A LITTLE over one week after the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in their states, President Muhammadu Buhari distanced himself from the party and uncharacteristically reaffirmed his faith in the courts as the last arbiter. The party had on November 19 warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction. Citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution, the party had insisted that failure to exhaust the party’s intermediation processes before going to court was a flagrant subversion of party regulations. But on November 26, the president weighed in and asked those aggrieved to disregard the party’s threat and continue to explore their chances in the courts.
The party may well have been right and shrewd to caution and restrain its litigious members, especially in the light of the provisions of its constitution, and had obviously hoped that the prospect of peace, whatever the cost, would brighten or at least sustain the chances of the party in the next polls. But to the angry and despondent in the party, three of whom are close to the president, and are well known and celebrated for their temper and intransigence, the party’s order was foolish and intemperate. They had sworn to fight the party to the death over the primaries dispute, but increasingly it was looking like the only ones dying were the angry party leaders. So, to save face, and perhaps to ply the party with more discomfort and unbearable pressure, they headed for the courts. To be then told by their party that even litigation was unacceptable was to subject them to indignity beyond their natural forbearance.
Sensing that the aggrieved chieftains had reached the end of their tethers, the president waded into the fray and overruled the party’s orders. The bitter chieftains, said the president, could go to court to seek redress, for the party must never carry itself so imperiously as to be the final authority in any dispute. It was not clear whether the president really thought any good could come out of the litigations, or whether the chieftains would get the redress they sought, but he was clearly happy to make what appeared to many observers to be the first really philosophical suggestion he had ever made since joining partisan politics. He suspected the courts, and felt they were slow and ponderous and mysterious, but here he was sounding concerned about the disaffected in the party and eager to assuage their hurt. And he capped his concerns with a little philosophy.
Said the president: “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights. We agreed that party primaries should be conducted either through direct, indirect or consensus method, and if anyone feels unjustly treated in the process, such a person can go to court. The court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied. For the party to outlaw the court process is not acceptable to me.” It is reassuring that the president spoke about the people’s rights, and why they must never be denied, and of the courts as the last resort, admitting that nobody had the right to abridge it or arrogate it to themselves. The president’s philosophical undertones may be trite and sophomoric, but they were nonetheless somewhat engaging and pleasant to the ears, and even to the rest of the senses. If only the president had taken his own counsel and applied it to the Sambo Dasuki case and the Ibraheem el-Zakzaky rigmarole, both of which he not only prejudged but had sounded a note of finality on them that fully scorned the courts.
The suspicion is indeed rife that President Buhari reached deep into his philosophical core in order to mollify the anger of certain party chieftains who, in action and speech, had all but deified him. They had been with him for much longer than many others in the APC, and had submitted both their will and their souls to him to lead as he pleased. The president was therefore torn between subverting the party to please his friends or reinforcing the party to brighten his electoral chances. It obviously did not cost him anything, nor, it seems, the party too, to keep the legal channels opened to the aggrieved chieftains. He was smart enough, and experienced had taught him too, to know that the legal channels had become occluded long ago for the chieftains. They were unlikely to get the redress they sought, and even if they got a hearing, and assuming the ponderous judicial system could be catalysed to deal with the case, the result would still be futile.
Yes, the president knew all this, but the aggrieved chieftains were not so dim-witted as not to know that coming so close to the elections and the end of the nominations, the courts were also effectively powerless, reduced as it were to only rubber-stamping the processes the chieftains complained so bitterly about. For conscience sake, the president had taken the rather safe and placatory step of disagreeing with his party leaders, a measure the bitter political leaders had waited for him for so long to take. Well, he finally repudiated his party’s administrators, but the outcome of the dispute was never in doubt both to him and anyone else. It was brinkmanship all round, but brinkmanship only in theory. No one was in doubt how the president had voted in the controversial primaries, despite his initial and lasting squeamishness.
Realistic and sensible, the aggrieved chieftains finally threw in the towel and played their jokers. They inspired a few defections, and importantly got their factional governorship candidates, the ones left in the cold by the party, to move to other parties where they easily secured tickets as standard-bearers. They will stand for the governorship elections, but they will not have a big and solid party structure behind them but the ephemeral structures of the flailing governors. Their intention is that while they remain in the ruling party, they will work for their candidates who had taken shelter in other parties. How they hope to run with the hare and hunt with the hound will be one of the most difficult balancing acts of this political season. It has never worked, and no party has ever tolerated such flagrant display of disloyalty. But the aggrieved politicians will hope to have their cake and eat it in the presence of an indulgent president who, they think, understands their plight.
