Bola Ahmed Tinubu: The next President of Nigeria?

Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Never in the history of Nigeria has who will be the next President been so eagerly anticipated.

The huge anticipation for the next Nigeria president began in the year 2017, just two years into the first term of Muhammadu Buhari who took over the presidency on May 29, 2015 with the overwhelming support of Nigerians who believed he would move the country forward as desired.

But just a year into his reign, real disillusion set in as the country was moving backward instead under him and by the second year of his administration, it was obvious he couldn’t deliver the nation from its problems.

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So people looked forward to the next presidential election albeit with the resignation that Buhari would rule for eight years nevertheless as the country seems to have settled into a state whereby each president rules for eight years and anyone who does less leads to disgruntlement that the zone the person is from in the part of the country has been cheated of ruling for the full time it should.

A proper example of this is when Umaru Musa Yar’adua became president in 2007 and succumbed to illness a couple of years afterward. His vice, Goodluck Jonatha, took over from him and had the fortune of winning the next election in 2011.

But the country is still suffering from the downfall of Yar’adua’s shortlived tenure as the north where he’s from believed it was their turn to rule then but they didn’t use their full tenure because Yar’adua died and he wasn’t replaced by a northerner.

So with that in mind, it was easier for Buhari to claim the 2019 presidential election despite all the voting irregularities and the will of the people that preferred his rival, Atiku Abubakar, because the political class didn’t want a sort of repeat of the Yar’adua episode.

Muhammadu Buhari

With his second term confirmed, the anticipation of people again turned to who will be the next president after him, but with more urgency such that Buhari has the ignominious record of being a president that people are just tolerating to end his tenure so they can choose a better person.

And now that time is steadily drawing closer.

This is the year 2022, the one in which each political party will choose their candidates for presidency and present them for the election in 2023 and one of them will take over from Buhari inevitably.

Sadly for Buhari, he has to go in 2023 whether he likes it or not and after he’s no longer in office, the country will let him know what is really thought of him when he will be powerless to fight back.

Most likely, he will become publicly despised like a former military head of state, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) and if he tries to contribute to the public discourse, social media will burn him completely the same way it did to IBB when he once tried to run for democratic presidency.

But it will be even worse for Buhari as his tenure is definitely the worst ever in the country’s annals and no one will miss him but will prefer never to see him again.

So Buhari will go in May 2023. He must go, he has no choice. Though he tried to carve out a third term for himself, it failed because of his terrible governance and this is significant when compared to President Xi Jinping of China whom the country has agreed to rule them forevermore simply because he’s leading them well.

Xi Jinping

So who will take over from Buhari in 2023?

Is it Bola Ahmed Tinubu who’s obviously the frontrunner and without whom Buhari would never have become President?

It’s on record that Buhari tried three times to become President but failed woefully each time until Tinubu supported him for the 2015 election and he then won.

Definitely, Tinubu’s support of Buhari was for his own interests at best as a political juggernaut. He also wants to be President and you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you his calculation was that after Buhari, it would be him.

This is why even after he was sidelined by Buhari after they won the election, he didn’t complain. It was also why when Buhari retraced his steps to him again to support him for a second term, he supported him still.

A proverb says: To catch a monkey, you have to behave like a monkey.

Apply this to Tinubu and it simply means he has tolerated Buhari’s insults for eight years because he wants to be President after him and he knows he’s in pole position for it because he’s the most important person in their political party, APC (All Progressives Congress).

He has even more clout in the party than Buhari who’s the President and without him the party would disintegrate overnight into a trillion pieces.

And this is all the more reason why he’s at an advantage to emerge the party’s presidency candidate.

If he doesn’t, the party will scatter, the PDP will win the election extremely easy, and they all will be exposed to probes, jail terms and all that.

Do they want that?

Definitely not.

So Tinubu will definitely be their next flag bearer and most likely the next President of Nigeria because whoever the APC fields will be the next President as sitting Presidents don’t lose elections in Nigeria.

The only exception to that rule is Jonathan in 2015 when he lost to Buhari and with that fact very present in their minds, the APC didn’t make the same mistake in 2019 for Buhari’s second term and you can be dead sure they won’t also for his successor in 2023.