If We Are Crying Let Us Still Have Time To See And Other Stories

Here are some of my thoughts on the election that brought Tinubu to power.

This will be my longest newsletter and even this does not capture the entirety of my thoughts concerning the elections. Indeed I would have to write a book if I were to analyze every pattern this election displayed and every lesson it taught me.

Unfortunately for me, I am preoccupied with the economics of earning money in order to sustain a living, so I don’t have as much time as I would like to put all my thoughts down.

This newsletter is technically six newsletters in one. The first is a status post my very good friend Pascal (Hello Meliodas!) put down during the election. It is the introduction to this article. The next five deal with different themes.

In Jesus is Batified, I explain how Jesus Christ loves our good man Bola Ahmed. In Politics Is Actually A Game, I explore how misguided the thought that winning is not the central purpose of politics is.

In the ABCs of elections in Sub-Saharan Africa, I explore what an election actually does in this part of the world. In the Myth of Vote Splitting, I seriously contend with what vote splitting means in practice and how that definitely never happens. In Bigotry Is A Compound Noun, I explore what it means for a Nigerian to call you a bigot.

This is also my 50th newsletter so I'll be taking an opinion poll to celebrate. If you'd like to skip right to it, it's here. If you don't, it's at the end of the letters.

I hope you enjoy reading.

Red shirts and blue shirts

So let us assume there is a neighborhood. In that neighborhood, there is a company (publicly owned and run by administrators), that supplies clean water, electricity, and food to the people.

After a few years of equal distribution of these commodities and services, things take a bad turn. The water supply gets bad and is not as clean as before. Electricity is no longer constant. The administrators are siphoning these commodities to their circle and friends. As members of the neighborhood, you have tried protesting and fighting. It never leads to anything meaningful or a successful change.

But you noticed something; to get into this company one needs to wear a blue shirt. The company’s bylaws make it clear that you need a blue shirt to be in the company. However, everyone in the community wears a red shirt, so only special blue shirt wearers can join the company. The problem with the red shirt wearers is that they can only protest and organize, and the blue shirt wearers have no obligation to listen to them. In fact, they largely ignore them and do not even act like the red shirts exist.

You, a red shirt wearer, know that you can change things. You know that if you manage to get into the company you can make it work for everyone, not just the blue shirt wearers. But you wear a red shirt. You cannot get into the company with a red shirt. Everyone knows that.

And then one day, while on your way to a protest, you find a blue shirt on the ground. There is no one around. If you put off your red shirt and wear the blue shirt, no one will find out. You have the choice to make a change. But you just have to wear the blue shirt. What do you do?

ABCs of Elections in Sub-Saharan Africa 

Are you a first-time voter in a Sub-Saharan state like Nigeria? Here are some things you must know. First, you need to know the basic thing about elections; your votes count, but they don’t matter. You are not going to decide anything, no matter what. You have just one vote in a million, so your effort is immaterial. You may be better served spending your day getting your genitals sucked than actually voting.

The second thing you need to know is that elections are never free and fair. A free and fair election in Sub-Saharan Africa is like the second coming of Jesus Christ. People plan on it happening. There are entire movements based on it happening. And many people have their lives revolve around it happening. But it never happens.

There are many reasons for this and perhaps one day you might write about all of them. But the issue is that it never happens, and I don’t believe it will happen. That is just what it is.

Why am I so sure that this will never happen? Well, here is the thing. For a free and fair election to happen the government has to find over a hundred and fifty thousand highly competent and honest people willing to work for peanuts. Because it does not matter what laws are passed, if the people working in the institutions are corrupt, they will make a mockery of the laws. Since Sub-Saharan African nations cannot find this critical mass of people, free and fair elections can simply not happen, just like the second coming.

So if free and fair elections never happen, what does happen, you might ask? You see, any election in this part of the world is not really an election. It is simply a way of testing the mettle of power.

Who has the power to bend the bureaucratic arm of the government the most? Who can utilize violence for their ends the most? Who is popular enough to forestall violence in certain areas the most? These are the questions the election answers.

