by Uchechukwu Okoroafor,Abuja
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have been sworn in on Monday, May 29, 2023 as the president of Nigeria and commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but what he cannot wish away are the millions of Nigerians who rejected his presidential bid and voted overwhelmingly against him and the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the last general election and in particular the presidential election in which the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared him the winner in controversial circumstances that are being challenged at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and Labour Party and their presidential candidates Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi respectively among others.
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To put this in perspective. According to the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, with which Bola Ahmed Tinubu was declared winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential election which is being disputed in court, Bola Tinubu of the APC polled 8,704, 726 votes to emerge winner of the election, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP came second with 6,984,520 votes, Peter Obi of the Labour Party came third with 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, emerged fourth with 1,496,687 votes. And if you add the total votes scored by the opposition parties you will get 14,582,740. This is nearly 15million Nigerians that voted against Tinubu and who found him unworthy to be their president and are probably the people behind the hashtag, #TinubuIsNotMyPresident trending on micro-blog site Twitter since weekend of Tinubu’s inauguration on Monday, May 29, 2023. Never has such a large number of Nigerians overwhelmingly rejected a presidential candidate and he still emerges president as Bola Ahmed Tinubu did on March 1, 2023 when INEC declared him president-elect. Tinubu’s victory figure of 8,704,520 votes is almost double the number of Nigerians who rejected him at the polls, but who invariably he would remain their president unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise in weeks or even months to come.
As Tinubu sets to constitute his government political elites are positioning themselves to get appointed into juicy positions and are basing their positioning quests on the number of votes their state or region contributed to make Tinubu’s presidential bid a reality. However, he should be circumspect in his choices beyond those that voted for him because if the choice he makes are restricted to the over 8million Nigerians that voted for him, there are about 15million who rejected him and could make his government fail if he doesn’t carry them along.
Nigerians cannot forget in a hurry how President Muhammadu Buhari shortly after he emerged victorious in 2015 presidential election against an incumbent president, the first time this had happened in Nigeria’s political history, he divided the country between the 5 percenters and 95 percenters which were those that voted for him and those that voted against him. He made it clear that he would take care of those who voted for him first before those that voted against him. That attitude sowed the seed of division along ethno-religious lines that characterized his eight years in office and left Nigeria more divided than ever before.
Also Tinubu’s apparent use of religion to emerge president, through the Muslim-muslim ticket which no one in the Christian community believed him when he said that he choose a fellow Muslim because he was looking for competent running mate. Which was invariably saying that he couldn’t find a competent Northern Christian to be his vice president. This means that Tinubu has to do much more than any president before him to convince Christians that they have equal stake in the Nigeria project. The inclusiveness of those who voted against him must not only be done it must be seen to have been done. Make no mistake about this, Nigeria is so divided that any small thing could trigger social upheaval that could make #EndSARS look like a child’s play.
Tinubu is not only inheriting a country deeply divided, he is also inheriting an economy in dire strait. When Buhari took over in 2015 the inflation rate was 9 percent and after eight years inflation rate under Buhari is more than 22 percent. Unemployment rate in 2015 was 8 percent under Buhari’s watch unemployment rate rose to 33percent and Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world and he also led the country into multiple recessions. The exchange rate of the naira to dollar in 2015 at the parallel market was less than N200 to the dollar, today is nearly N800 to the dollar. Nigeria’s foreign debt rose from $10.32billion in 2015 to $40.06billion in eight years of Buhari administration while Nigeria became more corrupt which excerbated the economic crisis. In 2020 corruption perception index the country scored 25 out of 100 points -with zero signifying the worst performing countries and 100 the best ranked. It also dropped to 149 out of the 180 countries surveyed, making it the second most corrupt country in West Africa. The 2020 rating is one point below that of 2019 when the country scored 26points and two points below its ranking in 2018 and 2017 when it got 27 points. This is the unbiased verdict of Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign by Transparency International (TI) which showed the enormity of the crises facing the new administration and which does not give room to discriminate against any part of Nigeria because of the votes that Tinubu or APC failed to get from there.
In fact the nearly 15million that voted against Tinubu should be a motivating factor to spur him to perform excellently well so that the 15million that rejected him would discover that they were wrong or he could continue with the divisive tendencies of the Buhari era and these 15million Nigerians would be convinced without doubt that they were right in rejecting his candidacy. Tinubu has been handed a doubled edged sword. He can make Nigeria better with it or he can continue in the tradition of making things worse like Muhammadu Buhari did.