By Tunde Asaju
It’s been three years since Bola Ahmed Tinubu finally realized his 38-year-long live ambition – to be president. To the man who broke every rule, brazed all the odds to achieve that feat, congratulations is the least we could offer him.
To the nation that has technically survived three years of the turbulence of the Tinubu presidency and what looks like an eternity of the ruling party, congratulations is also not out of place. Happy survival.
Tinubu’s aides want us to congratulate him very specially. They say he has taken bullets for the rest of the country. That is not how the family of Michael Oyedokun is likely to look at things.
Oyedokun was not a politician. Indeed, from what we know of him, he probably wasn’t even on the list of ambitious teachers. He chose or offered to teach mathematics, a subject that requires extra intellect but remains unpopular in school. He teaches in a rustic community called Ahoro-Esinlele in Oyo State.
It ìs unlikely that until May 15, (exactly two weeks to Tinubu government’s third anniversary) Ahoro-Esinlele remained a proper ahoro, an innocuous village, the type that politicians visit for a few seconds during their campaign season if it happened to be on the road to a bigger town.
But on May 15, Oyedokun and over 40 others, including little children were attacked by bandits and taken away. Before anyone could even start the now infamous negotiation process, Oyedokun had become a casualty of the insecurity that now seem to be the worst of the problems that plague the Tinubu administration. He was initially beaten black and blue even as he pleaded for his life, then his captors , slaughtered him like a ram. The bandits who carried out this dastardly act recorded it on video and those who have the indecorum to help propagate such horror are sharing to ‘make it go viral’. Tinubu, our National Assembly, security chiefs and cabinet members do not see this as a big deal. They think it is better than the era of bombs indiscriminately going off.
So, while Tinubu and his cabinet and family members went to the mosque to thank God that the bullets he is supposed to have taken for the rest of Nigerians did not kill him, the Oyedokun family and indeed the entire Ahoro-Esinlele are in mourning.
Other video evidence have surfaced, in which the unconscionable louts that kidnapped the teachers and pupils of that school have been subjected to horrors only fit for the imagination of the warped. It includes severe beating with twigs not even herdsmen would use on their cows. They light candles and let the hot wax drop on the bare skins of the children.
While the Oyedokun family are verily grappling with the loss of their breadwinner and the eternal trauma it would inflict, Nigerians live in constant fear of being the next victim. From Eruku to Enugu, Ekiti to Ekulobia elsewhere, Nigerians are walking on eggshells, not ready to criticize the regime and end up in jail or sit as ducks for kidnap and target practice as bandits, kidnappers, ritual killers and organ harvesters writ large.
Under Tinubu’s predecessor, the ineffable and now dead Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerians were subjected to several registrations – from BVN, voters cards to SIM cards. They were told that it was to enhance security. Obviously the data was mined and sold to the highest bidder.
The man who superintended that scam used to be a muallim who cursed politics, parties and politicians. Buhari exorcised him of that apoliticism to the effect that he wanted to become a state Governor under the party that is completely unaccountable for anything. When he failed, he jumped to the other party and snatched the nomination.
In Nigeria, failure is a gum that qualifies glues the failure to the common wealth. Those who fail are invited to repeat class with greater incapacitation. You fail as a military leader, you drop your uniform and return as a bloody civilian. Aluta continua!
Asaju is a renowned journalist.