Let us get down to the practical aspect of it. Imagine, for instance, that there is a fictional country in the Niger area. Let us imagine this country is then called Nigeria. Since this country is in the Niger area, it would have an unholy number of ethnic groups. Let us say maybe it has 200 ethnic groups, and as expected the presidential candidate in every election has support from his own ethnic group. Not because he is a capable candidate or because he loves his countrypeople especially — but because he has their blood and is one of them.

In that case, the candidate will have his own zones where maximum rigging will be done for him. Because they are his people and he has their trust, they will be able to write as many phantom figures as he wants. But even his capacity to do that is based on how many strong and influential grassroots politicians he has on his side.

The presidential candidate is not the one who actually rigs the election. This task and the logistics of it are left to the men on the ground. He just tells them, we must win. Or, more specifically, he tells them to fight for it, grab it, snatch it, and run with it. Here is a video of some old and probably demented political leader doing the exact same thing.

These foot soldiers already know what is expected of them and they will give the same orders to men under them. And so and so it goes till it reaches the average canvas wearing, dread making, and ugly looking ballot box thief.

That is why a party is not just a party; it is a gang of men — or, more accurately, an extensive network of men who know how to influence elections legally or illegally. And this gang of men is what makes up all parties. Hence if one of them refuses to do their duty, it will be done for them by the other gang.

This means that despite elections not being free and fair, the eventual winner actually has to work for his win. He cannot sit in the state house and write results to be announced. Even if he wants to rig he has to tap into the existing structure with money and influence and create alliances between states and ethnic groups to increase his home advantage. You see, the candidate knows that his opponent also has his own ethnic base, and that base will also rig. He knows that his chances there are close to nil, hence his job is to win where he can win convincingly, and suffer very low losses.

This dynamic creates a situation where candidates rarely campaign to the regular average Joe because they don’t matter in the long run. While they may spend some time attending functions and giving interviews, they only really do this for optics. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things. What matters — what will determine how they win — is getting the funds and brokering agreements needed to successfully rig the elections. This involves getting governors, local government heads, and even thugs working together to perfect the same vision; winning by crook, or maybe by hook. It is the making of the alliance that guarantees the win, not convincing the electorate.

It is precisely because of this that political parties in the sub-continent are not ideological. A candidate may have his own ideology and his own vision for running the country, but what bounds him and his political bedfellows together is not that ideology. It is their interests and willingness to enter a mutually beneficial partnership. It is the reason why a political party fashioned after the Labor Party of the UK may have a billionaire businessman as a candidate, and a progressive party may contain no principle of progressiveness. That is also the reason why a man may belong to ten political parties during his political lifetime. He does not join the party because he agrees with its ideas — he joins it because he sees it as a vehicle for getting power.

The Labor Man does not believe in the worker and his superiority. The progressive only progresses towards his own goal. And the democratic is only such when he wins.

Hence the election is not a test of ideas but a test of political networks and agreements. Which particular formula of political actors has the most power? And how much of this power can be transferred unto the polling sheets — regardless of method?

That is what an election here tests.

The political actors are not just blessed with the impossibility of a free and fair election, they are also blessed with perhaps the most gullible electorate the world may ever see. The average sub-Saharan African citizen, you see, is nothing more than a helpless puppy in a storm. The citizens know that free and fair elections are a myth and that they can never actually happen. But ever so often they get into a fantastic mood indeed and base permutations on this idea. Unfortunately for them, this merely introduces another dynamic into horse trading and alliance-making amongst political gladiators.

This is Sub-Saharan Africa, you see. Free and fair elections are a myth. And the house always wins.

You can argue, but have you ever seen a free and fair election in the wild?

The Myth of Vote Splitting 

The bandwidth of human faith is so expansive that anything can be a myth to anyone if they tell themselves the lie long enough.

Christians, Muslims, communists, pan-Africanists, Substack writers… It hardly matters. Everyone takes a healthy dose of myths every day to make themselves feel alive. We surely would not be able to actually rawdog life if we had to face the truth every day. We need myths.

And sometimes, we need them to win an election.

Six thousand three hundred and nineteen words. That is how many words the Wikipedia entry on vote splitting has. There is scarcely any electoral strategy as popular as it. Anyone who knows anything about elections knows about it.

