Political path of elected President of Nigeria
2023.03.01 04:49
Political path of elected President of Nigeria
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Bola Tinubu, the incoming president of Nigeria, has been widely regarded as a “godfather” who has used a vast patronage network to support candidates for office for a significant portion of his political career.
Outgoing leader Muhammadu Buhari was able to win two terms in office in 2015 and 2019 thanks to Tinubu’s support. Additionally, ever since Tinubu resigned as governor of Lagos in 2007, he has chosen every subsequent winner to lead Africa’s largest city.
Tinubu’s efforts to address Nigeria’s crises and improve on Buhari’s lackluster record will now put that power to the test.
Nigeria is plagued by armed groups that have rendered large portions of the country unruly, and its economy is barely keeping up with population growth due to soaring inflation and crippling cash shortages as a result of the erroneous introduction of new bank notes.
Many of these issues got worse under Buhari, who Tinubu ran for president on the party ticket. However, when asked why voters should elect him at a weekend news briefing, he distanced himself from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party that he helped found.
He declared, “I am not the party.” I should let my record speak for itself. Consider Lagos: We had robberies both during the day and at night, a chaotic traffic system, and bodies on the road prior to my arrival.
“Hurry up: clap for me,” he continued, displaying the arrogance that frequently characterizes leaders of Africa’s largest oil producer and most populous nation.
Tinubu has repeatedly dismissed concerns about his health, despite the fact that he has missed several of his party’s major campaign events and has occasionally appeared frail, with a speech that is frequently slurred and slow.
Despite strong challenges from Atiku Abubakar of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the insurgent Labour Party, few people doubted that Tinubu’s well-funded campaign would win in a country where the ruling party has a significant advantage.
Tinubu supporters believe that he is a good administrator who has a history of selecting competent technocrats.
According to his critics, he gives loyalists lucrative contracts and jobs and has used so-called “area boys,” who informally control Lagos’s streets and attend his rallies in large numbers, to intimidate opponents if he does not get his way.
The 70-year-old generally ignores such allegations rather than responding to them. Multiple inquiries for clarification were not answered by a campaign spokesperson for Tinubu.
According to his biography on his campaign website, Tinubu was born in Lagos in 1952 to a Muslim family of Yoruba, the majority ethnic group in southwest Nigeria. He is, according to some, much older.
He came to the United States in the 1970s and worked as a dishwasher, taxi driver, and night guard to pay for his education. In 1979, he earned a business administration degree from Chicago State University.
He returned to Nigeria in the 1980s and worked as an auditor for a Mobil oil company branch after working for U.S. consultancy firms.
He began his political career in the 1990s and was elected governor of Lagos after the end of military rule in 1999. He was elected twice.
His supporters claim that he improved the city’s roads, trash collection, and other services, but many Lagosians claim that the city is still deeply dysfunctional.
Others question whether the city really received value for its money given the exorbitant costs of contracts, some of which were awarded to businesses in which his close allies hold a controlling interest. After 20 years, a light rail project he started hasn’t been finished.
Tinubu’s support for Buhari did little to boost the confidence of many of Nigeria’s 93.4 million registered voters in his administration, which struggled to address the country’s major economic and security issues.
