By Idowu Akinlotan
Nearly three weeks ago, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Kashim Ibrahim-Imam as chairman, Board of Trustees of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND). Unlike many other appointments, this one met with almost universal approbation, with a number of political leaders, particularly from the All Progressives Congress (APC), exulting openly over an appointment that was indistinguishably one out of many in recent weeks. In the years when the so-called presidency cabal dominated the news, and the late Abba Kyari was factually or fictionally the public but silent face of that shadowy group, few ever heard of the name of Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam, despite his family pedigree. Not anymore.
Former Osun State governor and one-time interim chairman of the APC, Bisi Akande, stirred memories last week when he applauded the appointment of the TETFUND chairman in terms that convinced even sceptics that the president probably did a notable thing. Despite the controversy about lack of adherence to federal character principle in the appointment, two things came out of Chief Akande’s statement, which also doubled as a tribute to Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam. First, according to the former Osun governor, the new TETFUND chairman played a key role in the merger of legacy parties that produced the APC in 2013. Despite being overlooked in appointments since the 2015 victory of the ruling party, he had remained loyal and committed to the party. This is an unusual attribute. For far less provocations, some as flimsy as losing nominations into elective offices or failing to secure a contract, major political leaders have jumped ship and denounced their former confederates.
Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam not only comes from a family of proud and consistent progressives, he has demonstrated that he is a chip off the old block. Before APC was formed, he had twice on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform tried to win the Borno governorship, in 2003 and 2007. On both occasions, he had lost to the combative but wealthy Ali Modu Sheriff. Chief Akande supplied a biography brief of the new TETFUND chairman and enthused about his steadiness, reliability, progressivism and generosity. The former Osun governor is neither frivolous in statesmanship nor casual in assessing someone’s character. He needed only to issue a statement lauding the president and congratulating Alahji Ibrahim-Imam. To go beyond that simple political duty to write a copious attestation of the appointee’s character, describing the appointment as deserving and even belated, is signal proof that there is something unusual about the Borno politician.
Second, and perhaps more critically, is Chief Akande’s insinuation that the schism that bifurcated the APC since it took office in Abuja would perhaps start to receive some mending. Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam had worked hard to get the APC going, and had been instrumental to the 2019 campaigns. For such a solid character and politician to be overlooked in the scheme of things, hinted Chief Akande, was a reflection of the disconnect that existed between the party and its elected leaders. Said the former Osun governor: “When Buhari’s government, perhaps inadvertently, gave Ibrahim-Imam no position, Tinubu requested me to talk to Buhari on Ibrahim-Imam’s behalf. I refused because I presumed that there must have been a dangerous disconnect between the APC and its government. Now that the President has approved a position for Ibrahim-Imam in government, I congratulate President Buhari. I congratulate Ibrahim-Imam. I also sincerely congratulate the APC. I hope that from now on, the party and the government can learn to work in sync.”
It is in such moments that the public gets a confirmation of some of the dangerous undercurrents coursing through the foundations and operations of the political party. The APC had often given the impression that it was united and focused, with some of its leading officials accusing the public and the media of sensationalism and meddlesomeness when they argue otherwise. In reality, not only was the party disunited, and its soul hijacked, as the media speculated and even the president’s household corroborated, it won re-election probably only because its leading lights felt the burden of starting all over again in another party was less appealing than sticking to their party, as hobbled by internal dissension as it evidently was in the years between 2015 and 2019. It may be too early to determine that the healing Chief Akande insinuated is irreversible, but it may have begun and is at least noticeable. At a time when the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has adamantly refused to control its apparatchiks or inspire itself and the public into a new, rejuvenated mould, the renewal of the APC along principled party lines must encourage the public to keep an open mind regarding the political future of the country and the health of its democracy.
