By Reuben Abati
When we wrote much earlier that the All Progressives Congress
(APC), Nigeria ’s
ruling party was a coalition of strange bedfellows and a one-chance special
purpose vehicle to get rid of President Goodluck Jonathan by all and any means
possible, we were accused of sour grapes.
When we argued even much
earlier that Nigeria ’s
Presidential seat of power was jinxed and that there was and there is a
spiritual side to power and politics in Nigeria ,
we were asked to shut up. The new power brokers were so much at home with their
taken authority they boasted that no demons could touch them and that they were
so self-secure, they were even snoring inside the Villa. Al- hamdulillahi, they
have been snoring since then.
*President Buhari |
They have allowed the
demons to take charge and they have stubbornly refused to listen. When we wrote
again that the APC was going to implode most certainly, and that the implosion
was an accident waiting to happen, they turned round after the 2018 APC
Convention to say that the analysis had been proven wrong. They got a new
chairman whose stock-in-trade is propaganda and volubility, but now, a few
weeks later, we have been proven right. The APC is imploding, it has in fact
imploded, its sins have caught up with it, its nemesis is on grand display and
some characters are learning very bitter lessons.
It is not for me to gloat
over this but to do my duty as a professional critic of the Nigerian condition.
This, then, is not a partisan piece; it is a subtle reminder of facts. But I
don’t pity the APC and its members. Their hubris is self-made, self-inflicted
and self-mismanaged. They over-promised, they have under-delivered. When
President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office in 2015, the majority of Nigerians
looked up to him as the miracle man, the messiah who would help to straighten
Nigeria, and who with the force of his integrity will sort out Nigeria’s moral
and governmental crisis. It was some kind of mass hypnotism that brought him to
power because as we have seen, Nigerian was not even facing any major social,
political and economic crisis of today’s proportions.
The majorities – Yoruba and
Hausa/Fulani – were just tired of having a President from a minority group in
power and they ganged up, gave him a bad name and got rid of him. You can argue
with me over this, but I think on the whole since then, Nigeria ’s
minority groups have been expected to admit that their man had his own issues
and so, lick their wounds and seek how they can be re-accommodated into the
country’s power game, not on their own terms but on the terms of the
majorities. This game plan would have worked perfectly except that Buhari who
was raised to the level of a moral and leadership icon could not live up to the
bill. Nigerians have been taught one bitter lesson, through him, about power
and leadership: no man can give that which he does not have.
President Buhari has not
been able to give what he does not have. His government has thrown up more
contradictions than ever. His party is disemboweling. And I don’t pity him. I
don’t sympathize with him either. What a man sows, he shall reap. The APC ship
that he captains is sinking, and some of us are giggling, for we have been
proven right. Very soon, we may have the captain himself, screaming SOS and
Ahoy, calling for help. In the last week, 15 Senators and 37 members of the
House of Representatives jumped ship. They swam across the sea to join another
political party, the same party that they abandoned in 2014, that is the PDP,
in what is clearly a demonstration of should I say – contrition?
I know – you don’t need to
remind me, that our politicians of course don’t subscribe to any ideology other
than the ideology of self and stomach, and that is why these politicians always
behave strangely. The new APC Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, for example, likes to
talk, and he has been talking as if his Chairmanship of the ruling party puts
him in charge of Nigeria .
He has dismissed the obvious implosion of the APC as a non-event and I think he
is just playing the ostrich. Oshiomhole talks too much. He must be reminded
that he is not in an Edo village
anymore as a Governor and he is no longer a labour leader. He is occupying
centre stage, and he has to learn to talk like a man of the centre not as
someone who a return to the village has robbed of cosmopolitan values.
He would have plenty of
time to talk politics, as we move towards 2019, but the manner in which he has
been chewing his fingers and feet and uttering drivel is part of the problem
with the APC. His drivel alone is enough to sink the APC ship. Unfortunately,
President Buhari has also been behaving as if he does not know or he does not
care about the utter cluelessness of his team. I suspect he knows, but his
arrogance is perhaps his hubris. He doesn’t care because he does not think that
Nigerians are important enough. He projects a vision, an image, and optics of
power in contradistinction to the objectives of democratic governance.
How on earth would a
sitting and present-minded President allow the festering of the Saraki problem,
to cite one obvious example? Senate President Bukola Saraki is the biggest
problem Buhari has today. As a No. 3 citizen who has been abused, harassed and
intimidated by the Executive arm of government, after he was taken to the Code
of Conduct tribunal and other courts, and called a thief publicly and labeled a
godfather of armed robbers, Saraki is now taking his pound of flesh and he has
proven that he is a master of the game. Foreign diplomats now meet with him
regularly and those who believe that the Buhari myth is over and ended are
clustering around him.