Everyone takes a healthy dose of myths every day to make themselves feel alive. We surely would not be able to actually raw dog life if we had to face the truth every day. We need myths.

As I write this letter, Turkey is preparing to host a runoff election. I don’t want to bore you with history, so here is the gist of it. The current president is a man named Erdogan, and it seems many people want him gone. They want him gone so much that the six political parties went out of their self-interested ways to unite behind one man. But one man, Murrahem Ince, refused to unite behind the main opposition candidate. He was a runner-up in the previous election and believed that he had the juice to make a very big splash in a very large pool, regardless of his size.

He was begged, asked, and even warned to step down. He did not care. He was obviously not going to win. Everyone knew that. But you see…

Everyone takes a healthy dose of myths every day to make themselves feel alive. We surely would not be able to actually raw dog life if we had to face the truth every day. We need myths.

This man had been on the cusp of taking power back in 2018, and who was to say he could not do it again? His opponents told him about wasting votes and whatnot, but why should he care? That was nonsense.

You see, nobody votes because they want a particular candidate to win. They vote instead because they like a particular candidate. So who can win or not should not be a part of your considerations when choosing who to vote for. It does not matter who wins, you see. What matters is you exercise your civic duty. If it then happens that your favorite candidate wins, then that would be a sweet coincidence, but it is not the point of voting. It is not the point at all. Seriously.

This and more was what he said to his teeming supporters, who hated Erdogan with their lives. While they did not especially like the main opposition candidate, their hate for Erdogan surpassed any other emotion, and they felt Ince was the best vehicle to show that hate. If Ince went into the election with the main opposition candidate and Erdogan, Erdogan would have won the elections with more than 50% of the votes, hence making him president outright. Everyone knew Ince had no path to victory but…

Everyone takes a healthy dose of myths every day to make themselves feel alive. We surely would not be able to actually rawdog life if we had to face the truth every day. We need myths.

But sometimes, and here is where the wheel of history turns— sometimes, we do need to rawdog reality. And that was what Ince did. A few days before the election, he listened to wise counsel and shelved his ambition in support of the main opposition candidate.

At the end of the day, Erdogan did not get 50%.

Politics is Actually A Game

After the elections, many people took to the digital wasteland called Twitter to announce that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the winner, was an excellent strategist. One person even asked him to write a book about his political strategies as that might be a source of knowledge for an up-and-coming politician.

The reaction to this from the losers was the sort of reaction you might expect from a Jew who was just told Hitler was a decent painter (he really was not. I want to be clear about that. His human figures were deformed and disturbing to look at but since he painted landscapes no one cared or paid attention). Twitter was agog with people claiming that politics was not really a game, you see. They claimed this was different from the Premier League and was not a mere argument over who wins or loses. Instead, they argued that it was serious business and that lives were at stake.

Which is the sort of thing losers do when they have been beaten.

Whether serious business or not, your goal in politics should be to win. It should not be to make a statement or to spite someone; it should be to win. Except, of course, winning to you means embarrassing someone else. In that case, all power to you.

Politicians who play the game of politics understand this all too well. They know that everything; speeches, principles, campaigns, agreements, protests, and everything else are meaningless without the context of winning. Successful politicians do not align to fulfill all righteousness. They do not perform any selfless acts of leadership outside the paradigm of winning. All they think of and do exist within the context of a win or loss. To them, it is a game.

And is it not true? It does not matter how great your plans for the country is, If you are incapable of getting power your ideas are just as important as this substack article in the scheme of things. Wait this article may even be more important.

People who hope to influence the decisions of policymakers must also understand that it is a game. Of course, games can be serious or not, but that does not affect the fact that they are games. And the goal of playing a game is to win.

Bigotry Is A Compound Noun 

Over the last six months or so, the word “Bigot” got popular in online forums. I presume it also got really popular in real life, but I would not know for sure since I never make the horrid mistake of leaving my house and existing in social gatherings. People accused each other of bigotry, and for some reason, the accusers on all three sides seemed to believe their opponent was the ultimate bigot.

They were usually wrong. For the most part, anyway.

If there is one thing I have learned in the years I have gotten aware of the ethnic dynamics of Nigeria, it is that there is hardly ever an innocent party. There are no noble savages here. There are only strong and weak savages. It is the way of the world. It is the way of the country.

