The End of the Kingmaker?

Tinubu’s birth date has always been contentious—most recently, in December 2022 at Chatham House (the darling location of Nigerian politicians) he tried to dismiss the controversy around his age as unimportant. The uncertainty of Tinubu’s birth date is one of several controversies related to his life, others being his educational background and job history.

What is not uncertain, however, is the dramatic transformation of Tinubu from a former governor of the 1999/2003 ‘set’ into a sphinx-like political godfather and kingmaker. For more than two decades, Tinubu controlled the political trajectory of Lagos in a pseudo-progressive style installing key politicians into major roles and holding strong to their apron as a sort of puppet master. For example, in 2022, Tinubu rewarded former deputy governor, Idiat Adebule with a senatorial seat after she openly antagonized her principal, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode after Ambode fell out of favour. Before then, Adebule had served as a commissioner during Tinubu’s governorship administration and later as chief of staff to Babatunde Fashola when he was governor of Lagos. Tinubu also handpicked the current deputy governor of Lagos, Obafemi Hamzat from the United States. Since 2007, Tinubu has had a hand in the emergence of all the governors of Lagos, a feat whose end is beginning to look imminent as Lagos gears up for a historic governorship election that threatens to deal a final blow to Tinubu’s crumbling control of the state. Already, in the 2023 presidential election which Tinubu won nationwide, he scored 572, 606 votes in Lagos according to INEC, losing to Labour Party’s Peter Obi who scored 582,454 votes.

On 29 May 2007, 23 governors completed their two administrative terms. A lot of these governors went straight to the National Assembly that same year or made attempts for the presidency. Tinubu was one of the few governors who had other plans: to build a political dynasty. The work to achieve that started in 2006 when he cannibalized to extinction, the Mojisola Akinfenwa-led Alliance for Democracy (AD), the party that brought Tinubu to office.  He left AD to create a breakaway Action Congress, which later became the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), with Adebisi Akande as the chairman. Still in 2006, he anointed his then-chief of staff, Babatunde Fashola, as his successor, knocking off the gubernatorial interests of party bigwigs like his deputy Femi Pedro, Musiliu Obanikoro, Tokunbo Afikuyomi, Jimi Agbaje and Raimo Owonikoko. For Tinubu, this was the beginning of a long line of deciding who emerges as not just the gubernatorial candidate of his party but who becomes the governor of Lagos, a tradition that is currently under threat.

2015 was the first test against Tinubu’s kingmaker status and his success affirmed Tinubu as the undisputed anointer-in-chief and kingmaker of Lagos. Although a primary election took place, Akinwunmi Ambode, Tinubu’s preferred candidate won the election defeating his closest rival, Obafemi Hamzat, who many touted as then-governor, Fashola’s anointed candidate.

Since then, Tinubu has continued to have a hand—and a very strong one—in the emergence of the governorship candidate of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the subsequent electoral successes of such candidates. It did not matter if at the time they were being presented to the party and the state, such candidates were relatively unknown; Tinubu’s larger-than-life political presence was enough to get them into office. For example, Ambode who had served as accountant-general in Lagos for six years, was relatively unknown in the political circle until Tinubu hoisted his hand and crowned him Fashola’s successor. When Ambode began to sway away from the dictates of his political godfather, he was axed after four years and replaced with another politically obscure candidate, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.