Text of the Keynote Address by Prince Ade Omole, Director, Diaspora Directorate, Tinubu Shettima Presidential Campaign Council on the occasion of the London Town Hall Conference on Saturday, November 26 2022, Held At Holiday Inn Express, London, UK.

PROTOCOLS

1. The quote I am about to share with you has been said in many different words and versions. And I am certainly sure that most of you in this hall have come across this phrase at one time or another. It says that “some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
2. The topic, Who is a leader? The Asiwaju Example, that I am going to speak about today is my attempt to work closely with the theme of this Town Hall meeting which is “Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu: A Life of Service. A Better Nigeria is Possible” because both of these topics can reinforce each other or are interchangeable because at their core is leadership.
3. While my topic will attempt to speak frontally, using anecdotal evidence to express the leadership credentials of our father, our uncle, our brother, our leader, our principal, and of course the Presidential Candidate of our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, your theme may, at least to some people, come across as chronicling the “Life of Service” of our Presidential Candidate.
4. By chronicling this Life of Service, you would then be saying that because Asiwaju has very glaring, incredible pieces of evidence of his superlative accomplishments, it, therefore, goes without saying that a better Nigeria is indeed possible under his leadership. And at the end of it all, we would be saying the same thing but in different words.
5. We are gathered here in this hall because of what fate and circumstance have thrust upon us. It is fate because it chose Asiwaju as our party’s Presidential Candidate. It is circumstance because his candidature has generated, and continues to raise battalions of supporters in all the nooks and crannies of the world, which is quite unprecedented in the country’s electioneering history that it has become a movement. It is this combination of fate and circumstance that has made it possible for us to gather here.
6. What I don’t intend to do here is to reel out Asiwaju’s many accomplishments as the governor of Lagos State because there is simply no time for that in this gathering. But bring to the fore, with anecdotes, not only Asiwaju’s leadership traits that some of us either don’t know or we might have forgotten, but to articulate the fact that Asiwaju is a true leader who has been seriously tested and has gone through the furnace of leadership.
7. Let me start this topic with a video clip I saw a while back on social media in which a Chicago State University schoolmate of Asiwaju was interviewed. So much for the “wailers” who said the man never went to a primary school, let alone a university.
8. Aside from Asiwaju’s impeccable dressings he mentioned in the video which he emphasised by saying that if Asiwaju wore a brown suit, you can bet that he had a brown pair of shoes and a brown tie to match, ditto any colour of clothes he might be wearing at any particular time.
9. What he also said in the video, which was instructive, was the fact that Asiwaju ran for election for the President of the Accounting students of the university but lost. What this information revealed, it seems to me, is that the acorn seed of leadership was already planted in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by his Creator but he probably wasn’t acutely aware of it then, which has now grown into an Oak tree.
10. Also equally important to mention here is the fact it was because of that leadership seed that a foreign student, which Asiwaju was, dared to run for the headship of the Accounting students body, most, if not just about all, were American students. This speaks about a man imbued with greatness from the Almighty.
11. My next example of who a leader truly is can also be explained in “Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition (1988-1994).” This is a book written by Professor Olatunji Dare. For those of us who may not know him a quick citation will suffice here. Prof. Dare is a communication scholar and Professor of Communication, Emeritus, at Bradley University in Peoria, the State of Illinois in the United States. He was a Chair of The Guardian Editorial Board and a central figure in Chief MKO Abiola’s ill-fated Presidential bid who had to go underground in the aftermath of the June 12 annulment. Not only that, but he was also at the epicentre of subsequent events that cascaded from the June 12 annulment. So, we can see that from this brief description, Prof. Dare is a pro-democracy activist and a public intellectual.
12. Mention was made in the book of how Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then a Senator in the Third Republic of which Ibrahim Babangida was its head of state, stood up to the former head of state when he came to address the National Assembly about his transition plan that Asiwaju quickly saw through.
13. Although it was said that Babangida, after his address, went to shake hands with Asiwaju and acknowledged his courage, boldness and audacity to have taken him to task, and he was the only legislator who stood up in disagreement with the head of state. Nobody else publicly dissented with Babangida except Asiwaju.
