Tinubu is not a frightening opponent of the labour movement. He is an old and frail man who settled his way to the presidency. With unity and solidarity, he can easily be defeated.
TINUBU may be President of Nigeria, but he did not achieve this by being a skilled politician or a particularly successful business person. A skilled politician can depend on their political supporters. Tinubu’s support is based on blatant corruption. He is rich, but this is mainly due to his looting of Lagos State rather than the success of his business ventures. A skilled politician would have offered some immediate benefits to workers on the eve of a major strike – Tinubu only made vague promises about an increase in the minimum wage sometime in the future.
The Encyclopedia Britanica says: “Many of the details of Tinubu’s early life, education, work, and finances are unclear and, at times, challenged.” Tinubu’s real identity and education records contain omissions and contradictions that he has not convincingly explained. For instance, he said under oath to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while seeking to be Lagos State governor in 1999, that he attended the University of Chicago. The university had since disowned Tinubu.
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When he was governor of Lagos State, his immediate looting was restrained. This meant that he could spend some money on roads and other infrastructure developments. However, his looting continued long after he stopped being governor. This was possible through the use of his company, Alpha Beta Consulting.
A brilliant politician would hide any murky past that they may have had. But we all know about the $460,000 that was confiscated from a bank account in his name as suspected illegal drug income by the US courts. He cannot even maintain a consistent story about his name, his family and his educational background. ‘We can’t release Tinubu’s criminal nor immigration records till 2026 due to ‘unusual circumstances,’ the FBI and US State Department said recently in an American court.
He is alleged to have won the APC primaries by paying out $20,000 to each of the delegates who supported him. A skilled politician has supporters that provide their votes without having to be settled.
Tinubu is not even clear about which of his supporters should be rewarded by becoming ministers. Five months after he was elected and approaching two months after his inauguration, he was still unable to send his ministerial list to the Senate for confirmation. He eventually submitted his list one day before the legal dead-line, but this was not complete.
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Wike, former governor of Rivers State, did not campaign for Tinubu in the presidential elections, but has been rewarded with a ministerial post despite objections from the EFCC. Another prominent former governor, Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, is being rewarded with the position as national chair of the APC. This is despite the video of him stuffing wads of dollars in his pockets.
In 2015, the consultancy firm controlled by Tinubu, Alpha Beta Consulting, sacked 300 of its 375 workers for indicating that they wanted to join the Association of Senior Staff of Banks and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI). Two years later, in June 2017, 145 staff were retrenched from Tinubu’s television station, TVC. It is no accident that the offices of TVC and Tinubu’s newspaper, The Nation, were attacked and set on fire after the massacre of the #EndSARS protesters in October 2020 at Lekki Toll Gates.
Over the last 20 years, Alpha Beta Consulting has held the exclusive rights to collect internally generated revenue, especially the Land Use Charges in Lagos State in return for a commission. This is allegedly as high as 15%. However, as it is very difficult to account for any money until it has been paid into one of the Lagos State Government’s bank accounts. According to Premium Times in a report on March 7, 2018, “Alpha Beta Consulting is widely known amongst Lagosians as the state’s preeminent tax consulting firm, amidst speculations that it is being used as a conduit for siphoning state funds into private pockets.”
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In 2018, Oladapo Apara (former Managing Director of Alpha Beta Consulting) wrote a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accusing Alpha Beta of N100bn tax fraud and failure to pay his termination benefits. He also opened a court case alleging that Tinubu was concealing his control over the consultancy company. This case was eventually settled out of court in September 2022.
Tinubu may have already announced a raft of policies as president, but these are mainly based on the neoliberal agenda of the IMF and World Bank. They are not new ideas and he often reverses his ideas. This was the case with the N8,000 a month for so-called 12 million poorest of the poor people and the tax on single use plastic.
He was said to have been the national leader of the APC for many years. If this was true, a strong leader would have had his supporters in all key positions in the party. But the national chair/vice chair and secretary recently resigned. It is not immediately clear who will replace them.
The former Chair of EFCC is being held illegally and the former Governor of Central Bank only charged after a court order. There were fights between the DSS and Correctional Service officers after the court appearance of Emefiele. This is not the behaviour of officers of an effective and strong government.
Tinubu’s ‘legendary’ political control of Lagos failed when Peter Obi won more votes than him in Lagos during the presidential elections in February.
Tinubu is not a frightening opponent of the labour movement. He is an old and frail man who settled his way to the presidency. With unity and solidarity, he can easily be defeated.
Comrade Batubo, a member of Socialist Labour, writes from Abuja.
