demola Posted in CoverFeaturedNational NewsPolitics

How Akande, in his Book, My Participations, Characterises Bola Tinubu

Chief Bisi Akande and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu

By Ademola Adegbamigbe

Chief Bisi Akande, former Osun State Governor and one time All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman presented his autobiography, My Participations, to the public on Thursday, 9 December 2021. Not a few critics claimed that he treated Bola Tinubu with kid gloves in the book while he directed verbel exocets at his political foes.

Yesterday, 15 December, Pa Ayo Adebanjo came out smoking on Arise Television, calling Akande a liar. He implied that the Ila Oragun politician is Tinubu’s Man Friday, a character (savage servant) in Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe.

However, in a section of his autobiography, Akande characterises Tinubu, not entirely in the manner a lickspittle would. Sampler:

“Tinubu often incurred my displeasure each time he trivially assumed that political culture of the totally cosmopolitan Lagos was a perfect replica of those other cultures of the rest undiluted communities of Yorubaland and of Nigeria at large. He always absorbed my angry political tantrums as old-fashioned and with jocular snubs.

“However, despite my constant talking down impudently on him with pontification about my old-time political experiences, he has refused to give up on me. He always makes me feel resolutely pampered. And we came, at last, to trust each other absolutely.”

Below is the relevant portion:

The Bola Tinubu of My Reckoning

By Bisi Akande

Tinubu is a difficult personality; very complicated for me to classify. He revels in controversies, but constantly suppresses attendant difficult pains of disappointments and betrayals by consuming cups of strong espresso (coffee) and chains of cigarettes.

Ahmed Bola Tinubu is adept at building political bridges. He is an all-around leader, but in my view, he is not a native politician in the Nigerian sense. In struggles, Bola is always resolute against all difficult circumstances.

In fighting, Bola demonstrates consistent courage and resilience. He is powerful and a strong political mobiliser; a fierce and ferocious fighter such that he generally and quickly generates tension around himself when poised for a fight to the embarrassing confusion of those who might have enjoyed his pleasantness and generosity.

If you allow him to fight on the other side, even if you are winning the initial battles, you cannot be rest assured of winning the peace thereafter. Bola Tinubu is an adept believer in the American ‘two-party democracy’ and a shrewd business entrepreneur of the capitalist hue.

He carries his business sense too often into his political decisions. He always feel too strongly about his own (sometimes, peculiar) own political views and ways, but his presentations and utterances appear constantly underplaying by smarting too often under heavy burdens of human demands and public pressure.

For others in his positive antenna, he admires, protects and defends them with passion. Bola Tinubu is blindly generous and dangerously humorous. In his generosity, he relishes most political associates, and others with absolute optimism and invariably, in most cases, he indiscriminately accommodated many of them to his utter detriment.

In his humour, he is commonly characterizing and vocalizing the mannersims of his victims in ridiculous epithets. All along, we argued too constantly and quarrelled a lot too often on issues of political discretions.

Tinubu often incurred my displeasure each time he trivially assumed that political culture of the totally cosmopolitan Lagos was a perfect replica of those other cultures of the rest undiluted communities of Yorubaland and of Nigeria at large. He always absorbed my angry political tantrums as old-fashioned and with jocular snubs.

However, despite my constant talking down impudently on him with pontification about my old-time political experiences, he has refused to give up on me. He always makes me feel resolutely pampered. And we came, at last, to trust each other absolutely.

– Chief Akande, former Governor of Osun State on Tinubu in “My Participations”, an autobiography.

Next Read: Karen Akpagher and Premiere Academy: The “Truth” they are Trying to Bury »

Bisi AkandeBola Tinubu