14. While this act of courage may have earned Asiwaju some admiration from Babangida, it was also documented that Asiwaju became a marked man and a person of interest from that day by the maximum ruler. The import of this encounter, it seems to me, was akin to a ‘David’ who inadvertently invited a ‘Goliath’ to a duel to the consternation of all his colleagues. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of his colleagues believed at that time that Asiwaju had willingly signed his death warrant because he was foolish enough to have squared up with Babangida.
15. But is he not alive and well to tell this story? I ask you!
16. Another of Asiwaju’s examples of who a leader is, can find expression in the so-called Interim Government of Late Chief Ernest Shonekan after the annulment of the June 12 election. It was a very good yardstick with which to measure the true leadership qualities of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
17. It would be recalled that the majority of the dramatis personae of the June 12 struggle, some of whom backtracked because of General Babangida’s philosophy of governance and getting his wish done that everyone has a price. He was also inordinately willing and ready to settle whoever was willing to name his price so that he could jettison the struggle. Some of these turncoats came from southern Nigeria, particularly the southwest.
18. Asiwaju was a major southwest political figure then that General Babangida (Rtd) was ever ready for him to name his price, any price, no matter how outrageous, and he would have been settled. I have heard in several quarters that emissaries were sent to him to name his price, including an oil bloc to which the maximum ruler would have obliged without batting an eyelid.
19. Rather, Asiwaju put everything he had on the line, including his life and those of his family members so that the so-called Interim Government of Chief Shonekan did not stand. The pressure that came from the progressive camp, which was majorly spearheaded by him, became so unbearable for the Maradona until the goggled one, late Gen. Sani Abacha, perhaps after getting a signal from IBB, had to put Chief Shonekan out of his misery.
20. Not a few of the June 12 antagonists became battle weary after Shonekan’s interim government came to grief, again, because they also realised that late Gen. Sani Abacha was willing to play ball with whoever was willing to recant their positions on the June 12 struggle. But for Asiwaju, the battle had just started. Again, he threw everything into this new phase of the struggle occasioned by MKO Abiola’s mandate.
21. Please recall that Asiwaju was all along in the country throwing things, metaphorically speaking, at late Abacha just as he did with Babangida until he escaped assassination by the whiskers and had to go into exile. The new phase of the Abacha struggle culminated in the formation of Radio Kudirat and NADECO, both of which Asiwaju played a defining role.
22. Asiwaju’s progressive wing of the nation’s political spectrum, with the support of Northern and South-Eastern anti-June 12’vers eventually won the battle when Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, the man who took over the reins of power after the death of the goggled one and the murder of MKO, in order to, as the saying goes then, “balance the equation” not only started counting his days in power from Day One but superintended the birth of the Fourth Republic.
23. You would have thought that Asiwaju would have concluded his battle because the June 12 struggle, without fear of contradiction, birthed the present democratic dispensation. A typical politician would have taken anything that came his way from the centre especially when he had become the first Executive Governor of the most important state in the federation.
24. But the dictatorial, illegal, and unconstitutional inclinations of the Chief of State, President Olusegun Obasanjo seriously ran counter to not only the democratic ideals of Asiwaju but also against his understanding of a Life of Service to the people. Once again, he picked up the gauntlet that President Obasanjo threw down which resulted in torrents of lawsuits against the federal government but Asiwaju never lost a single one of them.
25. Several examples of Asiwaju Tinubu as the epitome of a true leader abound. But considering the relatively short time that has been allotted to this gathering, it would be very remiss of me to take a significant chunk of the total time.
26. What I have attempted to do in this speech is to situate Asiwaju’s leadership trajectory ever since he was a very young age with the fact that the totality of his life has been that of service to his people, his country and humanity at large. This is very important so that when we cast our minds back about this man, or when we must talk about him, it should always be within the context of his leadership qualities that had ennobled, and continues to ennoble his society. This is in addition to his accomplishments as a Lagos State governor that a better Nigeria is very possible if he’s given the privilege and opportunity to superintend over the affairs of this nation.
27. Please allow me to take you back to the quote about greatness in the first paragraph. From the foregoing examples, therefore, I believe you’re now at liberty to decide whether Asiwaju was born great, achieved greatness or have greatness thrust upon him.
28. But if you asked me, there’s no doubt in my mind that our Presidential Candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed has all the three indices of greatness embedded in his very essence. This is so because one can be born great but end up making mincemeat of his greatness.

Thank you for listening!