How I Met Bola Tinubu – Babatunde Fashola

The minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde
Raji Fashola explains in this interview how he first met
his mentor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Q: When and how did you meet Senator Bola Tinubu?
What was your first impression of him?
Answer: That is an invitation to walk down memory
lane. I think it must have been 1990 or 1991. He was
treasurer in Mobil, then. His office was at the Bookshop
House at CMS on Odunlami Street. I didn’t directly meet
him. I had seen him at parties, but we never met. At that
time, I was a senior associate at the law firm of Sofunde,
Osakwe, Ogundipe and Belgore, where I was practising.
Wale Tinubu, his nephew, came to join the law firm,
then. He was always mentioning “Uncle Bola”, and one
day, he said: ‘’let’s go and see my uncle.” We got there
and went out to lunch with him. That was then I could
say we formally met.
From then on, he would consult us on legal issues and we
would help and give him advice. Sometimes, he would
just come and say. “See we have this issue, what do you
lawyers think?” We ran around and he would always
give us pocket money. I think one thing that left some
impressions on me was his commitment to his staff and
that was symbolised by what I witnessed on a particular
day after the Sallah celebration.
He brought Sallah meat to the office and supervised its
sharing from floor to floor. As exalted as his office was,
he was concerned to ensure that those who could not
come to his house, even to the lowest driver, got part of
the Sallah meat. I recalled that after the sharing of the
meat, he sent someone to aggregate how much it would
cost to buy soft drink for everybody and equally
distributed money to them.
The incident left an impression on me and what became
a practice when I started observing the killing of rams
for Sallah. For me, it speaks of his concern about those
working for him.
Q: Tinubu described you as one of his greatest
achievements. What does this mean to you?
Answer: Well, there are many ways to look at it. For me,
that kind of statement coming from him puts more
pressure on me. I thought that I had seen all the pressure
that could come from this experience to be governor of
Lagos State. That adds pressure on me in no small
measure.
I think how I became governor is public knowledge.
Nothing could put pressure on me than the commitment
in pursuit of his decision in 2006 that I was the candidate
he was endorsing for governor and the cost in terms of
stress, disagreement, fights and long-draw emotional
arguments. Of course, immediately I won the election,
the biggest pressure was to ensure that I didn’t regret the
decision.
One, the people of Lagos State could have said: “We
didn’t know the man you have brought and he has
turned the state upside down.” There are other sides to it
that I would want to keep to myself. As I have said time
and time again, he should sit down and write his
memoirs so that people may know the story of that
election. This is what he should use to explain to
Lagosians the offers, the counter-offers and choices he
made and why he, as it were, went for broke.
The question to ask is: What was his abiding commitment
after eight years as well as questions on who became
governor, and who did not? But, in terms of a next step
from there, it is to say that it is an enriching experience
for our democracy, and not simply about me. It is also
about institution building in the sense that I have
continued to compare our 13-year journey in spite of its
twists and turns with those that we seek to benchmark
ourselves against.
Excerpts from an interview published in “Asiwaju:
Untold Story of The Leader”, a special publication of
TheNEWS.
Source: PMNews