The past elections had many narratives and storylines, but the most important one was probably the one that revolved around the ethnicity of the next president.

President Buhari (may God rest his brain cells) is a Fulani Muslim man. He ruled for eight years, and every sensible person in the country believed that another person from another ethnicity should have the chance to rule. Wait, they did not really believe that, you see. They believed that another person from their ethnicity should rule. This is an important distinction as it explains a lot of the behaviors and narratives born out of the rancor for power.

Unfortunately for the PDP and everyone else who wanted Tinubu not to win, a Fulani man won the PDP primaries and he did so through high-level power games that saw Tambuwal, a major contender, step down for him. This meant that everyone else who did not want a Fulani man to succeed a Fulani man was thrown into what one may call political wilderness.

The solution to that political quagmire came in the form of a man named Peter Obi. You see, he was a Southerner, but unlike Tinubu was a good one.

This created a situation where the three major tribes in the country had a shot at the number one seat. The Igbos said that people who didn't support their man were bigots, the Yoruba said the same, and even the Fulani said the same. Yorubas supporting a Yoruba president called Igbos supporting an Igbo person a bigot, and those ones kindly returned the insult.

In the end, everyone was trying to unite their ethnic base and attain victory through them. Atiku held several town halls with Northern leaders and Obi increased engagements massively with South Eastern leaders. Even the scale of their rallies in their zones was different. The Obi Anambra rally was something to behold and the same for Atiku in places like Jigawa and Kaduna. Each political actor knew the game and played it as best they could. The Labor Party influencers spoke endlessly about it being the Igbo’s time to rule. Atiku relentlessly argued that the North needed a pan-Nigerian northerner at the helm of affairs. Whatever that means. Tinubu and his gang did the same. Anyway, the point is that everyone did what they had to do to get what they wanted. And the results were predictable.

Atiku simultaneously beat expectations and underperformed. He was able to flip several APC states, but he did not even come close to having a complete hold in the North. He even came third in Kano. Tinubu and his Yoruba ronu slogan also underperformed. He lost in Osun state and in Lagos too. He did not win 90% of the votes anywhere, and if the opposition were united, he would have lost the elections by a ridiculous margin.

But Obi was the most successful of all in uniting his base. His win percentage mirrored those of Jonathan in 2011 and 2015. He won nearly 95% of all the votes in the South East, something no other candidate could manage in their zones.

But by some twist of irony, some LP Igbo supporters started shouting about bigotry and manipulation. They claimed that the Yoruba were bigoted against them because Tinubu used ethnic arguments to encourage his base. They claimed that it was the clearest form of bigotry they had ever seen, despite a non-trivial share of Yorubas rejecting the argument as best they could. It got so bad that they rejoiced when Ekiti, the state where Tinubu had the highest share of votes in, suffered a natural disaster. The state became a meme, and it was suddenly appropriate to abuse them.

None of them chose to reflect on the fact that the Igbo-dominated zones were the ones who succumbed the most to ethnic arguments. Obi swept away all the states that Atiku won in 2019. He did not even manage 50k votes in the entire zone. You could say that Obi was on the 2019 ticket too, and they were always voting for him, which could make sense. But what about Buhari? He had 230k votes in both Ebonyi and Imo in 2019, and in 2023 95% of the people in those states suddenly decided to vote for their clansman. What changed their minds? Did they not see Obi on the ticket in 2019? Are we supposed to think these people did not vote for Obi because he is Igbo?

They voted massively for APC in 2019 when their man was not on the ballot, but they suddenly changed their mind in 2023 when he arrived on the ballot as president. Are to assume that they were only voting for competence? If they were, when did that start? Because they certainly did not vote for competence in 2019. Nor in 2007, nor 2003, nor 1999. Perhaps it is a new awakening. We might never know.

But to hear some of our brothers speak on it, one would assume that ethnic voting is a new dimension to elections introduced by Tinubu, even when he massively underperformed when judged by those metrics. He tried it and failed. Despite winning the zone, he could not unite the SW to sing to his tune. Surely this must mean that such arguments are not as potent in the area as some would have us believe. The irony is that the SE, where most of the people making these arguments are from, is the one region that proved itself the most amenable to the ethnic argument. But that does not matter, and we are supposed to believe it is a mere coincidence that the most competent person they massively voted for was an Igbo man. It’s just a mere coincidence, you see.

