As he celebrates his 56th birthday, it appears there is still one ladder he intends to climb; the presidency. Oh, please don’t tell him it cannot be done!
Those who know Aminu Waziri Tambuwal well enough know there is a stubborn streak beneath that humble, obliging mien. Now and again that willful, defiant side shows up, astonishing allies and rivals alike. It has always been like that with him.
Growing up in the village of Tambuwal, Sokoto State, he was not exactly spoilt for choice. In 1966 when he was born, there was only so much available in terms of schools, professions or opportunities. So, he went to the Tambuwal Town Primary School, and then the Government Teachers College, Dogon Daji, to prepare for a professional teaching life. But afterwards, he decided he wanted to become a lawyer instead.
They told him it could not be done, not with a teacher’s certificate, not with the extant law curriculum, not… and swish, that non-compliant side showed up, and he went on to study law.
Thus began a trait that has become a trend in the life of this accomplished lawyer, parliamentarian and politician. He would begin a course of action, and suddenly change direction, with close friends and associates urging him not to take the risk, not to rock the boat, and to be content with what was already at hand. He would listen, he would probe, he would go back to restrategise, and then he would rise up to do what he had wanted to do, and do it so well that people would wonder why anyone thought it could not be done in the first place.
He is a great one for consensus, but in the end, he is his own man.
After his law degree, he went to the Nigeria Law School, Lagos and was called to the bar In 1992. He seemed to have loved the Law, the sheer combativeness of it, the fact that it was such a great leveler. If you find that grainy clip of the Oputa Panel that seemed to be making the social media rounds these days, you will see a young Tambuwal, looking serious and brave, appearing for the accused. But a few years later, he decided he wanted to be in politics instead. Soon after the return of Nigeria to democratic governance, he had grappled with a certain restlessness, the desire to exploit opportunities that could make him even more useful to more people in his environment. In 2003, he finally quit his job to contest elective office into the House of Representatives. He was going up against an incumbent in the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, and he had neither a sizeable warchest nor a godfather to speak of.
They told him it was a bad idea, a lost cause, that he could not win.
Yet, he went ahead and won, on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), becoming the representative of the people of Kebbe/Tambuwal Federal Constituency. Two years later, he was the Minority Leader of the House, beloved by his colleagues from every shade of the political divide. His humility and deft intelligence aside, his ability to read the mood of the House, to take advantage of the eternal wrangling between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led executive and its majority members in the legislature, made him critical to the passage of every bill or motion brought to the floor.
It was no surprise when Tambuwal won the 2007 elections back into the House, but then he decided he wanted to leave the opposition, to join the party in power, the PDP.
They told him he was presuming too much, that he couldn’t stake his fortunes on promises and friendship, that it would be a betrayal of sorts, that it would send the wrong message. Besides, it would mean leaving his leadership position with its attendant privileges. It took courage to leave, but he has always had that in huge measure. He again crossed the floor, was lucky enough to be made the Deputy Chief Whip of the House (2007 and 2011), becoming one of the most influential men to have held that position. He brought to the leadership of that House not only his experience as a former leader of the opposition but a clarity of thought and a personal integrity that was unsullied by politics.
Perhaps that is the one thing that made it easy for him to leave any political grouping which no longer shared his vision; his allegiance to policy and the people he represents trump his allegiance to parties.
In joining the PDP in 2007, Hon Aminu Tambuwal returned to a party that was set in its ways, however dated. As a progressive parliamentarian in a nation where the legislature is sometimes considered an unnecessary appendage, he had witnessed some of the most brutal battles for independence by a parliament.
In returning to the House for a Third Term in 2011, so many things troubled him and he believed that either things are done differently or the nation’s democratic journey would stagnate and rot.
Too many years of dictatorial rule had made the executive too arrogant to respect the other arms of government as being ‘separate but equal,’ and the party, which should normally serve as the impartial umpire in any dispute between the executive and the legislature, had too often taken the side of the former to be trusted by the latter.
Moreover, the 2011 elections were the most divisive, and the PDP faced a great deal of internal crisis, not helped by its handling of the controversial zoning arrangement. It seemed that zoning was no longer as sacrosanct as everyone thought. Worse, there was the result of the parliamentary elections in the South-West where the redoubtable Action Congress of Nigeria made it impossible for the PDP to produce more than half a dozen members to the House of Representatives in that zone. The consequence of all these on the zoning arrangement of the PDP, which set aside the Speakership of the House to the South-West, was soon apparent.
