The Paris visit and President Tinubu’s new allies

Permit me to rain on your parade. President Tinubu has done better than his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari. He has named principal officers before finding a reasonable excuse to go to Paris where we all know he has sought medical appointments in the past.

Enemies of the republic have followed him to Paris and discovered that he did not show up at the inaugural meeting of the conference he officially told us he was going to attend. While his younger colleagues, William Ruto of Kenya and even embattled Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa gave moving speeches and advocated for equity for the Global South, Tinubu was loudly silent.

The jury is out on whether this was a good first outing by those usually eager to hear him speak in tongues again. His friends say that he needed time to get the feel of leadership at the international level and that it was tactical for him not to have spoken. His handlers swear that his very presence was a sign that Nigeria is open for business as if Buhari had closed it earlier.

I am sure that those people saying that Tinubu did not show up early do not know the sayings in the president’s backyard – ẹní b’omi ìsanwọ náà b’oúnjẹ – a person that meets the water used to wash hands (by those who just dined) is said to have partaken in the meal. Late or not, there are now pictures of an ecstatic Tinubu warmly in the embrace of Emmanuel MacDonald at the Elysee.

At the conference proper, nobody caught the president napping. Paris flights are usually prone to the kind of turbulence that makes travellers prone to jet lag. To quote the younger African leaders, carrying them in buses like schoolchildren could make them prone to Paris traffic. African presidents obviously get a kick from kicking their citizens to the curb by gun-totting convoys slicing through the worst of traffic. Most modern leaders don’t have that luxury.

There is a curious thing about Nigerian presidents when they travel. We all know that they get an advance team that leaves a few days earlier, to make sure that everything that should go right stays right.

The late Tanzanian president, John Pombe Magufuli, ran a different protocol. He trusts his ambassadors and their staff to do the needed and so cancelled the protocol of sending officials at extra expense. Magufuli is not your ideal African president and his uniqueness and propensity for changing the official order of things finally led to his untimely death. He messed with COVID-19 and paid dearly for it. May his soul rest in revolutionary heaven.

Back to this convention of having advance parties wherever the president goes, they line themselves up like we elementary pupils used to do waiting for military ruiners back then. Perhaps seeing the same people he had seen a few hours before at his destination calms the president’s nerves. Something like he never left home. I am not a communist and so, I’ll ask that this practice continues to the shame of the embassy or mission staff and the chaps at the Ministry of Funny Affairs.

In Paris, incoming foreign minister, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, had an opportunity of doing a dress rehearsal. The president has now caught the bug of his predecessor by going on a private visit to the UK. Buhari must be smiling in Daura or Niger. Sorry, he’s said to be back in London too.

Back home a few curious events need accentuating just for historical purposes. Serendipity brought James Onanefe Ibori back to the Presidential Villa. The last time he was there as a big man was during Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s presidency when he was known as a powerful kingmaker. His fortunes nosedived when he was whisked away from Dubai as a fugitive from the law, flown to London in a cargo plane in handcuffs, tried and jailed for stealing and squandering Delta State’s resources. Having served his term, he was deported back home as an ex-con.

For those who bother about optics, his presence in Aso Rock pumping our new president’s hands is a bad one. However, Ibori returned to the villa either as a slight of protocol or as a sign that corruption is in the eye of the beholder. In Nigeria’s Delta State, nobody dares call Ibori a thief because he remains a titled chief.

Perhaps nobody knows the effect of being maligned like President Tinubu. Unofficial biographers have called him names. They travelled to Chicago to unearth what even America has buried.

Bad bellies all over the place, the same ones that did not pardon the past misdeeds of Tinubu’s present chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, eons ago when he was a lawyer in Georgia. Tinubu’s sea of Siloam washed Gbajabiamila’s sins, ran him through the Lagos political hierarchy and saw him become Speaker of the House of Representatives before being promoted to Chief of Staff. Any past misdeed is now buried in the sea of forgetfulness.

Tinubu is a generous man who knows how to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. As the pioneer Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, drove the fear of God into the hearts of the shady and shoddy among us. In lay terms, that’s about 99.9 per cent of the ruining class of that time. He sniffed out their crimes and exposed the secret files of those who had immunity from prosecution.

One of the people that Ribadu terrorised were the state governors of the time, including (you guessed right), Governor Bọlá Ahmed Tinubu as he then was. Tinubu was number two on the list of governors Ribadu would have loved to prosecute. That time never came as Ribadu became the first casualty of corruption fighting back and Tinubu never had his day in the courts.

As they say in marriage ceremonies, he will now forever hold his peace. Tinubu has invited him to dinner as National Security Adviser.

Again this must be based on the principle, – tí aò bá gbàgbé ọrọ àná,ao ni rí ẹni bá se – If we dwell too much on the past, we’ll run short of people to interact with. Nigeria may have 300 million citizens; it may be hard for Tinubu to find his men of like passions to work with.

Before we close this chapter of Tinubu’s friends, we must not forget Niger Delta’s reformed militant leader, Mujaheed Asari Dokubo. While he is yet to be nominated minister of Niger-Delta affairs, he has paid homage to the Asiwaju of Nigeria in the villa. Asari pumped the president’s hands and returned home with a lucrative anti-bunkering contract. The husband of four wives, big daddy of 22 children and several SUVs would never have to lift his finger against oil pipelines to feed his harem after that handshake.

Those who like my mentor Dapo Olorunyomi are quick to say that thuggery is a doomed art, should check the perks that come with the office of national thugs, especially national gangsters.