By Ikechukwu AMAECHI
OLUREMI Tinubu’s dangerous Osun power game: Tinubu’s wife insult to Governor Adeleke is not just about being rude, it is a carefully calibrated power game. The fact that she got away with it portends grave danger for Nigeria’s democracy. The path to power absolutism is not a 100-metre dash and does not happen overnight. It is one step at a time. Every little concession made by those who ought to resist executive impunity becomes a building block to the skyscraper of autocracy.
At the time Lucy Kibaki, wife of Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya, died at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital, South West London, on April 26, 2016, aged 75, she had the unenviable reputation of being Kenya’s grouchiest First Lady. In the ten years her husband was in office (2002-2013), she was, in the words of a popular 1974 song by Mac Davis, “One hell of a woman.” Worse still, that came with a violent streak.
Power inebriated her so much so that as First Lady, she became a terror – uncontrollable and tyrannical. Many Kenyans swore that she ran the show. She was not the power behind the throne, the kind of soft power that spouses of presidents wield. She was the real deal, who humiliated government officials at will. Story was told of how, without reference to her husband, she forced Matere Keriri, her husband’s Private Secretary, to resign in their first year in office.
In May 2005, three years into Kibaki’s presidency, she made international headlines when she invaded the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest daily newspaper. Angered by what she perceived as negative reportage, she stormed the newspaper’s Nairobi headquarters at night, along with her security details, and held the entire staff hostage. Footage from the encounter showed her slapping a cameraman who was tape-recording the bizarre invasion.
As Kenya’s First Lady, Lucy Kibaki was generous with slaps. Some said her husband was not spared what became known as the “Lucian slaps.” When it came to the misappropriation of state power by presidential spouses, Lady Lucy Kibaki was peerless. Her tendency for aggressive, hostile and physically harmful behaviour, was beyond compare, or so people thought.
But if what transpired in Osun State on Sunday, December 7, is anything to go by, Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, is in a pole position to snatch the trophy of Africa’s most irreverent First Lady from Lucy Kibaki by not limiting her wacky behaviour to her husband’s appointees as the former Kenyan First Lady did but also extending it to elected officials, including governors.
On Sunday, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, marked the 10th anniversary of his coronation, during which he conferred the title of Yeye Asiwaju Ile Oodua, previously held by the late Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo, wife of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on Oluremi. Ife, Ooni’s kingdom, is in Osun, which made Ademola Adeleke the host governor. In his goodwill speech, Adeleke not only extolled what he described as the Ooni’s remarkable decade of transformative leadership but also praised Oluremi as a pillar of national development whose contributions have facilitated numerous impactful initiatives across the country.
But not even such fulsome accolade could dissuade her from a bizarre power overreach – interrupting the governor’s speech and threatening to switch off the microphone as he sang a Christian song. Shortly before the “mo maa pa mic yin,” (I will switch off your microphone) threat, she had physically mounted the stage to order Adeleke to wrap up his speech in five minutes. Many Nigerians are outraged and rightfully so. But what Oluremi Tinubu did, though true to character, was a dangerous power signalling, which import should not be lost on Nigerians.
Her grotesque show of disrespect to Adeleke is typical. Oluremi Tinubu is not only every inch Lucy Kibaki, she is frighteningly worse. She loves picking fights in the market square. And she fights dirty. As the senator representing Lagos Central (2015 – 2023), she once embarrassed the then Senate President, Bukola Saraki, when on June 10, 2015, she refused to shake his outstretched hand during her inauguration together with 27 other lawmakers, including George Akume and Ahmed Lawan.
On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, she wilfully took over the seat of the then Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu who was not at the plenary that fateful day having survived an alleged assassination attempt the previous day. It took the vehement protestation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senators to stop her from using the microphone on the DSP’s seat when Saraki asked her to second the $200 million Lagos State loan request.
On yet another occasion, she almost slapped Senator Rafiu Ibrahim from Kwara State. But it was her verbal assault on Senator Dino Melaye who she called a thug during an executive session in July 2016 that threw the Red Chamber into a tailspin of confusion.
