Elder statesman and first Secretary to former Lagos State government under the leadership of
Elder statesman and first Secretary to former Lagos State government
under the leadership of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Chief Olorunfunmi Basorun
has said Bola Tinubu remains the only Yoruba leader.
According to
him, it was laughable for some people to juxtapose the political
achievement of Tinubu and former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.
In
an interview with Punch, the outspoken retired civil servant said, ”The
Yoruba leader now, without doubt, is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and there are
many reasons for this. The leadership of the Yoruba, whether political
or otherwise, is based on who has advanced the interest of the Yoruba
the most in recent times and Tinubu has done this. Firstly, he has
fought for the interest of the Yoruba people. He helped Kayode Fayemi to
get his governorship bid back in Ekiti in 2010. In the same year, he
helped Rauf Aregbesola to get his governorship mandate back in Osun
State.
”He
helped Olusegun Mimiko get his governorship mandate back in Ondo State
in 2009. He even helped Adams Oshiomhole in Edo as well. That shows that
his interest transcends personal preferences. In the political arena,
he graduated and moved to ensure that Nigeria became virtually a
two-party state. Because of Tinubu’s effort coupled with others, the APC
was born.”
Highlighting other areas of Tinubu’s achievements,
Basorun said, ”He led various others to ensure that the party did not
die. Before the merger of the party, there was a quarrel between
President Muhammadu Buhari and Rabiu Kwankwaso, who was then the Kano
State Governor. Tinubu brought both of them to the table of
reconciliation and settled it and the party emerged. That party, the
APC, is in power today. The party now rules 22 states out of 36 in
Nigeria and also produced the President. This shows Tinubu’s
achievements in politics.
”Even
look at the South-West. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State and Ibikunle Amosun
of Ogun State were in different parties before 2011. Tinubu brought
them into his party and they are now running a second term in their
respective states. During the last elections, Yoruba contributed 2.433m
votes to Buhari’s presidency where Buhari got 15m. That constitutes
about 16 per cent of Buhari’s votes and this kind of thing had never
happened before. Even when Obasanjo was made President, he didn’t get
more than one million votes in the South-West and in terms of
percentage, it was insignificant. And in the process of negotiations,
Tinubu got the position of the vice-president for the South-West. I
cannot point to any other Yoruba leader today that has struggled for the
Yoruba like Tinubu and succeeded.”
Speaking further on Obasanjo,
Bashorun said, ”He was President and he had greatness thrust upon him
but he did not work for greatness. I took part in electing him because I
was the founding chairman of the Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party.
We went to him in Abeokuta and spoke to him when he just returned from
prison but his first response was that he had become a born again
Christian and had no interest in politics. So, he did not work to be
President. Most of the Yoruba did not even want him. In the 1999
election, he was defeated at his polling unit. I took the pain to
compile all the votes he got.
”He
received about 1.1million votes in the South-West, but most of the
votes in the South-West came from Lagos. He got about 209,000 votes from
Lagos. He got a few votes from other South-West states. As President,
he performed to the best of his ability. But Obasanjo cannot match the
intellectual capacity of Awolowo and Tinubu. So, Obasanjo is a chief and
he is respected in Yoruba land but in the contemporary Nigeria today,
Tinubu is the Yoruba leader. Even as President, Obasanjo was not called
Yoruba leader at that time because he did not achieve anything on his
own. It was a question of people helping him. Awolowo said this in the
House of Representatives many years ago that some are born great, some
achieve greatness while some have greatness thrust upon them. Tinubu
achieved greatness while Obasanjo had greatness thrust upon him,” he
added.