In any case, the new House apparently had its own agenda. The members were determined to assert their independence. They were not going to just rubberstamp some name submitted by some party caucus. And just like that, the battle line was drawn.
What remained was for someone to step forward and be the symbol of the new determination to do things the right way, someone with enough experience and integrity to go against his own party, against the candidate chosen by the powers that be. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal stepped forward.
He was on familiar territory: The party was against him; the Presidency was against him, the system was against him. Indeed, even close friends and associates felt the odds were too much, that the deck was stacked too high. So they told him it could not be done, that it had never been done, that he should not do it.
And as we have seen over and over again in the life of this man, that was the wrong thing to say to him. Of course, he went ahead and did it, and won the Speakership – against his party’s own candidate. How he did it, the sheer courage and will power it took, the great mobilising that had to be done, that is a story that has already been told and will be told for a long time still. Suffice it to say that the stages, which have now revealed themselves to be the plot of destiny in the affairs of Tambuwal were again repeated: First, his decision to go against the grain, then the plethora of obstacles, and finally his resolve and victory, almost occurring in tandem.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is not one to mince words, was to say a couple of years later at a public forum in Sokoto, “Mr Speaker, I was one of those who didn’t like your emergence as Speaker. But I have watched you and I like what you are doing. You have done well.”
He had indeed. By the time he completed his tenure, the House of Reps on his watch had become the true bastion of democracy, a veritable people’s parliament. It even managed to acquire the wholesome reputation of being more focused on issues that affect the people than on its leadership or financial squabbles.
Tambuwal has always said that power is transient and should be used for any other purpose than the protection of the people’s welfare. “We forget too easily that we are mere trustees. The people are the real owners of power.”
Few jobs could have been as difficult as managing the affairs of 360 members of the House of Reps, each representing a federal constituency whose priorities were as different as any other can be. To do it while being under constant scrutiny by almost everyone; to do it while fighting a rearguard battle with elements in your party determined to see you fail; and to do it on a lean purse at a difficult time in the nation’s history, required courage and a strength of character that was nothing less than phenomenal.
Tambuwal did it, helped by his strong moral upbringing and a personal rectitude that does not permit him to be associated with shady business. “I am a trained lawyer,” he said to me once, “what will be my excuse?”
Yet, even before his tenure ended, he had already set his eyes on other things. Ambitious and energetic, he had considered making a run for the presidency in 2015 but he was, in that rare instance, prevailed upon to contest for the gubernatorial election for Sokoto State instead. As his first tenure as governor was ending, he took another stab at the presidency but he lost out in the primaries, so he went back to complete his second tenure – on the platform of another party, and he won.
Now as 2023 approaches, there are indications that he would again contest for his party’s ticket for the presidential elections. He seriously believes that this country deserves better, and that he could do better. As he said recently, he left the APC because the party and its presidency failed to live up to its promises.
His tenure at the Sokoto State Government House has been a difficult one, largely because of the security situation in the State. Bandits appear determined to make the state ungovernable, culminating in the horrendous, monstrous killing of dozens of people, recently burnt to death in a bus on December 6, 2021. “They are enemies of humanity,” said Tambuwal when a delegation from the Nigeria Governors Forum led by its chairman Governor Kayode Fayemi visited to commiserate with him over the murders.
As with the nation, the violence has overshadowed his tenure, a tenure that would have been remarkable for his revolutionary effort to make education both accessible and qualitative. His policies and programmes in that regard are solid: Increased budgetary spending, mass enrollment of pupils, heavy recruitment and training of teachers, palatable incentives for female education, the revamping of infrastructure.
There have been similar efforts in agriculture and water resources and the health sector but eventually the full scale of what his years as governor amounts to would only be clear after the detritus of this war by bandits clears.
He is not one for grandstanding, so he may not have been able to elicit the praise due him. In any case he believes that the people he serves know that he would always do the best he can for them. He has always tried to remain the same hardworking, humble and meticulous man he was before all the titles and offices came, believing that unless you are the same in your private life as you are in public, one day you will unravel.
As he celebrates his 56th birthday, it appears there is still one ladder he intends to climb; the presidency. Oh, please don’t tell him it cannot be done!
Olu Jacob wrote for Abuja.
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