https://www.blueprint.ng/why-tinubu-may-lose-lagos-in-2023-2/
Blueprint
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has declared his intention to achieve his “lifelong ambition” of becoming the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. His tenure as Lagos state governor ended in 2007, about 15 years ago. He was the only governor who got reelected on the platform of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) party. Why he didn’t deem it fit to contest the 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 Presidential election to achieve “his lifelong ambition” remains inexplicable.
He was the de facto leader of the defunct AD which metamorphosed to Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) as the only surviving governor on the platform of the party. And that could have made it pretty seamless for him to have emerged as the presidential candidate of the party at the time.
As a renowned political strategist as claimed by many of his admirers, he could have equally challenged a so-called weaker candidate of the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who was President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2011 general election. Does it mean that this purported “lifelong ambition” was not there when opportunities for presidential elections arose in the past after his gubernatorial sojourn?
President Muhammadu Buhari could be said to have harbored a lifelong ambition for the presidency. That was why he contested for the position in 2003, 2007, 2011 and finally succeeded in 2015. Tinubu has been harbouring a “lifelong ambition” yet was shying away from expressing it until now. My hunch tells me that Tinubu doesn’t have any “lifelong ambition” for the presidency of Nigeria. If he truly has, he would have made efforts to realize it in the past elections when he was younger and healthier. I wager to posit that Tinubu’s main interest is his suzerainty in Lagos state which may slip off his hands in 2023 if care is not taken.
Tinubu was declared as the winner of the 2003 governorship election against late Funsho Williams by a slim margin in the ratio of about 9:7 in hundreds of thousands of votes as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). That was the closest chance PDP ever had in taking over Lagos state. Stories had it that Funsho Williams actually won the election with over a million votes, but then Vice President Atiku Abubakar did some political magic to save his friend by ensuring that Tinubu retained his seat.
There were speculations that Tinubu never wanted former Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola to get a second term in 2011. By the end of Fashola’s first term, his relationship with his godfather (Tinubu) had soured. Tinubu was poised to deny him a second term.
However, his major impediments were PDP at the federal level and Fashola was popular and endeared himself to Lagosians. PDP at the federal level was ready to hand over the party’s ticket to Fashola if Tinubu had denied him the ACN ticket. President Jonathan and the PDP were watching the Lagos political scenario with keen interest. Tinubu was handicapped. His hands were tired. As a clever politician that he is, he demurred. Recoiled to his shell and allowed Fashola a second term.
Tinubu was able to deal with immediate past Governor Ambode just because APC was controlling the federal government in 2019. Those who say that Ambode is a coward are missing the point. He is not. If Ambode had defected to PDP, he would have still lost the election because President Buhari needed Lagos State for his (Buhari) own reelection. He needed Tinubu’s support and wouldn’t want Ambode’s second tenure ambition to torpedo his own reelection…
