NATION building, a joint task. This was the catch phrase of the Gbaja/Wase Campaign Organisation. Indeed, nation building is a joint task. We do not need to be reminded of that by any campaign organisation. It requires the contributions of every citizen to develop a nation. It is not a job that should be left to only those in power. By adopting this slogan, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and his deputy Ahmed Idris Wase were not only sending a message to their colleagues in the House of Representatives, but to the whole country.
As citizens, we all have a stake in the Nigerian Project. If things go well, it will be for the good of all and if they do not, we will bear the brunt jointly and severally. Now the campaigns for the leadership of the National Assembly are over, with the emergence of Ahmad Lawan, Ovie Omo-Agege, Gbajabiamila and Wase as Senate president, deputy Senate president, Speaker and deputy Speaker, on Tuesday. These men will in the next four years pilot the affairs of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
It is a job that comes with enormous responsibilities. So, these men have a great task ahead of them. They have told us that they have what it takes to preside over the Red and Green Chambers. Their colleagues believed in them and so gave them their mandate. The National Assembly got it right in picking its leaders. But, that is just the tip of the iceberg. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) did its homework well on the matter to avoid what happened in 2015. Much of what we witnessed on the floors of both chambers on Tuesday were settled outside those houses.
Part of the spade work was done by the party, which quickly retraced its steps after initially making some false moves. The greater job was done by the candidates who brought in their colleagues from the other parties into their campaigns. This bipartisan approach saved the APC from the 2015 horror which we all saw when the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) contested and won the deputy Senate president’s seat four years ago.
APC learnt its lesson the hard way. But the major task for the party, President Muhammadu Buhari and the assembly leadership lies ahead. They have scaled the first hurdle by getting the National Assembly leadership elections out of the way. What comes next now is governance. How can the people feel the impact of government? This is what should engage the minds of the party and its leadership. As a party, APC no doubt means well for the people. It seemed it could not do much in its first four years in office between 2015 and May 2019 because of what the President called the ‘unpatriotic’ National Assembly leadership he worked with.
The party claimed that it was hamstrung by the leadership of the eighth National Assembly. Also, APC spent its time, blaming the party in power before it for every ill that befell the country, even in its own time. It was the PDP this or PDP that, whenever there was any problem in the polity. The people are tired of hearing the party talk like that. Their desire is to see the party working for their good. APC did all the talking as it should have done when PDP was in power. It was proper then to criticise PDP because it was in power.
But having left office for four years now, will it still be proper to blame the party for anything? What APC owes Nigerians is to find solutions to the problems of poverty, insecurity, unemployment, economic and social imbalance plaguing the country. The problems are rising by the day because of our growing population. APC has its hands full for it to waste precious time, blaming PDP for everything under the sun. For 16 years, it talked and talked about PDP’s bad governance. The people applauded it because things were bad, damn bad, under PDP between 1999 and 2015. And they compensated the party with their votes in 2015. What they expect in return is good governance.
So, by now, they expect APC to be done with the talking. They waited patiently for four years, but there was no dice, and now they have given the party another four years to bring the change it promised them. It should no longer be time to talk; it is time to do. There is no better time to do what is expected of the party than now that it has another four-year mandate from the people. The party has got the National Assembly leadership right. As its Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole said on Tuesday, “we can no longer say we are blocked by the parliament’’. Now that it has the parliament it wants, what is left for the party is to get governance right too.
If the President needs to “shake the table”, to borrow the words of Speaker Gbajabiamila, to do that, he should not hesitate to do so. The buck stops at his table and at the end of the day, he will carry the can if the APC does not deliver. But if the party does well, the glory will, of course, be his. To mean well for the people is good, but to do well for them, is better. May the next four years be better than the last four.
Leave a Reply