Having achieved his aim couched in altruistic terms, party chairman Adams Oshiomhole wisely refused to join issues with the president after being overruled. He knew the court cases would peter out into fatuity, for after all, the aggrieved factional candidates had left for other pastures to graze, and cannot any longer diligently prosecute their suits against their former parties. But he also knew that he had outplayed those he regarded as state emperors in the ruling party. Curiously, he kept on protesting his innocence in the whole drama, and even reiterated his friendship with the aggrieved chieftains. They swore at him and promised him hell, but he responded gamely by blowing hot and cold, reaffirming his loyalty to their common friendship and in the same breath determining to cut them to size. But against the president, he said not a word. Next, he will probably find ways to stifle the aggrieved chieftains, choke their candidates, and threaten their remaining interests in the party. For a party chairman whose position seemed precarious a few weeks ago, it must puzzle observers that he has not only come out on top, but that he has spectacularly worsted his enemies to the bargain.
But despite Mr Oshiomhole’s notable triumphs and the president’s byzantine philosophy, the party will without question go into the next elections divided and petrified. They have embraced political brinkmanship of the worst variety. In their private moments — and perhaps this viewpoint would have been impressed on the president — they will wonder whether it was not wiser to adopt affirmation rather than the elective convention they organised in June. They knew they were buffeted by so many demons, and had hoped to keep those powerful dragons chained in the bottomless pits dotting the states under their control. But by opting for an elective convention and later embracing the devil’s metaphysics of direct and indirect primaries, it was clear to them that all the demons congregating under their fragile roof would soon break out in open revolt. They were not disappointed. But they were surprised that the revolts were much fiercer than they had hoped, and lasted longer than is good for their political objectives.
The party made a lot of money through their obscene pricing of nomination forms, and as the ruling party, they will have more access to free cash for their campaigns than the opposition. Above all, while their spooks and anti-graft agencies will sniff around the finances of the opposition to put a cog in the wheel of their campaigns, the finances of the ruling party will permanently smell of roses. Soon the president and his party will close ranks and train their guns on the opposition, but their mutual suspicion and rivalries will never really go away. The opposition is battling its own demons, perhaps hamstrung by shortage of cash and lacking the kind of confidence and daredevilry the APC summoned in 2015 to telling effect. But in the next one or two weeks, as the campaigns shape out, it will become a little clearer whether the APC has been hurt by its internal turmoil and unending brinkmanship, and the opposition helped by the country’s powermongers and the meddlesome coalition of foreign and domestic forces convinced that President Buhari had in his first term given his all and can do no other and go no further.
Should the APC win, it is expected that the party will eventually find its feet. Mr Oshiomhole’s cataclysmic ideas and political antecedents seem to imply that tempting possibility. He has been accused of running the party with the brutal firmness and candour of a chief executive officer, and he seems to have made up his mind on most things, and those things have often grated on the nerves of those disadvantaged by his decisions. And though he sometimes sounded conciliatory, they allege that more often than not he seems to court and relish a fight. The Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, loathes him with a passion, and was caught on tape recently swearing at him. Ogun State’s Ibikunle Amosun cannot stand him, and Imo State’s Rochas Okorocha regards him as the devil incarnate. Many more goblins lurking in diverse recesses in the party are bidding their time for the opportune moment to floor or incinerate him. Notwithstanding this fiery opposition, Mr Oshiomhole has made up his mind to reposition the party and mould it after his likeness. He has survived the attempt to unseat him, and will very likely lead the party through the coming campaigns, his enemies be damned.
But in this excessively turbulent party that seethes with plots and revolts, a party headed by a president who would rather be deified than cast in the image of a wholesome democrat and primus inter pares, nothing is guaranteed. The only thing that will be guaranteed will be the president’s position and his amorphous ideas and policies — not the chairman’s position, nor the party’s constitution, nor their detached manifesto, nor their convoluted and unreliable succession plan. They do not have an administrator par excellence in their midst — Mr Oshimohole is a unionist — nor an ideologue, nor a visionary. This was why right from the beginning they struggled to stand for something but ended up standing for nothing, and had had to submit to wholesale confusion and spawned small-minded imperators. There is no proof that even electoral success can mitigate their maladies.
A LITTLE over one week after the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in their states, President Muhammadu Buhari distanced himself from the party and uncharacteristically reaffirmed his faith in the courts as the last arbiter. The party had on November 19 warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction. Citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution, the party had insisted that failure to exhaust the party’s intermediation processes before going to court was a flagrant subversion of party regulations. But on November 26, the president weighed in and asked those aggrieved to disregard the party’s threat and continue to explore their chances in the courts.
The party may well have been right and shrewd to caution and restrain its litigious members, especially in the light of the provisions of its constitution, and had obviously hoped that the prospect of peace, whatever the cost, would brighten or at least sustain the chances of the party in the next polls. But to the angry and despondent in the party, three of whom are close to the president, and are well known and celebrated for their temper and intransigence, the party’s order was foolish and intemperate. They had sworn to fight the party to the death over the primaries dispute, but increasingly it was looking like the only ones dying were the angry party leaders. So, to save face, and perhaps to ply the party with more discomfort and unbearable pressure, they headed for the courts. To be then told by their party that even litigation was unacceptable was to subject them to indignity beyond their natural forbearance.
