By Fattykolly Ibn Alimi
For those who were not there, let me remind you who we are talking about.
We are talking about a man who, despite being President for eight years, despite commanding the army, despite controlling billions, could not win his own polling unit in Abeokuta. Not once. Not twice. In election after election, his own neighbours looked him in the eye and said, “Baba, not you.”
We are talking about the same man who gathered revered Obas – custodians of our culture, men who are older than his father, stools that predate Nigeria itself – and ordered them to stand up and sit down like primary school pupils. If that man does not understand Yoruba respect, how will he understand Yoruba politics?
And now some people in the opposition are clapping, thinking they have found a weapon against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu?
Let them wake up.
In the Southwest, politics is not about grammar. It is not about long letters from Ota Farm. It is about the streets. It is about who has stood with the people when it rained and when it shined. It is about who built leaders, who built parties, who built a political family that has survived every storm since 1999.
That man is not Obasanjo. That man is Tinubu.
Check the history. Obasanjo was imposed on us by the military elite in 1999. We tolerated him. Tinubu was chosen by us in the trenches of NADECO, in the days of danger, in the days when being a Yoruba progressive could cost you your life. One was a gift from the barracks. The other is a product of our struggle.
For over two decades, one man has contested, built, lost, rebuilt, forgiven, merged, and conquered. From AD to AC to ACN to APC. From one state to six states. From opposition leader to kingmaker to President. Every election cycle, they write him off. Every election cycle, he wins. That is not luck. That is called grassroots ownership. That is called being the Political Leader of the Yoruba race.
Obasanjo is a master of one thing: noise. He writes letters. He gives lectures. He makes wild claims about debts and dollars, conveniently forgetting that the same debt relief he boasts about today was built on oil selling for over $100, a luxury this government does not have. He talks about the Naira today, but forgets to tell his audience that the foundation of our import-dependent economy was laid in those years when we had so much and produced so little.
And before he lectures anyone about generational destruction, let Daddy Obasanjo tell Nigerians what happened to the billions of dollars his administration spent on power. Between 1999 and 2007, his government spent over $16 billion on power projects according to the National Assembly probe, yet at the end of eight years, Nigeria was in deeper darkness than he met it. Billions of dollars turned into darkness. That is the real generational disaster.
Billions of dollars. Not Naira. Dollars. Money that could have built new cities, that could have educated those 24 million out-of-school children he now cries about, that could have industrialized Nigeria. Where did it go? Into turbines that never turned? Into contracts that never saw light? Into darkness that still haunts us today?
A man who wasted billions to give us darkness has no moral right to call another man a generation-destroying disaster. The real generational disaster was to collect all that oil windfall when crude sold for over $100, collect all that debt relief, spend a fortune on power, and still leave Nigerians in 2007 with the same generator and candle they had in 1999.
He talks about the Naira today moving from N1 to $1 to N1500 to $1. But who laid the foundation of an economy that produces nothing and imports everything? Who destroyed our farms with importation policies? Who left us with refineries that never worked, forcing us to import fuel for 20 years? The seed of the disaster he is shouting about today was planted in those wasted years.
He says Tinubu is a disaster? The people of the Southwest know who the real disaster would be – to abandon their own son, the son of Abibatu Mogaji, the man who has never abandoned them, because a man who cannot win his ward is shouting from Ota.
Let Atiku and his people be deceived. Let them gather Obasanjo’s old newspaper clippings and think they have found the ace that will make Southwest dump APC. They do not understand us.
We Yorubas do not take political direction from a man who insults our Obas. We do not take lectures on loyalty from a man who fought his own party until it collapsed. We do not take lessons on winning from a man who loses at home.
Millions of APC supporters dumping the party? Which APC supporters? In which polling unit? Come to Iragbiji. Come to Ikeja. Come to Akure, Ibadan, Ado-Ekiti, Abeokuta – yes, even in Obasanjo’s own Abeokuta – and ask who owns the structure. Ask who owns the street. Ask the market women. Ask the agberos, the artisans, the students. They will tell you one name.
Tinubu remains our political leader. Not because we are blind to the hardship. We feel the hardship. We are Nigerians too. But because we know the difference between a leader who is fixing a broken house, and a noise-maker who only knows how to burn the house down and write a letter about the ashes.
Obasanjo may talk. He is very good at that. But when it is time to vote, the Southwest knows where to stand. We stood with Asiwaju before. We stand with him now. And in 2027, we will stand with him again.
No campaign of calumny will change that.
