How Tinubu Lost Kashim Imam

Presidential candidate of the ADC, Atiku Abubakar, just named members of his presidential campaign team, and it is led by people who would normally be associated with President Bola Tinubu.

At the very top are Kashim Ibrahim Imam, Nasir el-Rufai, and Dele Momodu, all of whom have political, business, or friendship ties with the president. Tinubu and Momodu had a friendship forged in the 12 June era. El-Rufai campaigned to get Tinubu elected.

And as for Kashim Imam, he stands out from the rest in terms of the nature of his friendship, political and business ties to the president.

But Tinubu isn’t simply a politician. Central to his existence has not only been gaining power and political relevance, but also business deals and amassing stupendous wealth.

And by some accounts, the paper trail of business deals involving one or two companies linked to Tinubu is more likely to lead to Imam.

It may be that no company is better known for generating revenue for the president than Alpha Beta. Its earnings are the kind of revenue that funds political operations. From news reports, the company raised as much as $718m for Lagos State in 2019 alone.

More recently, there have been reports that Alpha Beta earned as much as N213bn over two years for collecting N2.65tr on behalf of the public in Lagos. It’s not too difficult to imagine other business dealings with similar turnovers.

What brought Tinubu and Imam together, the real nature of their business dealings, and what pulled them apart is subject to speculation.

But it’s not only his friends and business associates who know who his political rivals were in the past that say a lot about who Kashim Imam is, but also the man Atiku Abubakar chose to lead his presidential campaign.

As a political operative, Imam has always worked from the shadows. In the 90s, he was the state chairman of the SDP in Borno, where he made his mark.

It’s something everybody knows about Ali Modu Sheriff. When other politicians spent N20,000 for a particular objective, Sheriff, a former godfather and later, governor of Borno, would spend N200,000.

And if there was anyone who matched Sheriff, naira for naira, dollar for dollar in a political contest, it was Kashim Ibrahim Imam. Both times Sheriff ran for governor, in 2003 and then 2007, his main opponent was Imam.

It was reported that the Sheriff had cut a deal with then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, meaning that Imam’s strategy and mobilisation could not dislodge the ANPP in Borno. ANPP also held on to Yobe and a few other states in the north.

So, what does all this mean for 2027? This is what it meant some years ago; Kashim Imam was always the real bridge between Tinubu and the north. That bridge was what made 2015, 2019, and 2023 possible.

And now that it has been severed, a deficit of trust and suspicion is driving appointments, political decisions, and election planning in the APC. At the very least, it could mean that this bridge is wobbling.