By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
TUE, SEPT 18 2018-theG&BJournal-Akinwunmi Ambode used to be a wonder boy of governance in Nigeria. Or he was marketed as such. But all that is gone like a silly fart. He is fighting for his political life. The details are not clear but the following is in the open. A large swathe of party’s grandees are disenchanted with Ambode’s style of sub-imperial rule. He is reputed to run a government structure that is completely divorced from the party. In a word, Ambode is a one man party in power.
But it is also clear that Ambode himself has faltered on some crucial matters. And one of such is the management and disposal of urban waste. Here, Ambode met a system that was working and ”fixed it.” And in fixing a working model, Ambode now has a Lagos that is broken down in disease, choked in filth. But the salient point is that it is not that failure that did him in. Ambode’s greatest crime in the court of party lords, we suspect, is political, not administrative. To put it in its lingo, Ambode did not properly declare and or share the proceeds of crime, sorry governance.
The point is that amongst politicians there are really no crimes such as mis-governance. The only crime in politics is in playing solo, in forgetting to declare and share the proceeds of the crimes against the populace. That is, the only crime in politics is the crime of unitary greed. If one ”federated well” with the proceeds of crime and or mis-governance, the party champagne lords will be there to save his neck if only to insure their own income streams. So what they are fighting is not really mis-governance as the malfeasance of unshared and or undeclared proceeds of greed. Or personalizing ”our in-group” greed.
However, there is another angle to it all. It is that the much touted Tinubu succession model is not exactly working. What is the Tinubu model? As popularly posted, it is that Tinubu is some kind of an elemental force. He is so all knowing that he spots the best ”sleeping talents” and brings them to work. And folks point at its inaugural or pilot captain, Babatunde Fashola. And now there is his second line successor Ambode.
But all that is the popular myth. The point of why Lagos ”works” to the extent it does, has little to do with these men. It is the forces at play, not the men at work that make Lagos what it is. Anyway a well connected journalist captures the fragility of the Tinubu succession model in the following words.
”There had been rumours that the political godfather in Lagos, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his political godson, the Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, were at loggerheads. And if it was for real, they had hoped it would be resolved eventually in favour of Ambode, as it was in the case of Ambode’s erstwhile predecessor – Tinubu versus Governor Babatunde Fashola when Fashola sought a second term in office. Somehow that ugly situation was reportedly amicably settled then. However, later events were to demonstrate that any resolution had merely been on the surface as Tinubu and Fashola now appear to be intractable foes.” https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/09/15/will-otedola-mythology-haunt-the-apc-in-lagos-state/
Whatever be the matter, the failure of the Tinubu succession plot is a larger topic than can be dealt with here. In all, one thing is clear. It is that the Tinubu model is not exactly working. On its maiden voyage – with Fashola- it hit the rocks. And on the recovery and repair of the Fashola wreckage, Ambode is about to beach the whale. One may thus say that Tinubu’s succession plan is at best a work in progress. That it is a working or workable model is plain hype.
And to make matters more interesting, the wisdom of Lamido Adebubu, the late Strongman of Ibadan politics is worth recounting. It is that political quarrels hardly get settled. For the sage of Ibadan politics, ”if you settled the quarrel, what of the enmity?” That is even if the Tinubu-Ambode saga or quarrel is ”resolved”, the suspicion and or enmity is eternal, ala Fashola. Shit happens.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