Nigerians were not mistaken when they dismissed the APC as confused and divided, nor were they extreme when they described the Buhari presidency as having been hijacked by non-politicians and non-technocrats. Chief Akande wrote a tribute to Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam, but the tribute itself is even more a tribute to the former governor’s own astuteness and character. Because of the respect the president has for him, Chief Akande was asked to put in a word for the Borno politician due to the huge role he played in the formation of the APC and its subsequent electoral victories. Nobody in the party leadership could feign ignorance of that role, the nonplussed Chief Akande seemed to say; and to have to be prodded to ask Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam to lend his savvy and character to serve the country was superfluous. If the insularity and paralysis that suffused the governance of the country in the past years should relent further, as they seem to be doing in the past few weeks, there may yet be hope that as reviled as the Buhari presidency has been, some substantial good might yet come out of it to help build and cement its legacy.
But something else came out of the appointment of Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam, something else beyond energising a hitherto stale and stultified presidency, healing the schisms in the APC, and considerably narrowing the chasm that had exposed the party to all kinds of aggravations and discord. Without doubt, that something else concerns the character of the new appointee. In his public statement, Chief Akande describes and lauds the generosity of the Borno politician. Yes, he was generous in an unforced and impressive way, and he had gone out of his way to demonstrate his love for his fellow politicians, regardless of their tribe and background. Far more than these, however, are these extras: (a) that the joie de vivre that hallmarks partisan politics is sometimes lost on the public, and (b) that few Nigerians know the extent politicians go in establishing networks of political allies and friendships across the country.
Chief Akande illustrates the generosity of Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam in the persistence and expansiveness with which he sought to demonstrate his hospitality. The former Osun governor, in company with the national leader of the party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had just visited the former military head of state, Buhari, in the heady days of trying to concretise the party’s potential presidential candidacy. On their way to the airport, they had stopped over at the Ibrahim-Imam residence only to meet ‘three giant pots of pigeon’ delicacy waiting for them. The snag was that they were already full. Notwithstanding the apologies of his guests, the genial host sent the delicacies after them to Abuja. When Chief Akande recalled the commitment and generosity of the Borno politician, and rued the inability of the Buhari presidency to draft him to service, he was not suggesting that Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam needed a job or was poor, or that it mattered that he and Asiwaju Tinubu enjoyed the delicacy for days on end, or even that things couldn’t run without the Borno politician. No, all he was saying with his pigeon soup allegories is that they speak to something far deeper in politics and relationships than the quality or quantity of an unusual meal.
Politicians are animated not only by office, after they had won elections, but are also inspired by the friendships they strike along the way and the exuberant rigour and adrenalin surge they endure when they criss-cross the country to form alliances, sweat over party platforms and ideologies, and solicit for votes even in unlikely places — places where sometimes they are harassed, stoned, or wickedly rebuffed. It explains their constant and unending optimism even in the face of political defeat, their readiness to spend their last kobo in the pursuit of their avocation, to financially overreach themselves if necessary, and of course to make new friends, argue over policies and ideas, exert pressure on one another, scramble for offices, and address more than a dozen campaign stops in a day. Imagine then enduring such sufferings and contradictions only to watch dismally the prize snatched at the end of a tortuous and long process, and handed blithely to a complete stranger.
Whatever the achievements of the Buhari presidency in the first term, it had very little to do with the APC. When he deigned to look in the direction of the party, it was often to straighten out party dissenters and cajole a few recalcitrant party leaders; it was seldom to work with the party, or rally its foot soldiers, or elevate and implement its ideology, or involve party leaders in governance. Chief Akande alluded to this policy of exclusion and hoped that the appointment of Alhaji Ibrahim-Imam would mark the end of the disconnect between the party and the presidency. Even if President Buhari is unable to appreciate many other things, he is expected to know the value of being succeeded by an APC president. That will only happen if he unequivocally ends his politics of exclusion, open up the country to the inspiring side of the APC, spread the dividends of democracy far beyond insular lines, and work closely with his party to energise the base and leadership of his party. While it may be wrong to impose a candidate or person on the party or the country, he should be interested in what the post-Buhari presidency would look like, both in terms of personalities and in terms of ideology. He should not pretend that there are no problems. Chief Akande alluded to these problems as honestly and avuncularly as possible.
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