BY:KCU MACEBUH
There is a Daily Trust back page column article, of Monday, April 19, 2021. The article is titled “Nigeria’s Next Accidental President?”. It is written by Daily Trust columnist, Suleiman A. Suleiman. The columnist writes the article under the sobriquet, THE WHITE PAPER. The material, below, is our duly tailored exception to the “Suleiman Paper,” as hereinafter referred.
Of the “Suleiman Paper,” in which he interrogates, but without its demanding scrutiny, a paper, “Accidental Processes,” by Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, of which its subject is similar or collateral to Suleiman’s topic of “accidental presidents,” the Daily Trust columnist discusses what he considers the history of Nigerian presidency, military and civilian (elected and selected), having historically been occupied by leaders, as what he terms “accidental presidents” who, according to Suleiman, were — and still are — not institutionally prepared, trained, tutored, or socioculturally exposed in their respectively projected governance templates to federalism, as based on multiethnic and religious pluralism of Nigeria.
We do here assume that Suleiman’s “accidental presidents” include not only Nigeria’s first republican President whose office was ceremonial, without executive powers, but also Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, of federal executive powers, as the Chief Executive of the Parliamentary Government of the Federation, October 1, 1960 – January 15, 1966. We add also that among Suleiman’s “accidental presidents” of Nigeria was “that one,” as “Head” of that contraption termed “Interim National Government,” of some months of the year, 1993.
For purposes of our interest, we proclaim that it is for us politically competent, necessary and proper to express neutrality on required interrogation toward determination of factitude or otherwise of the underlying presumptions and assumptions of Suleiman’s “accidental presidents” moniker. Our self-imposed neutrality offshoots from absence in Suleiman’s “accidental presidents” thesis a sampling inspection, of statistical significance, of who among Nigeria’s past and present, even aspiring , presidents “are to be housed,” true or false, in columnist Suleiman’s categorical canopy of “accidental presidents.”
Notwithstanding merit or demerit of “Accidental Presidents?”, Suleiman, in roping in potentially aspiring president/s into its canopy, inveighs what amounts to encrusted geopolitical, if not distinctively ethnic sarcasm, ostensibly defanging any element of deferential weight of nationalist or federalist trustworthiness of his presumptive introspection of “accidental presidents.”
In enroping into his “accidental presidents” canopy all aspiring, but yet “undeclared” contestants, Suleiman states, “What with some presidential hopefuls celebrating their birthday in Kano, making donations to victims of fire in Katsina and holding a national colloquium about the nation, all in about the same week, and all without stating clearly what everyone paradoxically knows but still don’t.”
Without any hindrance, every discerning mind in ongoing maneuvers on Nigeria’s 2023 presidential politics knows who Suleiman is referring to. It is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
While the thrust of Suleiman’s cynicism appears covertly refuged in his apparent castigation of the impediments of the country’s electoral law or laws, in its apparent fire brigade approach to presidential campaign scheduling, restricting early emergence of election aspirants on campaign husting before the electorate, it cannot in any reasonable electoral measure, by viritue of his cognizably tested political pedigree, defying enumeration hereunder, be concluded that Bola Ahmed Tinubu will emerge, if destiny so compels, an “accidental president.” We stop here, for now.
KCU Macebuh
Member, Tinubu Support Group(TSG)
