October 12, (THEWILL) — President Bola Ahmed Tinubus’s recent visit to Plateau State came with tempers. For its sheer enormity and spirito-cultural agenda, it has generated news and story lines, sparked analysts and their perspectives, left much to be desired and very little to cheer.
Coming three years after his last multi-billion naira political campaign visit to the State to flag off the APC’s presidential campaign for the 2023 general elections, his visit this time was necessary but disguised in the rather solemn obsequies and funeral ceremony of the mother of a Professor Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwen, who is also the sixth national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
Tinubu’s visit to Plateau State on October 4 was necessary based on the unexamined and fallible logic of the English saying that “early to bed, early to rise”. To that extent, and ennobled by his well advertised agenda to meet with Church leaders from the North during the visit, it was a well conceived and orchestrated political campaign outing which used the cultural event of the burial of the APC national chairman’s mother as a cloak to circumvent and neutralise the warning by the INEC that political campaigns towards the 2027 general elections are for now subjudice, and to that extent not privileged.
Again, it is deserving of emphasis to say the Tinubu plan to kill two unequalled birds with one stone was well articulated, rehearsed, and rendered. As it turned out, according to the reports from his interaction with the Church leaders, these clergy men responded in clerical and clear terms, including proving earlier to overzealous and hyperactive security personnel that in God’s case, no security weapon wielded against a man of God shall prosper. In a light and momentary security-initiated skirmish that sought to obstruct the day that the Lord had made; or curse what the Lord had blessed for that day, by sheer word and determined spirit, the men of God found and had their way, while the security personnel consoled themselves by seeking to put the blame on some journalists as the lowest, common soft targets.
Gossips that filtered out of the meeting between the Church leaders and Mr President have it that all went well; and the meeting rose on the note that all is well that ends well! President Tinubu is said to have reassured the Men of God that he was not only in COCIN headquarters, Jos, to meet and confer with them, but, indeed, to demonstrate to them that not only is the Church in all nations, but the word and fear of God are in all minds. He recalled and reiterated that the incidence of the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket in 2023 was not just a callous distortion of Nigeria’s political history, but an injustice and contemptuous attack on the Church and its congregation.
In the spirit of the renewed hope paradigm of Mr. President’s national development view, the Men of God’s hopes and expectations were renewed and reassured to the effect that the Christians in Nigeria should warm up to grapple with a better deal and repackaging with a renewed Tinubu Mandate come 2027. Taking the game to the Church and its congregation thus, Men of God ended the interaction in the hope that the running mate to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who witnessed live the funeral church service of the mother of the APC national chairman at the COCIN Headquarters Compound Church, Jos, would be of the Christian faith. This expectation, according to analysts, is a new bond between President Tinubu whose electoral expectations and times with the far Northern bloc is frosty and indeterminate towards 2027; and the robust Christian population and its enormous electoral army that can coalesce with the South West, South East, and South-South geopolitical wholesome to catalyze a Tinubu presidential victory in 2027.
For both timing and agenda of the visit, the President’s critics have carpeted him as a desperate politician, who, because of the odds ranged against him and his profound fear of the enemy (opposition), sets out on the 2027 presidential gamble like the proverbial early bird. For preferring to use the occasion of the burial of the mother of his party national chairman as the auspicious moment to close in politically on the Christendom in Northern, the opposition in the North has described his claims of attending the deceased funeral as a wicked pretence which translates simply as doing a political dance on the grave of the deceased person.
The opposition also queries the President’s duty to the Plateau people since he came to power in 2023. The opposition apparently differs from Abuja on what it terms Mr. President’s rule by proxy, especially when he failed to show up in Plateau each time bandits and herdsmen unleash nocturnal attacks and deathly ambushes on villages in Bassa, Riyom, Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, and other Parts of Plateau. The opposition criticised the President for not showing up during the killings in Plateau and being silent on the grievous matter as he concentrated on his re-election desire and the fate of Christians in his improbable second tenure, as if the lives of those massacred in those planned and co-ordinated attacks do not matter. The dullest aspect of his parochial agenda with the Men of God in Jos is that the planners could not as much as include one or two minutes solemnity in the protocols to kick-start the interaction in honour of the thousands murdered in the senseless killings in Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Mangu, Riyom, and other parts of Plateau by wandering herdsmen and marauding land speculators.
The opposition also pins the overriding political motive of the President’s visit to his failure to place emphasis on the interment proper in Dungum village, Kanke local government area home of the deceased, to witness her burial proper. The opposition argues further that as a Muslim, his emphasis should have been on the burial not funeral Mass service. President Tinubu’s preference for the church service was because of the convenience it afforded him to execute the ultimate objective of his visit – to meet with church leaders, and the COCIN Headquarters Compound provided a spiritually and physically convivial venue for this.
From the Yakubu Gowon Airport in Heipang, all the way through the Yakubu Gowon Way, joining the Joseph Gomwalk Way, connecting the COCIN Headquarters via Fidelis Tapgun Road, it was more of a political carnival as political groups, including rented crowds, adorned all sides of the road to welcome the President to a renewed Jos where the Caleb Mutfwang government is rigorous with urban governance and revamping of city infrastructures. The opposition is of the view that the carnival atmosphere, with all the commensurate pomp, colour, and glamour, robbed the visit and the event of the tears, sobs, solemnity, sobriety, and wailing that do shape the mood of such cemetery events. The opposition contends that for both mood and emotional pain, President Tinubu and his party national chairman were not on the same page that day because cheers and sorrow do not keep company.
For Nentawe Yilwatda Goshwe, national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, October 4 was certainly a day to remember because anyway is actually some way. His speech during the church service succeeded in its acknowledgement of the trepidations and uncertainties of orphanage which shrill realization and tremulous emotion drove him, in spite of being a Professor and national chairman of a ruling Party, to seek fatherly adoption by the same Mr President whose presence at the occasion the opposition has dismissed as self-serving crocodile tears.
All the same, from all intent and purposes, there was a burial, and the world stood witness to it just as the state economy experienced and captured the attendant footfalls, because a mother actually died, and was buried.
