s Party, NNPP, which is essentially a provincial (Arewa) party.

We have two Northern presidential candidates – Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (NNPP); and their two Southern counterparts, Peter Obi (LP) and Bola Tinubu (APC). There is absolutely no tension between the camps of the Northern candidates. But the same cannot be said for the Southern contenders. The camp of the APC candidate, Tinubu, has been stoking narratives that, if not checked at this budding stage, could balloon into an inter-ethnic crisis which could mar our march to May 29, 2023.

In June, Tinubu’s daughter, Folashade Ojo, falsely claimed that her dad, a two-term governor of Lagos, made the state comfortable for the Igbo residents and they “choose to be ungrateful”. Twelve days ago, Tinubu’s wife, Remi, a senator and pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, vowed to invoke Lagos deities to chase Igbo out. A national daily quotes her thus: “We will entreat all the deities of Lagos to chase Igbo people out. Igbo who didn’t marry Yoruba, we will inherit them. Given how much we love Igbo, you now want to spoil everything”. That’s hate speech, but let’s put that aside, for now.

“Spoil everything” here means that the Igbo people in Lagos are perceived by her, Folashade and the Tinubu political clique, as poised to derail the ambition of their presidential candidate, Tinubu. After the Yoruba indigenes, the Igbo maintain the second largest population and economic presence in Lagos. Tinubu’s people are mischievously and ignorantly spinning the false narrative that he “developed Lagos” which enabled the Igbo thrive.

These are victims of the stoppage of history as a subject in Nigerian schools. If they knew the history of Nigeria and Lagos in particular, they would realise that though a Yoruba enclave, Lagos, like the Igbo city of Port Harcourt, is a national and international heritage. Igbo politicians of the defunct National Council for Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, held senior political positions in Lagos in the 1950s and 1960s when Nigeria was still normal. If not for ethnic coup, Nnamdi Azikiwe was poised to be the Premier of the Western Region.

It was not only in Lagos that people from outside the ethnolinguistic fold of the region occupied top positions. The first and only Lord Mayor of Enugu was called Umaru Altine, a Fulani from Sokoto. In Port Harcourt, Yoruba, Edo, Igbo, Ijaw, Ghanaians and Sierra Leoneans occupied senior bureaucratic and political positions.

Udo Udoma, an Ibibio lawyer and jurist, formed the first ever ethnic union in Nigeria – the Ibibio State Union – as a resident of Aba where he also published a newspaper between the 1930s and 1950s. The famous Igbo State Union only followed the example of Udoma’s initiative.

Politics at that time, especially in the NCNC platform, was nationalist and pan-Africanist in scope. It was Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group, AG, that ethnicised politics to establish his relevance and political kingdom. Also, Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress, NPC, used region and religion to carve out his political fiefdom.

This brief historical aside is for the benefit of the youth and the generation that lacks an understanding of Nigeria’s past glories and failed aspirations.

Besides, from its time as a separate British Colony to its emergence as Nigeria’s capital in 1914, Lagos has always been the nation’s foremost centre of commerce and economic melting pot. This has nothing to do with ethnicity, let alone personality. Lagos was Nigeria’s capital for 76 long years. The British colonialists officially governed Nigeria from Lagos for 45 years, while Nigerians (civilians and military) administered the country from there for 31 years.

General Yakubu Gowon and General Olusegun Obasanjo sank the bulk of our first oil boom into Lagos to develop its infrastructure, such as airport, seaports, bridges (especially flyovers), highways, causeways and the sundry military, bureaucratic and commercial institutions. In spite of economic downturn, the development of Lagos, especially under Shehu Shagari and Ibrahim Babangida (the man who built the Third Mainland Bridge) continued until the seat of power moved to Abuja.

Bola Tinubu’s only real contribution to the Lagos we have today is that he shored up its revenue base, capitalising on infrastructural assets developed for over nearly a century. In doing so, he enriched himself too, both economically and politically.

So, these false narratives will not work because they have no historical or logical foundation. Comically, the same Remi Tinubu who will invoke deities to expel Igbo from Lagos went to Abuja suburbs with a group of APC women to canvass for support for her husband! The “deities” of Abuja are also waiting to prevent Remi Tinubu from becoming the next First Lady, going by her own rule of engagement.

In the second part of this article, we will point out the excesses that the Tinubu political camp needs to check to ensure a hitch-free march to May 29, 2023.