As Nigerians await the May 29 handover from one government to another, president-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, if sworn in, would be the first former senator to be president.
During the brief Third Republic, the president-elect was elected senator for Lagos West Senatorial district.
Interestingly, Tinubu’s wife and first lady designate, Remi, was also a senator who represented Lagos Central Senatorial District from 2015 till date.
No other former senator has gone on to be president in the country, but Tinubu is set to be the first in the coming weeks after he was declared the winner of the contest by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
A former senator and governor of Kano state, Rabiu Kwankwaso, was one of the contestants for the 2023 presidential election under the New Nigeria Peoples Party.
Tinubu, 71, was a former governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 under the defunct regional political party, Alliance for Democracy.
He was the only surviving governor from the 2003 political tsunami of the then ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party, which swept away other south-west governors from office.
Tinubu later spear-headed the merger of his new party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, to merge with the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Congress for Progressives Change, and some aggrieved members of the PDP to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014.
Since then, Tinubu has been known as the national leader of the APC, a title given to him because of his role in the merger.
Some see Tinubu’s ascendancy to the position of president as fulfilling Sir Obafemi Awolowo’s dream to be the country’s number one citizen.
Tinubu had been a political student of the Nigerian nationalist and statesmen during his time as a revered politician in the country.
The former Lagos state governor had also been an associate of another revered politician in the country’s south-west, Moshood Abiola.
Abiola’s election as Nigeria’s president was annulled by the then Military Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, causing a political crisis that led to General Sani Abacha seizing power later that year.
Many of Abiola’s admirers and associates are today in Tinubu’s political camp.