Shockingly the region that has proven itself to be the most welcoming of the ethnic argument was also the one who jettisoned it the most, if INEC is to be believed. The North West and North East were starkly divided on the question of who to become president. There was no consensus, and many people voted for both the Yoruba man and the Fulani man in almost equal doses. You could say Tinubu was an attractive choice because he was Muslim, and perhaps that could be true. However, I am no mind reader, and the stats clearly show who voted the most based on tribe.

The larger point, of course, is that it is comedic for any Nigerian region to accuse the other of bigotry. Yes, there were pockets of violence and ethnic profiling in Lagos, but that's because Lagos has a large Igbo diaspora. If the SE had the same size of Yoruba diaspora the same drama would have played out. Or are we saying polling units where Obi won 98% of the votes wouldn't have violently objected to tens of Yoruba immigrants voting for Tinubu and flipping the unit? In fact, here is a video of that exactly happening.

Or are we saying the Obi win in Lagos wasn't engineered, at least in part, by the huge Igbo diaspora in the state? We must learn to tell ourselves the truth. This was not Nigeria's first elections.

ALL Nigerian tribes were born in bigotry, bathed in it, and many Nigerians never even knew of tolerance and inclusion until they were already men. The voters know it. The politicians know it. The political parties know it. The electoral commission knows it. And if you don’t know it it is probably because you are accustomed to it in the way the fish is accustomed to water.

Bigotry is a compound noun in Nigeria, because we are all whatever tribes we are before we are Nigerian. Or at least most people are. It is what it is. You may hope that this is not true, but you do not live in a state that you hope to exist; you live in one that presently exists.

And in that state bigotry is not a dirty word.

Jesus is BATIFIED 

Earlier in the year, about a month before the election, I was invited to a talk show. It was not really a show to be fair, it was more like a Youtube special. I was invited anyway and asked to take a position on the candidates.

You are the Obedient, right? And you are the BATified, right? And you? You are the Atikulated, right?

Those tags made me angry because of how infantile they sounded. Why would a grown man choose to call himself an Obedient? Or an Atikulated? Or a Batified? It sounded so insulting, and I am not the only one who holds this opinion. Even a certain Nobel prize winner holds the same.

By the way, I do agree with Seun Kuti; ‘Obidients’ is one of the most repulsive, off-putting concoctions I ever encountered in any political arena. Some love it however, and this is what freedom is about. Choice. Taste. Free emotions.

Wole Soyinka

I wonder what he feels about the tag “aticulated”, which means less than nothing, or the tag “batified”, which is simply embarrassing. Anyway, as I was filming this show, I got thinking. Who does Jesus support? That is a serious question we all must ask ourselves as good Christians.

All the parties surely have Christians amongst their ranks praying for the success of their respective candidates. It means Jesus must have gotten prayer requests from the Obideints, Batified, and Atikulated. Who did he choose to side with?

It is hard to know exactly what camp Jesus is in since I don’t have him on Whatsapp, but we can look at the events surrounding the election to guess whose logo the spiritual hand of Christ thumb printed for. The following explanation is lengthy, but it will eventually tell you whose prayers God answered.

As far back as 2007, Bola Ahmed Tinubu had one problem and one problem only. He was a Yoruba Muslim. While ones religion does not really matter in the South West, it is of ridiculous importance across other parts of the nation. A Muslim cannot become governor in the South East and South-South, and a Christian cannot become one in the North West and North East either. That is because people who belong to those denominations are minorities, and in Nigeria minorities cannot get power except by the act of God.

The problem with being a Yoruba Muslim, or a Southern Muslim, is that you are a minority in the South. If you do manage to get on a ticket, you would necessarily have to choose a Northern Muslim for your ticket to have any hope at all. That would create a Muslim/Muslim ticket that would alienate the southern Christian base and destroy your chances of winning the elections. And if you have no Southern base to rely on why would a sufficiently popular Northern Muslim agree to deputize you? This was the political headache that our man Bola Ahmed had.

