Tambuwal’s travels and tours

Speaker Aminu Tambuwal’s almost flawless flow with friends and foes has raised concerns among leading partisans of his own political party. Arguably the most popular of the half a dozen speakers of the House in the Fourth Republic, Tambuwal’s ability to avoid trouble despite his hectic pace and pattern is befuddling ‘I AM visiting the national leader of the PDP. Baba and myself are in the PDP,” Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal said last weekend as he touched base with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the latter’s Abeokuta residence. Speaker Tambuwal’s humored assertion of belonging to the PDP with baba, was certainly not lost on anyone. After all, Obasanjo had two months ago vowed to pull back from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP until what he noted as certain anomalies were corrected. The speaker’s aversion for his own party’s events has also become a trend that these days the news of the speaker’s presence or absence at national events is almost always tied to news reports of such events. The political commonality between the speaker and the former president is now almost universally said to be that the two men are closet members of the leading opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. That is given their recent political genuflections towards the opposition party. However, the encounter last weekend was the first time that the two men were known to have met in public or private since Obasanjo’s famous denunciation in 2011 of Tambuwal’s emergence as speaker of the House of Representatives against the zoning policy of the PDP. The meeting of the two men came in the wake of the increasing curiosity on the political intentions of the two men who have in recent times walked out of sync with the present leaders in the PDP. Calming the anxiety of the waiting journalists in Abeokuta last weekend, Speaker Tambuwal said: “Baba is a leader not only in Nigeria but in Africa and it is only appropriate  for those of us in positions of authority and leadership to occasionally come and consult him on matters of national interest…” Whatever consultations Speaker Tambuwal came for in Abeokuta, his visit was bound to raise curiosity especially at the timing of the visit. Tambuwal was the only one of the 11 members of the House of Representatives from Sokoto State who did not defect from the PDP to the APC when the members deserted the PDP last December. Obasanjo on his part had at about the time the Sokoto legislators defected signaled his intention to pull back from the activities of the PDP pending when anomalies he alleged in the party were addressed. Remarkably, Tambuwal has by occasion of accident also missed out from some major PDP activities that ordinarily should concern him. When President Goodluck Jonathan visited Sokoto State at the beginning of the month to receive former Governor Attahiru Bafarawa into the PDP, many newspapers went to town with the report that Tambuwal was absent at the occasion. His absence was, however, traced to a trip outside the country as he was at the time of the Sokoto rally in Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj. Before the Sokoto rally, Speaker Tambuwal had also raised a stir when he visited Benin, the Edo State capital on a condolence visit to the Oba of Benin on the death of the queen mother. Speaker Tambuwal took opportunity of the visit to visit Governor Adams Oshiomhole. It was not surprising that political pundits projecting higher offices for the speaker were able to match up the duo for a presidential ticket in 2015. Tambuwal who has been roundly praised for his management of the House and bringing maturity to bear in the face of multifarious political pressures has been repeatedly mentioned for higher office in the country. The most eloquent testimonial for the speaker was the call on him by former President Ibrahim Babangida who at the Vanguard Personality of the Year investiture ceremony last year urged the speaker to aspire for higher office. “When leaders like Tamuwal delivered on their electoral promise, we advise them to try something higher. For Tambuwal, your guess is as good as mine. Well done,” Babangida had said. Given the widely reported achievements of Oshiomhole in Edo State, it was not difficult for political pundits to project a Tambuwal – Oshiomhole ticket or an Oshiomhole – Tambuwal ticket with either of them at the head of a sellable ticket. However, the visit to Obasanjo last weekend was in the view of some further efforts by the speaker in consolidating his grounds ahead of his widely expected presidential declaration. Speaker’s travels and tours But associates of the speaker are not totally taken by such permutations. Given that the speaker was in Shagari village, Sokoto State, last Tuesday, to celebrate with former President Shehu Shagari, close associates say the speaker’s travels and tours  are only illustrative of the speaker’s readiness to associate with all statesmen irrespective of their political allegiances. “Would you say that speaker went to see Shagari for political endorsement,” one of the speaker’s associates asked? That Speaker Tambuwal would visit President Obasanjo who in 2011 called on the speaker to resign his office on account of his alleged willful distortion of the PDP zoning policy reflects the political astuteness of the speaker and his much celebrated humility. It is also suggestive of the determination of the political class to put all permutations on ground in the forthcoming presidential combat