The same thing cannot be said for the current crop of judges who have turned their chambers and courtrooms into the marketplace of politics, where deals are made and judgments are bartered for material and pecuniary gains. The national assembly members are nothing more than the president’s stooges and lackeys.
The rumours of tenure elongation and a third term agenda in 2006, during the final years of former president Olusegun Obasanjo caused massive ripple in the murky and treacherous water of Nigerian politics. It struck fear of an imminent untimely end to the fourth republic in the hearts of many Nigerians. Thankfully the third term bid did not materialise thanks to the men and women of conscience at the national assembly who did the right thing by putting the nation first and above personal interest and other primordial sentiments. However, many, now speaking with the benefit of hindsight, have insinuated that maybe allowing Obasanjo to get his way would have been better seeing as how Nigeria has regressed since he left power. This discourse is a matter for another day.
But that was nearly two decades ago. We may have shrugged off the spectre of life presidency under Obasanjo because the federal lawmakers did their jobs. Virtually every administration was dogged by the speculation of tenure elongation. The former president Goodluck Jonathan administration was rumoured to have initiated clandestine plans to change the term limit to perpetuate itself in power after plans to postpone the 2015 presidential election were announced, but that did not happen. In 2025, the troubling subject of life presidency is being broached again under President Bola Tinubu.
A few days ago, a video surfaced online showing former Kaduna State governor Nasir castigating President Tinubu over his handling of the country’s affairs. El-Rufai used to be a close associate of Tinubu, they were as thick as thieves. He fell out with the president after the presidential election, citing the troubling state of the nation and the deviation of the All Progressives Congress from the ideals and creeds of its founding fathers. Since leaving the APC, El-Rufai has intensified his criticism of the Tinubu government. In his latest outburst, El-Rufai expressed concern over Tinubu’s use of state apparatus to stifle dissent, suppress criticism and undermine opposition. He noted that some of the incidents that are unfolding under Tinubu, who prides himself as a true democrat, did not happen under the military. He stated Tinubu is already laying the groundwork to perpetuate himself in power, adding that he plans to take a leaf out of Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya’s, playbook by changing the constitution to make himself the president for life. Biya has been Cameroon’s president since 1982. He added that the signs are there and Nigerians must unite to stop such from happening.
The Presidency has since debunked El-Rufai’s claim, describing it as “absurd and baseless speculation”. It added that President Tinubu had no plans to stay in office beyond May 31, 2031. In Nigeria, the rumour mill is perhaps the only one that functions, or works. One way of confirming a rumour is to have it officially denied.
El-Rufai isn’t exactly a man of the people. His cutthroat divisive politics and extremist position on ethnoreligious issues have pitted him against many people outside his tribal and religious enclave and have earned him more enemies than friends. This has mostly brought reproach and opprobrium towards him and spurred many to view his takes and positions on national issues as self-serving and with scorn. However, his latest statement must not be dismissed as the ranting of an attention seeker or spent politician trying to worm his way into the heart of a populace who resent him. That will amount to throwing away the baby and the bathwater. Many may find his antics and shenanigans distasteful but we must not let his message get lost in the fog of contempt.
It is very easy to dismiss the possibility of Tinubu morphing into a life president, not because such concern is being voiced by a somewhat unpopular politician like El-Rufai, but because we think such an idea and plan can’t materialise or become a reality in a deeply divisive and heterogeneous country like ours. Anyone with this thought is either deluded and is living in a bubble very far from reality or has not been following unfolding socio-political events in the country in the last two years. If there’s anything that president Tinubu antecedents have amplified about what he is capable of doing, it is the ability to use his position to ruthlessly consolidate power, permanently plant himself and cronies in every critical private and public sector that makes it hard or even impossible for him to be uprooted or displaced by his adversaries while at the same time undermining and destroying any opposition to his hold on power. This is what he did in Lagos and is still doing.
Since he left office as the governor of Lagos State in 1999, Tinubu has not let go of the reins of power in the state, nothing happens without his knowledge and say so. He still calls the shots and determines who gets what or becomes the governor of the state. If the governor gets out of line and goes against him, the state assembly is activated to sabotage him and get him back in line, and if that does not work, he makes sure the governor does not secure a re-election. You either kiss the ring or get kicked out of the ring. This kind of Machiavellian, domineering, and all-conquering politics that engenders absolute control and state capture has since been imported to Abuja and is being replicated with brutal efficiency, and the consequences are already being felt in many aspects of his rule.
If Tinubu decides to remove the term limit and become president for life, it is hard to see which arm of government will stand in his way. Is it the pliant or amenable federal lawmakers who have unquestioningly approved every request he makes and even chant “on your mandate we shall stand”, a political slogan reaffirming their loyalty to him and not the country, whenever he is in the legislature chamber for one function or the other that will thwart such nefarious ambition or the malleable and exceedingly compromised supreme court that has repeatedly acted in manners that put the nation’s democracy in jeopardy because they don’t want to rule against the president in what what could have been a landmark and historical judicial intervention. The two most important arms of government that are supposed to check the excesses of the president and rein him in have become subservient to him.
The declaration of emergency rule in Rivers should have served as a cautionary tale and a powerful admonition to us on what the future holds if we, the people, don’t destroy the root of this fast-growing totalitarianism. The national assembly, dubious and illegally ratified the emergency rule proclamation despite not getting the quorum needed to do so. The Supreme Court refused to hear the suit filed by governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenging the emergency rule proclamation.
Despite Obasanjo’s touted highhandedness and tyranny, the judiciary, populated by upright, incorruptible and scrupulous judges at the time, stood as a bulwark to his disturbing excesses. The first and second national assemblies did not sacrifice national interest and democracy on the altar of crass politicking and crude subordination, and let the former president’s third-term agenda materialise. The same thing cannot be said for the current crop of judges who have turned their chambers and courtrooms into the marketplace of politics, where deals are made and judgments are bartered for pecuniary gains. The national assembly members are nothing more than the president’s stooges and lackeys.
We don’t know what information El-Rufai is privy to outside what is in the public domain to reach his foreboding conclusion and his words cannot become a solid prophecy that should be accepted with an unquestioning degree of certitude. Having said that, should Tinubu decide to become life president, the only people who can stop him are Nigerians. Not the slavish men in the Senate and House of Representatives and definitely not the subdued and underwhelming judiciary.
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