Melaye narrated how “just after she was first elected into the senate, one of the commissioners, who went to pay homage and congratulate her ‘mistakenly’ referred to her as “distinguished senator.” She took everyone aback when she flared up and warned never to be addressed like that again, asking the commissioner: “What happened to Yeye? Do you know how many senators we have made? You probably should have called me by name.”
She is an unapologetic ethnic bigot, which explains her disparaging remarks against Ndigbo in 2019. That was four years before the 2023 elections.
Like Lucy Kibaki, she is loutish and her disdain for journalists is legendary, all pretensions to the contrary, notwithstanding. Once at a town hall meeting in Yaba during her first term as a senator, a journalist had asked: “We have heard of a few things about you and your husband and some of the things you have been doing in Lagos…” But she wouldn’t let him ask his question before she retorted. “Who are you and where are you from? You heard a few things about us? We are Lagos.”
But all these pale into insignificance, as disconcerting as they are, when compared with the Ife show of shame. Oluremi Tinubu, with no mandate other than her proximity to power – by virtue of being the president’s wife – has neither the right nor powers to walk up to the executive governor of a state to physically interrupt his speech. The office of the First Lady is at best ceremonial. But there is an undisguised sense of entitlement. Today, she may well exclaim, “We are Nigeria.” I digress.
Granted, the First Lady wields some influence but not to the extent of enforcing rules at state functions. To that extent, giving a sitting governor an ultimatum is beyond the pale. Tragically, the governor obeyed, with a smile to boot, what to all intents and purposes is an ineffectual order. By complying, Adeleke unwittingly played into the hands of the Tinubu family.
Make no mistake about it. Oluremi Tinubu is no fool. She knows that she has no moral, political and constitutional right to do what she did. But she did it all the same. And Nigerians must pay attention. Lucy Kibaki was far better than Oluremi because despite her overreach, she was not a power monger in the strict sense and Kenyans were luckier because President Kibaki had no appetite for power maximisation. Contrarily, both Tinubu and his wife are Machiavellian. They covet power for its own sake. Their personality traits – prejudice plus power – is a dangerous combo, a hazardous blend.
Nigerians should be eternally vigilant because unlike the power dynamics between President Nwai Kibaki and his wife, Tinubu is very calculating, his wife, Oluremi is very calculating, his daughter, Folasade Tinubu-Ojo, is very calculating and his son, Seyi, is even more so. And in all this scheming, no thought is spared on the cost to Nigerians.
Her insult to Governor Adeleke is not just about being rude, it is a carefully calibrated power game. The fact that she got away with it portends grave danger for Nigeria’s democracy. The path to power absolutism is not a 100-metre dash and does not happen overnight. It is one step at a time. Every little concession made by those who ought to resist executive impunity becomes a building block to the skyscraper of autocracy.
The Tinubus are indubitably on a mission. The First Daughter is in-charge of all markets in Nigeria. The First Son attends Federal Executive Council meetings and when on goverment’s delegations abroad, ministers defer to him. The security architecture around him is more sophisticated than that of state governors. What we are witnessing under Tinubu’s watch is the unravelling of Nigeria’s democracy. Every institution of the Nigerian state has either been compromised or overwhelmed that if today, Tinubu takes an executive bill for the amendment of the constitution and removal of term limits, it will pass easily.
But I blame the governors – men without political balls. Tinubu couldn’t have taken the rubbish he is dishing out to them when he was governor. Imagine President Shehu Shagari’s wife telling a Michael Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo, Lateef Jakande, Sam Mbakwe, Abubakar Rimi, etc., to shut up at a public function in the Second Republic. Who even knew who Shagari’s wife was? Could Stella Obasanjo, Turai Yar’Adua, Aisha Buhari have tried it? Dame Patience Jonathan once crossed Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s path. She regretted it.
Unrestrained power is avaricious and incapable of self-restraint. It thrives on impunity. What is more, the subservience of the state governors is an elixir. Every well-meaning Nigerian should be worried about the direction this democracy is headed right now with these insufferable humiliations which rather than being frowned at are applauded in certain quarters.
Amaechi can be reached via Ikechukwuamaechi@yahoo.com or 08055069065
This is a republication of Candor’s Niche.
