Earlier this week the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) held its 62nd Annual General Conference. It took place at Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos. The Conference, themed “BOLD Transitions” was scheduled to hold between August 19 to 26 this year. Special guests included the PDP presidential candidate in the February’s presidential poll, Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi. The APC flagbearer, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu sent in his vice-presidential partner, Senator Kashim Shettima, to represent him. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP was conspicuously absent. But the former Kano State Governor had since issued a statement explaining the reason for his absence.
The award-winning writer and novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered a keynote address in which she declared that Nigeria lacked heroes to whom the youths could look up for inspiration. According to the author of ‘Half Of A Yellow Sun’: “As long as we refuse to untangle the knot of injustice, peace cannot thrive. If we don’t talk about it, we fail to hold leaders accountable and we turn what should be transparent systems into ugly opaque cults….My experience made me think there’s something dead in us in our society; a death of self-awareness and ability for self-criticism. There’s need for resurrection”.
For Obi and Atiku it was an incandescent performance as they pilloried the Buhari administration’s failures hammering on the positive way forward. Senator Shettima was content arguing that his gubernatorial performance in terror-ravaged Borno State and that of Asiwaju Tinubu in Lagos would be replicated at the national level should they be voted to power.
But more than what he had to say the Senator’s appearance caused a stir that reverberated across the world via the social media. Wearing an oversized suit and sneakers combo and not unbuttoning the suit where he sat gloom-faced Shettima cut a pitiable spectacle. The first to fire a salvo online was no other than the loquacious Reno Omokri, a former presidential aide living abroad.
Taking to his official Twitter account Omokri had tweeted: “This is Tinubu’s running mate at the NBA Conference today. Look at his feet. Who in his right mind wears a suit and tie and then puts on a pair of gym shoes to a conference?….If Shettima does not know how to dress himself, how can he address Nigeria’s challenges?”
Shettima’s antiquated dress mode reminded us risibly about how some Hausa-Fulanis (especially herders and breeders) dressed coming to the cinema in Jos when I went there for a vacation many years ago. The primitive dress mode of many of these people from the north always constitutes a source of embarrassment for us all in a great nation where the southerners are highly sophisticated in terms of our cherished way of life, including fashion.
Shettima displayed a stark fashion ignorance that betrayed his primitivism. How could he have dressed like that to such auspicious event featuring the best among us? Or was it a deliberate ploy to steal the ‘show’ with a negative attire? What was he thinking coming out dressed like a clown or jester? Baba Sala or Zebrudaya?
Asiwaju Tinubu, much like President Buhari, by sending in Shettima to represent him, had wittingly or unwittingly demonstrated his attitude towards delegation of duty. Like the lanky man from Daura he desperately wants to succeed in office next year Tinubu is good at delegating duties which ordinarily ought to occupy his time and attention. Buhari largely failed because of a surrogate presidency which sees an entrenched cabal slugging it out for influence and control with other political forces!
Just hours prior to the opening of the NBA Conference in Lagos Asiwaju Tinubu was spotted in Asaba, Delta State, en route to attending the burial ceremony of the mother of Chairman/Editor-in-Chief of Thisday/Arise Group, Princess Margaret Obaigbena at Owa-Oyibu, headquarters of Ika North East local government area of Delta State. Prince Nduka Obaigbena is, of course, a powerful media mogul whose attention many politicians crave. So the burial of his mother attracted the high and mighty of the society.
And days or hours after the commencement of the NBA Conference in the state of aquatic splendour, Tinubu’s politico-economic stronghold, Asiwaju was reportedly in London meeting with the aggrieved PDP Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike! Governor Wike has demonstrated his capacity for nuisance in the opposition PDP.
Given his failures to be President or Vice-President then something must give on his terms? Why hobnobbing with political adversaries if not to serve notice of exit routes and alternatives in the event of failure of the PDP hierarchy to satisfy his demands, some laughable?
Asiwaju Tinubu, given his health challenges and baggages of graft and corruption trailing his eventful public life, must have decided to evade scrutiny and/or accountability towards the 2023 presidential poll. But for how long can this old man who claimed it is his ‘right’ to be President continue dodging probing questions, eyes and cameras?
He was recently with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in his Hill-top Mansion in Abeokuta. Asiwaju must have gone there to woo ‘Baba’ to support his presidential ambition. And OBJ in his usual humour and irony had told Tinubu that he had made ‘history’ by introducing ‘Emi-lo’kan’ and ‘O’lu-le’ vocabularies into the Yoruba dictionary. ‘Emi-lo’kan’ translates to ‘my turn’ in Yoruba language while ‘O’lu-le’ refers to serial presidential ambition failure of the incumbent President before the Asiwaju effect made it possible in 2015.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, had spoken in Surulere, Lagos, about the meeting giving the impression that ‘Baba’ OBJ had thrown his weight behind Asiwaju in his desperate quest to be President. Speaker Gbajabiamila was present during the closed-door meeting in Abeokuta but he was being economical with the truth.
Obasanjo was forced, following the misinterpretation and insinuations trailing the meeting, to issue a statement categorically debunking any endorsement claims from the Tinubu camp. The elder statesman made it clear that the meeting was more “brotherly rather than political”.
Is Asiwaju Tinubu afraid of lawyers, the bar and the bench? We cannot surely answer in the affirmative. But by ‘snubbing’ the learned gentlemen and ladies of the bar in his Lagos ‘den’ Asiwaju must have sent a negative message fraught with conjectures.
The Lagos godfather must get out of the presidential kitchen if he finds the heat too much to bear in there! Aso Rock must be ‘demystified’ post-Buharism making the seat of power a place for a healthy President. And not a dwelling abode for an invalid executive one.
SOC Okenwa
soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr
