POLITICAL NOTES
In his acceptance speech, after he was declared presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), at the Eagles Square, Abuja, former Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, said to one of his co-contestants, the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, that he was initially angry that he contested the ticket with him, but now that he had won, Lawan could go and lick his wounds.
Unfortunately, people only laughed off that part of the speech but were unable to properly interpret it at the time. Perhaps, Tinubu knew what many people did not know at the time and as you read this, Lawan is not only licking his wounds, he is, with a heavy heart, stepping it down with some methylated spirit, so it could help culture the bleeding.
So, what’s the story? Lawan had chased the presidential ticket of the APC in the hope that his current Yobe North senate seat, had been locked down, using some Bashir Machina, to hold it in trust, forced through the primaries. Indeed, the coming onboard of Lawan as a presidential hopeful, was initially dismissed as a child’s play, but it went on to unsettle calculations for other serious candidates, who had nothing else to fall back on.
Sadly, things went south for him and he lost the ticket. He was even unable to read the game properly to have considered stepping down as some did. He went all out and the whole hog. But he was not so much worried that he lost the presidential bid; he had thought and hoped that his senate ticket was waiting for him, and that it would just be a return to status quo ante.
Low and behold, he was damn wrong. His ticket was in the hand of another greedy fellow like him. Obviously and without a doubt, he must have established a clear understanding with Machina as some politicians, who are clever by half are wont to do in such circumstances. But things do change and so was his case this time. Machina has refused to relinquish the ticket and had written to relevant authorities to affirm his position. Motivated by sheer greed, Lawan, had chased two mice, only to lose both.
Machina insisted he would not surrender the ticket, because Lawan should not have contested the party’s presidential primary if he had the ambition of returning to the Senate.Truth! There were several others in his shoes, he was just unlucky. After all, Godswill Akpabio did same thing. Even the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, had another ‘Machina’ hold his ticket in trust. It took the uncommon ‘will of man’ to get it back. But, while there’s a critical and instructive lesson in this for everyone, it is yet to be seen how the APC plans to beat the system – guided by laws, rules and regulations – and still went ahead to submit Lawan’s name to INEC..
