Tinubu: Battle with Jonathan my toughest ever

Bola Tinubu, national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has revealed that the race to unseat former President Goodluck Jonathan was the toughest of his political career.

Tinubu, known to be a dogged politician who has fought many battles, told The Sun in an interview that Jonathan’s camp bombarded people with the kind of money that required letting go of “personal temptation” to resist.

“President Jonathan’s battle was the toughest. When you are fighting the incumbent, it is tough,” he said.

“You had the challenge of terrorism; you had a class that is divided and a nation that was almost moving from its focus of religious tolerance and diversity to religious division. You had a system that had been corrupted beyond any­body’s imagination. People were being bombarded with money in Lagos. But you have to forget personal temptation.”

Tinubu also spoke on why he used his resources to fight for the enthronement of good governance in the country, explaining that he derives pleasure in fighting the status quo “if it is perverted”.

“I am not a thoroughbred politician, having come from a corpo­rate background. But I believe in strategy; and strategy to win is that of every politician,” he said.

“We can be politically sensitive and come up with the fact that you want to be a good politician but no boxer steps into the ring to lose. No investor would want to invest to lose; otherwise, you can carry your money and throw it to the Lagoon. You are there to win.

“How do you plan that strategy to win and to come on top? That is where I always like to specialise. Then, there are elements of diabolical perversion in the political process paticu­larly in the maintenance of status quo. Mine is to chal­lenge the status quo if it is perverted. How do I chal­lenge it?”

Tinubu said his first litmus test in political battles was the 1999 governorship election in Lagos when he had to contend with a lot of forces.

“When we came back in 1999 and the political space was opened, we had our politi­cal party, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), the plat­form where I contested,” he said.

“The perversion started with the so-called delegates’ election. How can I want a free and fair election if I subscribe to the delegates’ election where you buy people like chickens and apples and you pay them off? I said let the Lagos people determine through the political party structure who and who they wanted.

“I created a process to eliminate that delegates’ election system and we won. We won the debate and we now have direct primaries in all the local governments. Those who have followed politics here know that it was a tough battle between Funsho Williams of blessed memory and myself. I won 17 local governments out of 20 and in two of them, there were no elections. They chewed the results in my local government, Ikeja. Lagos Mainland was the stronghold of late Funsho Williams and Ikorodu too with Ogunlewe and co. But we challenged the status quo because it was evident that I won that election no matter whatever story any­body tells you. I still have that record. It is there. Then I was determined to form a government that is profes­sionally and intellectually balanced to be a model for other states. It is very easy for people to forget.”

He also spoke on how he survived when other south-west governors under the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) lost their seats due to a deal entered with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“The high is when I survived as the only governor and one man standing on the platform of the AD in the South West after the 2003 governorship election,” he said.

“In leadership and political battles, you must be able to recognise the talent of your opponent. Don’t ever underestimate your opponent particularly a per­sonality like former Presi­dent Obasanjo. First, he is not just an army general for nothing; they call their overall fatigue uniform, camouflage. What does that mean? Deception! They are trained in strategy, deception and tactics to defeat the enemy. If you underestimate them, you do that at your own peril. If you now recognize that quality in them, you know how to play the game with them.

“There are some aspects of it that I cannot discuss here; they are my own weapons tomorrow. When I started a journey of a tree that can make a forest, the game is first of all, survive. I made it clear that everybody should know that this friendship is laced with poison. I kept the warning to everybody very loud. How can you trust a man whose uniform is camouflage? How can I believe that he is my politi­cal friend when I am in the opposition? No, draw the battle line.”