Mamman Daura and the next President of Nigeria

WHO wins the February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria would have done so mainly thanks to or despite Mamman Daura, the 83-year-old elderly cousin of President Mohammadu Buhari. This may seem like an ostentatious claim or an inflationary grant of power to a man whose only claim to it, in the current circumstances, is that the president is his younger cousin. Yet this is an open secret among those with a deep understanding of the current presidency contest and the nature of power under Muhammadu Buhari’s government. But most people are not eager to discuss the matter directly in public, either out of discretion and/or fear of the almighty Daura.

However, between the ruling party’s nominee, Governor Bola Tinubu, and the main opposition party’s nominee, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, there has been a clear acknowledgment of the pivotal role that Daura plays and would play in regards to who will be the next president. from Nigeria. This came as no surprise to the former governor of Lagos. He acknowledges that the presidency, which has been effectively under Daura’s control for most of the past eight years, is somehow being mobilized against him. Perhaps more than anyone else, it is Daura who has ensured that Tinubu, as “designed,” would not reap all the benefits of his total investment in making Buhari president. When Buhari declared he belonged to no one when he came to power, it was partly a ventriloquist shot by his cousin at the direction of the man who had assumed he would be the power behind the throne. At the center of the process that resulted in the much-analyzed eruption of the Jagaban at Abeokuta, when he informed the world that emi lo kan (“it’s my turn”; or “I’m next”) was Daura’s machinations to make sure to ensure that Tinubu would not be the ruling party’s presidential candidate, let alone succeed Buhari.

Those who thought that the eruption sealed Tinubu’s fate later realized that it is not for nothing that the man has been governing Nigeria’s main state directly or by proxy for 22 years. Bringing the battle to Buhari and his handlers, the Abeokuta Wager proved to be a courageous venture that helped stop Daura and his constituents, making a mockery of their desperate attempt to present the party ticket to the Senate. Chairman Ahmad Lawan. If Tinubu’s spirited survival of the President Olusegun Obasanjo-led tsunami that swept all other AD governors from power in 2003 didn’t convince most people of the man’s political genius, how he reclaimed every single southwestern state in parts from the opposition and eventually installing Buhari as president in concert with other forces should have confirmed his unusual political potency.

No doubt that potential was most vulnerable when he formally entered the bid to win the APC ticket and remains so as he goes for the ultimate prize. But it was also the point at which all of his accumulated political assets had to be mobilized in the service of his lifelong ambition. However, it should be noted that it wasn’t until Tinubu met Daura that he experienced his first major sustained checkmate in Fourth Republic politics. The man who has since become the most valuable player in Yoruba politics faced an unusual opponent in Daura. None of those Tinubu had had to wrestle with since 1998, that is, when he began his campaign to become governor of Lagos State, possessed the strategic advantage of a combination of stealth, restraint and inexplicable power as Daura does.

Intellectual, generous but taciturn, Mamman Daura, the fascinating power-hungry par excellence, and the paper’s former editor and manager, seems determined to end Tinubu’s political ambition on the eve of the latter’s latest home run. As the only surviving member of the triumvirate who can lay claim to almost unbridled influence over Muhammadu Buhari, Daura is well placed to challenge the ambition of the two leading presidential candidates, Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, in the February 2023 presidential election. hinder or promote. . And he’s not shy about using his clout to tip the scales against the former governor of Lagos. With the passing of the two other people closest to Buhari, i.e. the late Emir of Borgu, Haliru Dantoro Kitoro III, who died in October 2015, barely five months after Buhari took office, and Liman Ciroma, Nigeria’s first qualified archaeologist ( whom the Guardian of London described in a 2014 obituary as a fine civil servant who was courteous, considerate and generous), the Daura-born presidential cousin has had no counterweight since 2015. who was solely responsible for brokering the rapprochement that facilitated the “political marriage” of Buhari (CPC) and Tinubu (ACN) would not have allowed the deliberate distance between the two that followed Buhari’s takeover of power. The first lady, Aisha Halilu Buhari, was unable to replace the deceased Borgu monarch. Her fearless attempt to take on Daura ended in a semi-exile in Dubai, when her husband declared her place to be in the other room. But the determined woman is back with a vengeance. As we move into February 25, she wants to see that Daura’s reign ends with that of his kinsmen.

It was as if fate conspired against Tinubu and Nigeria in the death of the Emir of Borgu and Ciroma. Not a few close to Buhari believe that his reign would not have come to this sad stride had the two lived longer. Daura would not have had a debilitating unchecked influence on Buhari for at least the past eight years, which most people believe is a tragedy for Nigeria. These two deceased gentlemen, who did not need to be near the Villa like Daura, would have provided a number of other avenues to reach Buhari by moderating the excesses of those who defined the terrible trajectory of his leadership of the Nigerian state . But those who know Daura well still wonder how such an otherwise fine mind and quiet soul had turned into one of the most consistent and hindering powers in Nigeria’s history. Those in this category even insist that Daura’s influence over Buhari and his influence in this government are exaggerated. They would add that if the country had been organized differently, the kind, literate, cultured man would have been the president and his illiterate cousin would have been his assistant.

But the reality of Daura’s influence and imprint on this administration’s most devastating actions and inactions is too glaring. Take the way he has preserved and protected the tragedy that lives up to the label of Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele who even encouraged the latter, as many thought, to run for president, and to have Emefiele in office after that failed ambition. How could such a man who clearly had a conflict of interest not only continue in office, but also claim to change the color of the currency to influence the outcome of the presidential election? Imagine the untold suffering of the poor masses of the country caused by this ill-considered measure. Whatever you think of the main contenders for the presidency, his opponents would insist, there are fewer stronger examples of Daura’s gamble with the fate of the nation and of democracy than the recent moves by uptight fifth columnists of all stripes.

For those still wondering what happened to the candor of ‘Candido, the famous masked newspaper columnist of the defunct New Nigerian: it’s power. This is what power does to people, especially when they assume they have power with capital, though all any of us can have, even in the best of circumstances, is power with a small capital. No one can have power. It eludes even the most deranged among us in human history. Still, that doesn’t stop some people from playing God.

Will Daura’s role as the invisible god of the Aso Rock Villa over the past eight years be confirmed or rejected in the next presidential election? We’ve only got a few weeks to find out. But no matter what, Daura would undoubtedly have done his best to determine who our next president would (not) be.

• Adebanwi, author of Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria, is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.