But Tinubu is a man of extensive ambition. He would not take this fact of the Nigerian political structure lying down. As they would say in Sunday school, he believed all protocols would be broken for his sake. And my oh my, how right was he! All protocols were indeed broken for his sake.

In reality, the solution to his problem was simple; he just needed a powerful Northern Muslim to either bring his party to power or get on a same-faith ticket with him as either president or vice.

In 2007, after Atiku’s misadventures with the PDP and Obasanjo, Tinubu welcomed him into the AC. He wanted Atiku to run on the platform of the AC at the time. One of the plausible reasons why he did not run himself was because he was Yoruba, and Obasanjo was Yoruba as well. Since he did not have the backing of the Northern structure like Obasanjo did, he certainly was not going to win. The entire country would take a dim view of a Yoruba man replacing a Yoruba man.

However, Atiku could run. So he tried to get on the Atiku ticket as VP. Unfortunately, Atiku refused because then it would be two Muslims on one ticket. That was never going to fly anyway.

All those propositions would prove to be irrelevant, as Obasanjo would go on to organize the fakest elections the country has ever seen. Till today even INEC cannot tell you the complete results of the elections. It is what it is.

2011 rolled around, and Tinubu was still in the fray and still carrying the baggage of his religion. He was still a Muslim, and no northern Muslim would want him on his ticket because it would be a same-faith affair. But this time, Tinubu had a trick or two up his sleeves. He wanted to merge his party, the ACN, with the CPC. This could allow his party to seize power, and then he would have more leeway to play certain power games that might get him in power.

At this point, the CPC had a powerful Northerner, an obscure fellow named Muhammadu Buhari, as its flag bearer. Tinubu hoped that he could be vice to this man and use that route to become president.

But the talks between both parties broke down at a crucial point, and they headed to the polls divided.

This ordinarily meant that the ruling party would win, but our man Tinubu did not get to where he was by hoping on chance and luck. He knew that the ruling party would most likely win, you see. But he also knew that the situation was precarious. If the CPC won and defeated the ruling party, it would relegate his party to a properly regional status. It would be the third-largest party in the country, and it would be almost impossible to take power in such circumstances. The PDP would have at least two regions of the country in its grasp (SS and SE) and the CPC would have the NW and the NE.

This would leave the ACN with just one region, as the NC would be a stomping ground for all three parties. That was an impossible situation for our man BAT, so he correctly deduced that his biggest enemy in the 2011 elections was not the ruling party, but the other opposition party.

A lesson there.

Hence he did the smart thing; he endorsed the candidate of the PDP to ensure that the win was complete and permanent. He sacrificed his own presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, just to keep his party alive.

Ribadu would go on to win only Osun state in the 2011 elections. PDP won the other South Western states.

It is the sort of thing you may read in the memoirs of successful generals. But Tinubu had not yet won any major battle, he had just avoided defeat. He still carried the baggage of his religion, and he still had to convince a powerful candidate to take him on as Vice President.

The reason why Tinubu was so particular about being VP was that the position was enormously politically beneficial. It was also a position that usually went to ambitious people. Hence, a VP that was not him would be a stumbling block to his ambition, even if his party got into power. He also could not get elected on his own because he was a Southerner and the zoning arrangements of those years meant that a Northerner would always get more votes than him.

Southerners hardly know it, but Northerners have a massive numerical advantage over the peoples of the South. The North West and North East of Nigeria combined have more numbers than any other two politically and ethnically aligned zones. Hence, any candidate with their support already has a robust base to build his ambition on. Such a candidate would really only require the support of just one more zone. This meant that any Southerner had to unite the Southern zones to win against the North, while the Northerner simply had to pick up one more zone. The reality of this meant that Tinubu did not have a chance in hell to become president as long as a powerful Northerner was contesting under a party with any national spread.

And our man Buhari had that support. He just needed one more zone. Tinubu knew that the only way forward was with Buhari, and that he needed to show the CPC that they could not win without him. The debilitating CPC loss at the 2011 elections got every major player where Tinubu wanted them to be.

It left the CPC with the stark reality that they could not win against the PDP without the ACN. And it left Jonathan, the president, with the faulty assumption that he could beat Buhari at the polls. This assumption would eventually lead to his arrogance in contesting once more.

