After several months of speculations on whether he will run for president in 2023 or not, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has come out to publicly declare that he will not turn down his teeming supporters who asking him to run for the office.

The former Governor of Lagos State said this after he met with leaders of the Northern Alliance Committee in Abuja yesterday, according to media reports.

While field questions from pressmen after the meeting, the man whose supporters fondly call the Asiwaju of Lagos and Jagaban of Borgu, disclosed that he is still consulting with stakeholders before officially announcing a decision on the matter.

He said:

“I’m not going to turn them down but I will still effectively and widely consult, particularly brainstorm with my friends and find a date to come out openly to tell Nigerians.

“But the president is still in office. I don’t want to distract him from all the challenges that he might face today.”

By that declaration, the maverick politician famed for his masterstroke political strategies, simplify trod the well-worn path of Nigerian politicians that the electorate is all too familiar with.

Nigerian politicians have always adopted this age-long trick to hoodwink the electorate into believing that they are so important and so invaluable that citizens are mounting pressure on them to run for one political office or the other. In reality, that is not always the true position of things.

In almost all cases, it is the politicians who would usually sponsor unscrupulous individuals and groups to go around drumming up support for them to make it look like the citizens are pressurizing them to run for office.

Interestingly, even though this trick has become old and well-worn, Nigerian politicians still cannot do without it.

Even Tinubu, the revered master political strategist, could not resist the temptation to tread that beaten path.