Osinbajo commits political apostasy

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has lived the life of the quintessential vice president in the past 14 months of his emergence. There is an old American anecdote that portrays the Vice Presidency as a particularly “irrelevant” post in a presidential democracy.

It tells of how one Unlce Tom “lost” two of his sons: “one joined the Navy, the other became the Vice President”. Perhaps, that is American sarcasm taken too far. In Nigeria, the Vice President is important for three major reasons.
He is the Second Citizen and constitutionally empowered to act as the Chairman of the National Economic Council, NEC.

part from acting for the President whenever the latter is not available, he also carries out many assignments given him by his boss, especially if he enjoys the President’s confidence.


But most importantly, though he acts the role of a “spare tyre” most of the time, he becomes President when the occupant of that position becomes permanently unavailable, as we saw in the case of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, former Vice President to the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua.

Like all the Vice Presidents our presidential democracy has produced, Osinbajo boasts intimidating academic and public service credentials (dwarfed only by Dr Alex Ekwueme’s multiple doctorates and professional accomplishments).

Indeed, our Vice Presidents (except, perhaps, Atiku Abubakar and Namadi Sambo) have tended to be academic Brobdingnagians but political Lilliputians compared to their principals. Of the lot, Osinbajo towers over Buhari many times over:

while the authenticity of President Muhammadu Buhari’s School Certificate (with which he joined the Army to rise to the rank of Major General and Head of State) remains in doubt, Osinbajo is a Professor of Law and an epoch-making former Attorney-General of Lagos State during the tenure of Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu as governor.

When Tinubu submitted his name to Buhari, the presidential candidate of the upstart All Progressives Congress, APC, as running mate in 2014, the party’s famous (or infamous) propaganda machinery was immediately deployed in his favour.

Osinbajo’s position as a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, was tweaked and burnished to prove that Buhari who accepted him as his VP was not a religious extremist.





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