Once the CPC picked up the pieces from its loss, the party met with Tinubu again and this time they reached an agreement to create the APC.

But the APC was not just a merger between the CPC and the ACN. You see, the PDP, due to Jonathan’s arrogance from his fantastic showing at the 2011 elections, had splintered. Our man Jonathan believed he had the heart of the people and that free and fair elections would save him. He truly believed you see. He believed that by appointing the right man as INEC head, a pristine election would be delivered and that he would win the elections. He truly believed.

But this is no country for true believers.

As you might have read in the last letter, free and fair elections are a myth, and what determines who becomes president is the extent of the political networks one has built and their depth. And the calculus of that was severely on Buhari’s side. Tinubu controlled the South-West, and Buhari controlled the NW and NE. It was a fantastic merger that did two things — it broke the Southern wall that took Jonathan to victory in 2011, and gave Buhari the spread and additional zone he needed to win.

Once this was done, the election itself (as it always is) was a mere formality. The campaigns and everything else were just dramas. The winner was already decided. When it was time for Buhari to pick a Vice President, Tinubu once again threw his hat in the ring. But despite his many political machinations, he was yet to solve the problem of his religion. This problem was so huge that even Buhari — a man who has once asked for Sharia law all over Nigeria — could not risk it. A same-faith ticket could alienate a significant portion of not just the South West but the North Central as well, tilting the balance in PDP’s favor. Buhari did not need a divided South West, he needed a united one. A same-faith ticket, without a Yoruba man as the president, would definitely alienate the South West zone.

Alienate here does not mean that it would alienate the random voters on the street. No. It means it would weaken the network of political actors willing to deliver their units by crook or by hook. So he refused Tinubu and asked him to nominate another person.

Here was where the sliver of a plan began to glow on our man Tinubu’s head. Instead of nominating a political heavyweight — that is, someone who has won elections before, he decided to nominate a lowly former Attorney-General of Lagos State, Yemi Osibanjo. This was risky. Professor (and Pastor) Yemi was not well known by the Yoruba people, and his lack of popularity might have influenced the election results. But that is assuming the elections are free and fair. In the condition where they are not, Yemi’s candidacy did not need to convince the average Yoruba man. It only needed to convince the political network, and it did.

Nominating Yemi was a stroke of genius because the Prof lacked the political clout he would need when he eventually sought to take over from Buhari. Hence, Tinubu neutralized the Vice President position by nominating an incompetent politician. Since his entire reason for wanting to be Vice President was to be next in line to the presidency position, nominating Yemi meant that he would be next regardless of whatever stunt our pastor eventually pulled.

The win came, as expected. But still — but still — Tinubu had his problem with him; his religion. The APC had won power with Buhari and, with it, had inherited the Buhari votes. Or some of it, at least. But that meant nothing. The coalitions around the country and across rival political networks were always changing, and power was only as certain as the political network that birthed them.

Soon enough, election season came upon the APC. It was time to choose a successor to Buhari. This time it was the turn of a Southerner, and Tinubu was the obvious choice. He had continued to build his network of allies through the years, and his relationships had matured. Many people owed him favors, and it was time to collect. As expected, the Vice President stood against him, but he was such a lightweight that he came third in the primaries.

But even in this, Bola Tinubu’s win depended greatly on the candidate the PDP elected. If the PDP nominated a Southerner, his win would be assured. He would be able to inherit the votes of Buhari completely, and would retain his region. But this depended on him choosing a Northern Muslim VP.

If you are a political lightweight like our dear professor who came third, you may ask yourself, why? Why would Tinubu need a Northern Muslim to win? You see, those APC votes from Buhari are only a given if a representative of the majority group — Muslim Northerners — is on it. Without them, Tinubu would be as alien to them as your average Igbo trader at Ladipo. He needed that Muslim VP to lock those Northern votes down. Without it, he could say goodbye to the NW and NE alliance that Buhari brought to the party. The network of political actors would simply not hold.