He helped to create the
APC; he is helping to destroying it and he will. One lesson here is that those
who come to power on the wings of conspiracy must realize, early enough, that
the same conspiracy can consume them. President Buhari is a victim of the same
conspiracy that brought him to power. He is at this sorry point because he
burned the bridge that brought him to power. His failure to manage and sustain
that conspiracy has resulted in the defection of Saraki and his supporters, (of
course Saraki would soon defect), members of the National Assembly and the
likes of Buba Galadima, who boast confidently that they and others brought
Buhari into politics. Let it be remembered that in 2014/15, Buhari was indeed a
strong force in his own constituency and in the South West. The combined force
of his successful marketing in those two strongholds made his ascendancy
unstoppable. But today, those who voted for him in Kano are
burning the broom, the symbol of the party; and in the South West, the main man
who carried him on his back, that is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has lost
significant advantages.
Across Nigeria ,
the ordinary man is no longer impressed by the Buhari persona. In the arena of
politics, at least three Governors have more or less deserted the APC, namely
the governors of Kwara, Sokoto and Benue and
the dubious attempt to impeach he latter, that is the Governor of Benue State
can only strengthen his resolve and the anger of his people. Playing the
ostrich would not make the problem lighter. Please tell Oshionhole and co.
There are probably more fifth columnists in the APC today than there were at
any other time in the displaced PDP. History in a sense, is repeating itself.
President Muhammadu Buhari in case anyone has forgotten is the second military
leader to return to power under a civilian dispensation; before him was General
Olusegun Obasanjo. The symbolism and meaning of military exit and re-entry in
Nigerian politics is that in spite of democracy, we are reminded of the
continuing place of, or the intrusion of the military in Nigerian politics.
Obasanjo may have kept that story alive, but
Buhari has ruined whatever is left of it. The mood today is that no retired
soldier is good enough for the biggest job in the land. The moral high ground
that the officers claimed, the high horse that they climbed, their
sanctimonious claims of being more disciplined, patriotic, and honest, in or
out of uniform, has been exploded. President Buhari for example came to power
on the wings of the claim that he will fight and end corruption, and punish
corrupt persons. Barely three years later, some of the worst scams ever in
Nigerian history have been witnessed under his watch: his Minister of Finance,
the equivalent of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK , and Secretary of the
Treasury in the United States has
been implicated in an unexplained case of forgery, misrepresentation and
perjury.
His Minister of State for
Petroleum and the Group Managing Director of the country’s oil company, NNPC
got into an ego-driven argument about NNPC finances and made some disturbing
revelations – nobody is looking into those disclosures. A former Secretary to
the Government of the Federation was caught in a state of compromise and abuse;
he got a mere slap on the wrist, he lost his position and appointed his own
successor- and he has since returned to the corridors of favour; and so on and
so forth. Now, even a Special Adviser to the President on Prosecutions has been
accused of forging his secondary school level certificate. And these are all
APC men, the party that promised paradise and delivered hell, even within its
own quarters. Some members of the party have been boasting that whether
Nigerians like it or not, the APC will win the 2019 general elections and
President Buhari will be re-elected.
It is most strange that members
of a party leading the most populous country in the Black World in an age of
democracy would step forward to make such a statement. So, why are we all
obtaining, keeping and securing our voters’ cards if the APC elite is so sure
that our votes mean nothing? The only explanation can only be that they are
politicians and not democrats. They want Buhari back, because they are using
him to serve their own interests and they are ready to commit any atrocity in
his name.
As I have argued before
now, President Buhari’s biggest protection lies in the legacy that he leaves
behind. The people he listens to, those who claim to be his managers or
handlers, those who speak for or claim to speak for him, have done incalculable
damage to the minimum legacy that he can lay claim to – being the second former
military Head of State to serve as Nigeria’s civilian President. They insist
after a fashion that he will be back in 2019 and that his legacy can be
reconstructed. But here is what I think: If Buhari wins in 2019, he may have
the big challenge of legitimacy to deal with.
This is my point given the
tragedy of the APC ship that has capsized. But I also think that the PDP or
whatever other opposition groups that may emerge can only displace Buhari or
take advantage of the failure of the APC, if they come up with a credible and
acceptable Presidential candidate. The APC may be sinking with Buhari as
Captain but the opposition will need a strong alternative candidate and better
ideas to change the game. For now, Nigerians are still where they have been in
the last three years… in the valley of uncertainty.
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