TheCable

BY HAKEEM ADISA

“Certainly, Nigeria needs more Tinubus in its quest for the attainment of all tenets of democracy. With men like Tinubu, men who are kind and have a heart of gold, Nigerians can go to sleep, assured that the health of the nation and the welfare of its citizens are guaranteed…”

The above excerpt is the concluding paragraph of ‘activist’ Babafemi Ojudu’s celebratory piece published by TheNews magazine to commemorate Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 60th birthday in 2012. At the time he wrote this piece, he had become a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, representing the Ekiti-central senatorial district through the benevolence of Tinubu.

He was unable to get re-elected because he could not give his people what he does not have, and so he was booted out.

In his response titled, ‘Principled Political Choices Are Not Betrayal’, Ojudu laboriously tried to profess his adoration of Tinubu, deploying highly doubtful epithets while contradicting his position by saying “…on this matter of 2023, I wish him well but l cannot, in good conscience, give him my support or cast my vote for him in the coming primary”.

Ojudu should be bold enough to inform Nigerians the real reasons behind his becoming a latter-day convert of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo whose engagement with Ojudu, with all sense of humility, had the imprint of Tinubu.

Therefore, it is very clear that Ojudu’s support for Osinbajo’s yet-to-be publicly declared presidential ambition is a matter of strategic opportunism rather than of any contentious political principle that Ojudu wants to lay claim to. As a political appointee in the office of the vice president, no one can begrudge him for aligning with a man that is ‘buttering his bread’.

What’s disgusting is for him to attempt to hide behind a finger, apologies to the late Bashorun MKO Abiola. All through the years that Tinubu was buttering his/family’s bread and that of the institution he served as managing editor till the time Tinubu secured him a senatorial ticket in Ekiti, his political principle resided with the ‘Lion of Bourdillon’.

The moment he lost the seat and secured his current post as an aide of Osinbajo, and following his questionable logic, his political principle has automatically shifted. Osinbajo should also note that Ojudu will abandon him promptly like a filthy rag once the lucre dries up.

Ojudu’s boast that he was already made before encountering Tinubu is another lie from the blues. Not all publishers or editors are made depending on the viability of their platforms.

Intelligence revealed that the land on which he built his first house in Magodo Phase 2, Lagos was given to him by Tinubu with substantial ‘support’ to him from Jagaban. His first brand new car in life was given to him free by Tinubu amongst other humongous benefits accorded him in cash and kind.

If Tinubu did not humanely intervene in TheNews affairs in its moment of dire situation, perhaps Ojudu will be somewhere abroad hustling for survival. Ojudu’s self-glorification knows no bounds with his phantom creation of ‘telephone threats’ to his life and that of his family. By whom if we may ask?

He’s so inconsequential to Tinubu’s presidential ambition to warrant his being stalked. For purposes of clarification, such bohemian idea was and is not within the contemplation of genuine Tinubu adherents or that of Jagaban that Ojudu willfully described as humanist par excellence.

The coming presidential contest in which Ojudu has chosen to forsake Tinubu for Osinbajo has further exemplified his bread and butter political principle. His quotation above gave him away. For want of what to eat, Ojudu can continue to grandstand but Nigerians know that his current reprobation contradicts his conscientious 2012 writing on Jagaban to wit: “With men like Tinubu, men who are kind and have a heart of gold, Nigerians can go to sleep, assured that the health of the nation and the welfare of its citizens are guaranteed”.

Ojudu’s apt description of Tinubu only fits him and him alone, not an Osinbajo that he currently puts on his head for a pot of porridge. Discernible Nigerians, for record purposes, can now see Ojudu’s illogical understanding of ‘political principle.’

Adisa is the secretary-general of Movement Against Societal Hypocrisy (MASH)