Going against a Southerner meant that Tinubu would get those Northern votes and would only need to maintain his grasp on the SW network he has. No other Southerner could be as popular as he was in the North, and none of them could break APC's hold on the region. With no Northerner on the ballot, Tinubu was assured of the win. He could use the same formula that had brought Buhari much joy without much trouble. And without a Northerner on the ballot, he could pick a Northern Muslim as Vice President without much trouble. The South West would stand with him regardless, and a Muslim/Muslim ticket may even increase his popularity in the North. An alliance like that would birth the presidency, regardless of what happened elsewhere.

So, going into the primaries weekend, he had but one prayer;

Please God, he prayed, let the PDP choose a Southerner.

His prayer was not just sound; it was also likely to happen. Buhari had spent eight years, and tradition would dictate that the next leader would be from the southern part of the country. The Igbo have also had a years-long grappling with legitimacy within Nigeria, and especially within the PDP. One might have even expected an Igbo person to get the ticket.

That would have made Tinubu endlessly happy. He would be able to recreate Buhari’s number in the North, win with an even bigger margin in the South West, and pick up a few Muslim-majority states in the North Central. The electoral map would look like it did in 2015, and he would win clearly.

A Northerner with the PDP would be a different ball game. The Northerner could split votes in the North and even flip a few APC states. Since the PDP has a bigger base in the South-South and South East, the Northerner would also win there. This was especially likely since Tinubu would run a Muslim/Muslim ticket and hence would lose massive ground in the South East and South-South.

Hence, Tinubu would face a divided North and a united South-South, and South East. In those conditions, not only would he lose, his loss would be catastrophic. It would be the end of his career as a politician, and the APC may even disintegrate afterward.

So he prayed to God and asked him fervently, God, let the PDP choose a Southerner. Especially an Igbo one.

But God did not answer, you see.

Instead, the PDP went with Atiku.

I wonder how scared he must have been during those first few days, especially as Atiku was never the frontline candidate. It was always Wike, and Wike had the same weaknesses as any Southern politician against the APC. He had no inroads into the North as the APC was more popular, and he could not compete in the South West. Of course, he would win the South East and South-South with disgusting margins, but Jonathan did the same and lost. The calculus of the political network was not on his side.

But Atiku’s emergence threw a spanner in those plans. Tinubu’s potential Muslim/Muslim ticket meant it would be harder to stay competitive in the North Central, South-South, and South East. He would need to work hard for his victory.

However, when God says you will be what you will be, he will break protocols for your sake. God was firmly in Tinubu’s side. Despite the disappointments of the primaries, he prepared a fantastic table before him.

The emergence of Obi as a contender in the elections was the answer to Tinubu’s prayer. Now, a Southerner had emerged that solved all his problems. He could pick a Northern Muslim without worrying about losing gains in the North Central and elsewhere. In a way, even Atiku, initially his albatross, was now merely a pawn in the big game. With Atiku on the field, Obi could not get any votes from the North and would lose serious ground in the South West. And with Obi on the ground, Atiku could forget about any votes in the South-South and South East.

He was the luckiest man, this Tinubu fella. He was God’s favorite child.

His enemies had taken themselves out at the knee and the election was already won before it began. He did not have to do anything other than the bare minimum during campaigns. He only needed to be seen at certain places and energize his base of political actors (NOT VOTERS) through certain appearances in the media. There was no point doing a debate — he had already won.

He was the luckiest man, this Tinubu fella. He was God’s favorite child.

If Jesus himself was BATIFIED, it is difficult to imagine him crafting an even better circumstance for Tinubu to win. The stars aligned in the most ridiculous ways, and confusion was literally thrown into the camp of the enemy. It was the most delicious sort of irony. The people who hated Tinubu the most became the vehicle that drove him to Aso Rock. Ten thousands fell by right hand, and a hundred thousand fell by his left hand — and none of them could touch him.

It is the sort of things Christians spend their days praying for.

Father, let my enemies be confused. Father, break protocols for my sake. Father, let my enemies work against themselves.

The hilarious thing is that Tinubu is a Muslim. If that does not convince you that even Jesus Christ is BATIFIED, then maybe this Bible verse may do the same.

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

Romans 13.

This verse says Tinubu’s win was clearly the will of God. Hence, Jesus Christ is a verified BAT-ist. Do with that what you may.

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