Why Bola Tinubu Should Not Be Nigeria’s President in 2023
Bola Tinubu was the governor of Lagos state between 1999 and 2007. Since that time, he has transformed into a political Godfather; a political operative who grooms handpicked candidates for political office.
To the average Nigerian, his country has two basic problems that have hindered progress; bad leadership and corruption.
The fact of the matter is Tinubu has handpicked the majority of state governors in South-Western Nigeria since 2007. The APC, an alliance that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power as Nigeria’s president in 2015 further gave him the opportunity to pick senators, civil servants like ministers, judges, and heads of government agencies. Tinubu practically picked and installed Nigeria’s vice president!
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To understand what a Tinubu presidency will look like we need to follow the story of one of his minions, Babatunde Raji Fashola.
Fashola used to be Tinubu’s Chief-of-Staff when the latter served as governor of Lagos state. When Tinubu left office in2007, he picked Fashola to be his replacement. Fashola’s rule, like that of many Nigerian governors, was plagued with lots of corruption allegations, so much so that in 2010 Lagos state parliament debated removing him from office on charges in relation to the Eko Mega City project.
As minister of power, Fashola has only been able to marginally improve Nigeria’s power generation capacity from 4000 megawatts in 2015 to about 4500 megawatts in 2020. In that same period, Egypt was able to build a power plant that generated 14.4GW of power despite having a fraction of Nigeria’s population and resources.
Tinubu is 68 years old, his reasons for wanting to be president is anything but altruism. Just like his buddy Muhammad Buhari, being President is not about working to serve the people, it’s just an opportunity to tick-off another item on their wishlists.
The biggest problem in today’s Nigeria is poor and visionless leadership, if that is true our reality is that no man in the last 20 years has had more impact on Nigeria’s leadership than Bola Tinubu.
