Sam Omatseye
President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s plane erupted into the sultry sky and left France, whose beauty Hitler envied and where Charles de Gaulle tenanted his genius. Destination: Abuja. His return was awaited, to some for good, to others for ill. But when he came out of the aircraft, he blew a boyhood kiss and his hand transported it in a wave to the cheering crowd.
He unveiled his soul in a smile as he walked down the aircraft, followed by the incoming first lady, Oluremi Tinubu. The video seemed deceptive, a touch post-modern. Behind him were vice-president-elect Kashim Shettima. Other dignitaries in tow, including Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong. Did they come with him? No, they entered the plane to welcome him before he led them out. So, he stepped onto the tarmac in the firelight of a pageant.
Some expected him to limp. He strode. Some expected him to be lean. He was robust. For those who wanted him to look pale, he was ruddy. Some anticipated a triumphal swagger. He was folksy. While a picture of virility, some eyed infirmity. So, to many, it was an applause for a homecoming. Cynics homed in on something else. Hence, they saw a patch instead of a wave, gloom in place of a visceral cheer.
To quote Shakespeare, “Are not some whole that we must make them sick?”
Like Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Return of the Native, a homecoming is about going back to root. That was what Tinubu did. It was a return to Abuja, where he heard INEC chief Mahmood Yakubu’s aplomb voice announce him president-elect, where he had his situation room under Trojan of works Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, where he slept at 4 am or not at all in the combustions of campaigns before victory’s champagnes popped, where he hoped and steeled himself against despair, where many pelted accusations and clerics swore.
The return of the native is not always, as Hardy’s tale shows, to a setting of unity. But it challenges the cooperative instinct of the native. The Nigerian native, that is. He who must rise above cant and cannot be a tribalist or fanatic but a fan of all. He returns as a native, not a nativist.
Hence, the first matter on the burner has been who heads the National Assembly. All kinds of views rend the air. He belongs to the executive, not the legislative branch. But once you win the election, you become not just the head of the country, but also of the party. That is the presidential way. He wears shifting hats. When some say the senate president must come from southeast or south-south, he must ruminate what is good for the country, and good for the times. He must not forget what is good for him to work as a party man, and more especially a partner as president. It is time to dispense with Rudyard Kipling manifesto, “East is east, west is west and never the twain shall meet.” That is, he is not thinking Igbo or Yoruba, but Nigerian native.
Time to rise above LP or PDP, but clutch Nigeria in the sky. He knows, as a past master, that no single formula works. He will not succumb to the semantics and polemic of a sectional intelligentsia raving without logic except those cooked to discredit their own people. Hence, he said as he arrived, that he has to consult. That is the impulse of the native just like his kiss – it blows into the air without borders.
He knows that this is a nation divided. This is where the tribe and tongues differed. Where the cleric went to church and made the pulpit a shotgun. Where phone calls about religious war belied pieties of holy men and exposed the shenanigans of men of power who wanted their black shirts to transfigure into cassocks in the credulity of their followers.
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE NATION
