AS we explained in the first part of this article, we have had two types of leaders since independence. The first were those selected by the powers-that-be to serve their interests. Thirteen out of our 16 rulers were handpicked. These were: Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (British colonial masters), Yakubu Gowon (Britain and North’s Sokoto Caliphate Establishment, SCE), Murtala Mohammed (SCE), Olusegun Obasanjo (SCE), and Shehu Shagari (SCE).

The others are: Muhammadu Buhari (military wing of the SCE led by Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha); Abdulsalami Abubakar (Western Powers and international stakeholders), and Olusegun Obasanjo again (Western Powers with North’s backing). Obasanjo, having failed to extend his constitutional tenure in 2007, handpicked Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan lost power to Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu, who emerged from Tinubu’s plotting and maneouvres, with the strong backing of Western powers.

The emergence of the Buhari/Tinubu partnership followed the pattern of the Babangida/Abacha alliance. Ambitious Babangida used his charm and wits to build popularity and a power base in the military. His equally ambitious friend, Abacha, pledged his loyalty to Babangida, and the duo struck an agreement to snatch and share power. Abacha supported Babangida, helped to quell several attempted coups and the Orkar coup of April 22, 1990. He restored Babangida to power when he could easily have stepped in.

When Babangida was forced to quit on August 27, 1993 in the storm of the post-June presidential election annulment, he created the phoney Interim National Government, ING, appointed Ernest Shonekan as the figurehead and Abacha as Secretary of Defence. From there, Abacha could ease himself into power whenever he was ready.

In a similar manner, after pocketing Lagos, the nation’s economic capital, Tinubu developed the ambition to be president of Nigeria. This aspiration flowered further when he successfully captured the South-West for his political party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. By 2011, Muhammadu Buhari, who commanded a cult-like image in the Muslim North, Nigeria’s highest voting bloc, had contested and failed to be president thrice. He wept publicly and vowed not to contest again, until Tinubu changed his mind.

Like Abacha did to Babangida, Tinubu approached Buhari for an alliance whereby the North and South-West would combine to share power leveraging their voting strengths and residual political clouts cultivated since 1967 when they combined to fight the East. The plot worked like magic because President Goodluck Jonathan, a political weakling, tolerated their subterfuges. It is such a sour irony that young people who protested over hunger and bad government are being tried for “treason” by the same Tinubu who bankrolled protests against Jonathan and called him and his wife the dirtiest names in the book. He went scot-free.

Jonathan also played into the hands of the “woke” Western leaders, especially Barack Obama of the USA and David Cameron of the UK, when he signed the Anti-Same Sex Bill into law in January 2014. He was blocked from serving a second term. When Buhari finally became president, Tinubu gave him his full support. Indeed, Tinubu helped give Buhari undeserved victory in 2019 when thugs destroyed electoral materials in PDP and Igbo-dominated areas of Lagos. This was akin to Abacha’s stoppage of Orkar’s coup.

Several factors in Tinubu’s 15-month-old reign remind us of the late General Sani Abacha’s days in power. Abacha was the first Nigerian ruler to bring his family into the glare of our economic and political affairs. His first son, Ibrahim, who later died in a plane crash, was a power broker. Even army generals ran to him for favours.

Abacha, as Head of State, did not mind being seen as a “businessman”, with Ibrahim in full control of his “business empire”, especially our oil and the freshly commercialised telecom sectors. Abacha pocketed the political space by forming and taking over the five political parties. He was also moving towards some kind of geopolitical re-engineering of Nigeria to boost his popularity. Most interestingly, Abacha closed down the civil and democratic space. He threatened activists, protesters and opponents with arrest and arraignment for “treason”.  That way, those he could not win over, he cowed.

Are you seeing what I am seeing? Tinubu’s sons, daughter and family members are visible in our government and its businesses. Like Abacha, Tinubu has shown more than a passing interest in dominating our oil sector. He is not only the President and Minister of Petroleum, his family holdings, Oando, have acquired AGIP-Eni, and allegedly enjoy commanding interests in offshore refineries that sell products to Nigeria.

If this is so, why does anyone think we will ever get out of our fuel supply woes? Why should any local refinery work, except the president puts Nigeria’s interests above those of his family?

Tinubu gained power through protests. He became the Afenifere’s preferred candidate for Lagos governorship in 1999 because he was a NADECO activist who went into exile rather than join Abacha’s transition programme to bury “June 12”. Also, Tinubu sponsored many protests and rebellions in the National Assembly against Jonathan. He undermined the 2014 National Conference by mobilising against it. 

But just a year into power, Tinubu is arraigning #EndBadGovernance protesters for “treason” in the manner of Abacha’s phantom coup trials. Tinubu appears determined to uproot democracy after using it to climb to power. Just like Abacha’s time, we are also seeing forgotten old men now suddenly running around calling for a new constitutional order. Does the bell ring without someone ringing it? This is a classic case of what the French call déjà vu!

Let it be borne in mind, however: for every Abacha, there is post-Abacha!