Dr. Doyin Okupe, I think it was, who first called attention to the nature of the gathering of the Northern Nigerian political elite that met in the Daura country home of former president, Muhammadu Buhari, ostensibly to pay him Eid homage. He said pointedly that it was a political gathering.
A galaxy of politicians across party and professional lines. Shehu Sani, a former senator representing Kaduna Central in the Eight National Assembly, has now made a similar observation via a tweet two days ago. Senator Sani went further than Dr. Okupe in his tweet as he saw the gathering as part of a nascent anti-Bola Tinubu plot to rally forces around Buhari in order to oust Tinubu from Aso Villa.
For Sani, the gathering is the first manifestation of a subterfuge by Northern elements to wrest power from the South back to the North just a year after a Southerner became president. Such a move, as he rightly pointed out, is very ominous. It's as if some politicians can't see beyond themselves. They have persuaded themselves that the country exists for and because of them. They are the so-called owners of Nigeria who must drive the country in any direction they desire. Here belong those Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President and perennial presidential candidate, led to visit Buhari. They have also visited Ibrahim Babangida as well as Abdulsalami Abubakar, both former military rulers and Generals of the Nigerian Army.
Beyond being politicians, Atiku's fellow travellers are not necessarily birds of the same feathers. Their political plumage is as diverse as the colours of the regalia of an ancestral masquerade even if they would want to be seen as one. But they came together and made a beeline to Buhari's residence to pay him homage even if the primary purpose of their visit, they say, was to commiserate with one of their bereaved associates. I guess we are expected to suspend our sense of disbelief and accept there was nothing about their meeting beyond what they told us it was. But Dr. Okupe didn't see things as the Northern politicians would have the world to believe. Neither does Senator Shehu Sani. Both men are not spring chickens in politics and as political horses, they have grown long enough in the tooth to know the difference between a political and a social or religious gathering. Not when these visits appear coordinated and directed at specific political leaders.
Buhari is hale and hearty. He is looking more relaxed and in much better health than he has ever been as president even if he spent a lot of his terms in office tending to his health and ensuring he was not weighed down by Nigeria's troubles. Moreover, Buhari had told us all by the time he left office that he wanted no more than to retire to his Daura home. He was in effect saying he was a retired politician who now cherishes a bucolic existence among his people. He has since then been seen among his cattle and the ordinary people of Daura. The last time he had the Northern political elite in the same numbers paid him the Eid homage, he was still president and his visitors were overwhelmingly members of his own party.
Need one add also that the Buhari that returned to Daura last year after May 29 had lost his mystique. It was a demystified Buhari about whom Nigerians had lost their innocence. It was not the Buhari of the pre-2015 years, the Mai Gaskiya that could not put a foot wrong among the Northern talakawa. The one who as opposition presidential candidate could be assured of at least 10 million votes in an electoral contest. The Buhari that returned to Daura over a year ago has considerably lost both his lustre and political capital. His erstwhile political lieutenants even in the All Progressives Congress had revolted against him in the spirit of enlightened self-interest, collective and otherwise, especially as he started to vacillate on his support for a Southerner in the candidacy of Bola Tinubu.
One of the most respectful of these lieutenants of his and a most implacable opponent of Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party's candidate in the 2023 presidential election, was Nasir el-Rufai, the Immediate past governor of Kaduna. El-Rufai who is now embattled and under attack from those he brought into office is apparently disaffected with President Tinubu. Whatever would make El-Rufai visit Buhari about the same time as Atiku has to be more fundamental than a mere Eid homage. The only thing common to both of them as far as their relationship with Tinubu goes is that their relationship is currently "out of joint" - at least in the last one year for El-Rufai and a little much earlier than that for Atiku.
That these two men could find common cause to unite must have to do with politics. It's a demonstration of the dictum that there are only permanent interests and not permanent enemies in politics. The Atiku move should be a warning to Peter Obi whose relationship with Atiku appears to be warming up. While Atiku has openly told him he would willing yield ground to him politically, if it's the wish of their followers, the same Atiku went to BBC Hausa to express his determination to pursue his ambition as a politician.
Nobody is fooled by these backyard meetings of the Northern guard. It was under such disguises that coups were planned in years of yore - at conferences and events scheduled to coincide with religious events. It was under such umbrella politicians strategised when the military placed bans on partisan politics. Nobody is thus fooled by the Daura, Minna as well as other meetings that Atiku and other disaffected Northern politicians have been holding. As Senator Shehu Sani has come to observe through his tweet two days ago, the politicians are only betraying their lack of strategic planning and political savvy. They may well be planning to set Nigeria on fire.
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If they had nothing to say or do for all the eight years that Buhari held sway before bequeathing us a legacy of human and food insecurity, galloping inflation and a parlous economy, then one wonders why they have suddenly gone insufferably loquacious with complaints in just one year of a Tinubu presidency.
It is actions like theirs that make it look as if people criticizing their biased attitude are defending the Tinubu presidency. They make it difficult for the shortcomings of the Tinubu administration to be put in perspective and the President held to account in terms of his administration's failure beyond the inherited debilities of the Buhari years.
