Browsing: Viewpoint

“I remember when Bida had only one professor: Shehu Bida,” I told my friend. “It was to him I took my first completed book as a teenager. As his expertise was in veterinary medicine, it was a silly move from me. But the wise man kindly passed down the book to the late Abubakar Gimba.”

Something remarkable happened on the morning of February 25, the day of the Nigerian presidential election. Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust. Since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigerians have had little confidence in elections. To vote in a presidential election was to brace yourself for the inevitable aftermath: fraud.

When Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu squarely beat all his opponents at the primary election for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), most discerning Nigerians knew there was no stopping him from proving his now famous phrase,  ‘Emi Lo Kan’ which literally translates ‘It’s my turn’ boldly uttered when he declared intention to run.

Anyone who expected the period of transition to new administrations in the country on May 29 to be tranquil has got another thing coming. Far from being a period of rest, introspection and forward planning after the tumultuous campaign and election period, the drama has now shifted to press conferences, radio and television interviews, Eze’s palaces, street demonstrations, leaked audio tapes of a religious war and even in aircraft cabins. And that is before the courts move in.