Tales of Betrayal and Aregbesola’s Difficult Task Against Tinubu, by Emmanuel Aziken

The acerbic attacks of Daniel Bwala at the All Progressives Congress, APC, and its triumphant 2023 presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, resurfaced this week as the political space again reflected on the fickleness of Nigerian politicians.

In a social media post that has come to symbolise the mutability of Nigerian political actors, Bwala, who before the 2023 General Election, while serving as an aide of Atiku Abubaka,r posted thus:

“The human brain is unique and miraculous. It works and functions optically 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year, UNTIL YOU JOIN APC, THEN IT STOPS WORKING.”

Following that, while analysing the 2024 budget proposal of President Tinubu, he had quipped that nothing would come out of the Tinubu government even if it were given another 30 years.

“When there is a fundamental problem with policy, time is irrelevant; 30 years it will not work. Most of the economists I’ve listened to have faulted the President’s budget with which he was supposed to deliver the agenda flat-out…”

When he made those comments, Bwala was an ally of Atiku Abubakar.

However, Bwala was singing a completely different tune this week. The very man who said that Tinubu cannot do anything positive in 30 years, only about a year ago, told his audience in a television interview of how Nigeria was now turning into an Eldorado. But the internet does not forget and his past caustic remarks against the government he now sings for are regularly being used against him.

His contradictory assertions are indeed not surprising. It is the trajectory of the Nigerian political class.

Who remembers the energetic drive of Akpabio during the 2015 election campaigns, when he went as far as saying that the APC was a houseboy’s party. At that time, in an apparent effort to demonstrate the liberation of Akwa Ibom from the mentality of a people who supply houseboys to Nigeria, he had said:

“APC is a house boy party. Only houseboys carry brooms.” However, three years after, Akpabio surrendered his role as opposition leader and joined the broom carrying crowd. When he spoke at that time, Akpabio was a strong canvasser for Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Mama P.

If the defection of Akpabio and Bwala shocked, the swing around of Rauf Aregbesola against Tinubu is one that many people are still yet to come to terms with.

Aregbesola served as about the most powerful commissioner in the Tinubu government from where he launched the onslaught for the 2007 governorship seat in Osun State.

Even while still a candidate and after becoming governor in 2010, he remained about the second most influential decider in the politics of Lagos State. From his base in Osun State he was reportedly influencing politics in Lagos State. Some have also named him as among the principal characters who stopped a second term for Governor Akinwunmi Ambode in 2019.

While it is alleged that he fell out with Tinubu over his lack of satisfaction with the way his former boss handled the crisis with Gboyega Oyetola, others smell a rat in the conspiracy by the Buhari cabal to frustrate the emergence of Tinubu as president. Was Aregbesola recruited into the script?

Whatever, when Oyetola, his successor as governor, sought re-election in 2022, Aregbesola was reported to have subtly if not actively frustrated him.

He was similarly on the sidelines as Tinubu battled the Buhari cabal, and after that, the Obidients and other allied forces in his journey to be president.

Today, Aregbesola is the national secretary of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, presently, the vehicle being used by leading oppositionists to frustrate a second term for President Tinubu.

Your correspondent has heard of how Aregbesola has been mobilising around leading political actors in the Southwest with the aim of stirring rebellion among faithful and disenchanted loyalists of Tinubu.

His effort, it was gathered, has not been very successful. Despite the negative impact of some of Tinubu’s economic measures that have made him lose popularity, Aregbesola, it was gathered, is still having difficulty sowing the seed of rebellion. Many of those he has canvassed to, it is alleged, claim that it would be inhumane to join Aregbesola in any plot against Tinubu, given the role the president played in the former Osun governor’s political life.

The tale of duplicity among Nigerian politicians is often shaped by the puerile proclivity to personality rather than principles, which it is alleged is the bane of the political system.

Indeed, the political ecosystem is saturated with political narratives of changed dynamics influenced by lack of political scruples. Chibuke Amaechi and Nyesom Wike; Atiku Abubakar and Reno Omokri; Olusola Saraki and his son, Bukola; Bukola Saraki and his sister, Gbemi Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa, Rabiu Kwankwaso and Abdulahi Ganduje and indeed many more.

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