Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu At 69: His Relevance, Importance In Nigeria’s Democracy

• Only a few men are fortunate to see their lives celebrated during their lifetime.
• But to a few of these men, it’s more than luck.
• They are so amazing that the world cannot afford to wait until their departure before they are celebrated..

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a man who continues to draw many of us to his business,  political life and legacy.

It is that time again when the world celebrates his birthday and as usual, many annual events have been underway in this direction..

According to INEC, Youth – 18 and 35 years – constitute the highest number of voters with 51.11 percent at 42,938,458 voters.

This means that out of the 84 million registered voters in Nigeria today, 51.11% were either unborn or were kids in 1993 when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu came into limelight.

Perhaps this 69th birthday is a good moment to tell young people a little about their history, which is incomplete without this man we love to call by one of his several traditional titles – Jagaban.

From the private sector, Tinubu won the 1993 election as the Senator representing Lagos West constituency on the platform of Social Democratic Party (SDP).

The military take-over in December 1993 set our generation back and destroyed what was going to be Nigeria’s smoothest return to democratic government.

Tinubu was elected governor of Lagos state on the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD) and created the masterplan for today’s Lagos – Nigeria’s only true metropolitan megacity.

The test of his resourcefulness came in 2003 during the general elections where he ran for a second term.

His fellow AD governors from the southwest had aligned with then President Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP to secure his second term in office.

After delivering their states in the presidential election, they all lost their governorship elections and PDP took over their states. Only Governor Bola Tinubu was unbeatable. He won his election and remained in office for two terms.

We all saw that there was more to this man than just his generosity, he was also a political genius.

After the political crash-landing, Tinubu’s doggedness saw to the rebuilding of the progressive movement in the southwest and it dawned on many that the Yoruba race might have unearthed a true leader they had needed since Obafemi Awolowo.

Tinubu has made sure that the south-west remains relevant in all federal political permutations.

Only a few Nigerians will forget his tenacity during that epic battle with the Obasanjo government that stood against the creation of LCDAs in Lagos. For Tinubu, the development of his people was more important than anything else.

The day he amazed the world was at the end of his tenure as Lagos state governor in 2007 when he sacrificed his ambition to return to the Senate and relinquished the senatorial ticket to Ganiyu Solomon to make peace within the party.

After the 2007 presidential elections in which the People’s Democratic Party represented by Umaru Musa Ya’adua won with a wide margin, Tinubu and few other members of opposition parties, began to make efforts to bring together the fragmented opposition parties in the country in order to form a Mega party that was capable of challenging PDP.

These efforts however didn’t pay off until February of 2013 when Nigeria’s 3 strongest opposition parties as at then which were The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), as well as factions of other parties came together to form a single political party which is today known as the All Progressive Congress (APC).

Bola Tinubu ever since then has continued to play a very vital role in the party, supporting President Muhammadu during the 2015 presidential election to take over political power from the ruling party (PDP) after their 16 years rule.

In 2020, following an internal crisis in the party, the former party chairman Adams Oshiomole was removed and Bola Tinubu became the national APC party chairman.

The culture of sacrifice, loyalty, compromise for common good and selflessness is why Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has remained not just relevant but pivotal to Nigeria’s democracy.

This is why he remains one of the biggest icons of modern democracy in Nigeria and indeed the African continent.