When the journey between former President Muhammadu Buhari and President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu began, Betta Edu, the ousted Minister of Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation, was barely in secondary school, if the provided information about her education is anything to go by. Typical of midday sojourners, she exhibited her strides when she became the first person in government to criticize the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Her first salvo was to discredit the achievements of the ministry she had just inherited, stripping all honor and accolades garnered by her predecessor Sadiya Faruk. For a party desiring continuity, Betta’s hasty jab was a drawback. She opened a sore in that ministry even before having the time to scrutinize what she was coming to superintend. Like a farmer who planted maize by the roadside, Betta tragically attracted attention to the ministry and, by extension, herself – a hubris bookmaker now dubbed as her greatest undoing.
To her, President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is inheriting a battered administration, and this must be relayed to the world – so she became the pallbearer! But she was proven wholly wrong, even after her dismissal. The venue was Abuja, the nation’s capital, and the verdict ground was at the book launch written by ace journalist, columnist, and former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, titled ‘Working with Buhari.’ There, President Tinubu passed his judgment on the administration of his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.
Donning a blue flowing robe, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu mounted the rostrum and, like a judge, poured out his verdict: “It will be said glowingly of President Buhari that in his eight turbulent years, marked by acute shortage of revenue, the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down the global economy for almost two years, his administration embarked on the most ambitious infrastructural renewal for the country.
President Buhari gave us the second Niger Bridge. He revamped the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. He gave us the Lagos-Ibadan and Warri-Itakpe Rail lines. He completed the Abuja-Kaduna rail line and Lekki Seaport. He built brand new airports, among many other landmark economic projects. The Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Expressway, which he started, will be completed by my administration, by the Grace of God.”
President Tinubu was unmistakable, frank, and nonpolitical; it was a candid submission by a man who understands the strait that comes with governance. Anyone who says President Buhari didn’t provide the needed leadership can be faulted and accused of deliberate malice; he did try his best, and the new man on the saddle can continue from where he stops. Governance is a continuum, and those who left and those who succeed must join hands to make things work.
With President Tinubu reaffirming his faith in Muhammadu Buhari and the former president pledging his commitment to the All Progressives Congress, the naysayers can quietly go to sleep in disappointment. For the two leaders, it is a ‘correct and cordial’ relationship.
A huge lesson must be drawn from the character of these two leaders; the journey for their political copulation began around 2007, and this continued until 2015 when combined forces made it possible for their relationship to yield fruit. The fruit was the defeat of the People’s Democratic Party in the general elections – an upset never witnessed anywhere in the world – for a powerful party in power to be ousted by the opposition. At the forefront of this upset was Asiwaju, who stoically stood by President Buhari in the eight years of his administration. It was in that same vein that President Buhari defied all principalities and pressure to ensure Tinubu became his successor.
With such a long history of commitment, trust, and mutual respect, Betta Edu thinks she is so perfectly fit to come in between Tinubu and Buhari – like the proverbial scissors, she got badly cut when she tried to squeeze herself between the opened scissors. Someone should have informed her that politics is far beyond beauty and the push to the top – politics is character, loyalty, and integrity.”