Sensing that the aggrieved chieftains had reached the end of their tethers, the president waded into the fray and overruled the party’s orders. The bitter chieftains, said the president, could go to court to seek redress, for the party must never carry itself so imperiously as to be the final authority in any dispute. It was not clear whether the president really thought any good could come out of the litigations, or whether the chieftains would get the redress they sought, but he was clearly happy to make what appeared to many observers to be the first really philosophical suggestion he had ever made since joining partisan politics. He suspected the courts, and felt they were slow and ponderous and mysterious, but here he was sounding concerned about the disaffected in the party and eager to assuage their hurt. And he capped his concerns with a little philosophy.
Said the president: “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights. We agreed that party primaries should be conducted either through direct, indirect or consensus method, and if anyone feels unjustly treated in the process, such a person can go to court. The court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied. For the party to outlaw the court process is not acceptable to me.” It is reassuring that the president spoke about the people’s rights, and why they must never be denied, and of the courts as the last resort, admitting that nobody had the right to abridge it or arrogate it to themselves. The president’s philosophical undertones may be trite and sophomoric, but they were nonetheless somewhat engaging and pleasant to the ears, and even to the rest of the senses. If only the president had taken his own counsel and applied it to the Sambo Dasuki case and the Ibraheem el-Zakzaky rigmarole, both of which he not only prejudged but had sounded a note of finality on them that fully scorned the courts.
The suspicion is indeed rife that President Buhari reached deep into his philosophical core in order to mollify the anger of certain party chieftains who, in action and speech, had all but deified him. They had been with him for much longer than many others in the APC, and had submitted both their will and their souls to him to lead as he pleased. The president was therefore torn between subverting the party to please his friends or reinforcing the party to brighten his electoral chances. It obviously did not cost him anything, nor, it seems, the party too, to keep the legal channels opened to the aggrieved chieftains. He was smart enough, and experienced had taught him too, to know that the legal channels had become occluded long ago for the chieftains. They were unlikely to get the redress they sought, and even if they got a hearing, and assuming the ponderous judicial system could be catalysed to deal with the case, the result would still be futile.
Yes, the president knew all this, but the aggrieved chieftains were not so dim-witted as not to know that coming so close to the elections and the end of the nominations, the courts were also effectively powerless, reduced as it were to only rubber-stamping the processes the chieftains complained so bitterly about. For conscience sake, the president had taken the rather safe and placatory step of disagreeing with his party leaders, a measure the bitter political leaders had waited for him for so long to take. Well, he finally repudiated his party’s administrators, but the outcome of the dispute was never in doubt both to him and anyone else. It was brinkmanship all round, but brinkmanship only in theory. No one was in doubt how the president had voted in the controversial primaries, despite his initial and lasting squeamishness.
Realistic and sensible, the aggrieved chieftains finally threw in the towel and played their jokers. They inspired a few defections, and importantly got their factional governorship candidates, the ones left in the cold by the party, to move to other parties where they easily secured tickets as standard-bearers. They will stand for the governorship elections, but they will not have a big and solid party structure behind them but the ephemeral structures of the flailing governors. Their intention is that while they remain in the ruling party, they will work for their candidates who had taken shelter in other parties. How they hope to run with the hare and hunt with the hound will be one of the most difficult balancing acts of this political season. It has never worked, and no party has ever tolerated such flagrant display of disloyalty. But the aggrieved politicians will hope to have their cake and eat it in the presence of an indulgent president who, they think, understands their plight.
Having achieved his aim couched in altruistic terms, party chairman Adams Oshiomhole wisely refused to join issues with the president after being overruled. He knew the court cases would peter out into fatuity, for after all, the aggrieved factional candidates had left for other pastures to graze, and cannot any longer diligently prosecute their suits against their former parties. But he also knew that he had outplayed those he regarded as state emperors in the ruling party. Curiously, he kept on protesting his innocence in the whole drama, and even reiterated his friendship with the aggrieved chieftains. They swore at him and promised him hell, but he responded gamely by blowing hot and cold, reaffirming his loyalty to their common friendship and in the same breath determining to cut them to size. But against the president, he said not a word. Next, he will probably find ways to stifle the aggrieved chieftains, choke their candidates, and threaten their remaining interests in the party. For a party chairman whose position seemed precarious a few weeks ago, it must puzzle observers that he has not only come out on top, but that he has spectacularly worsted his enemies to the bargain.
But despite Mr Oshiomhole’s notable triumphs and the president’s byzantine philosophy, the party will without question go into the next elections divided and petrified. They have embraced political brinkmanship of the worst variety. In their private moments — and perhaps this viewpoint would have been impressed on the president — they will wonder whether it was not wiser to adopt affirmation rather than the elective convention they organised in June. They knew they were buffeted by so many demons, and had hoped to keep those powerful dragons chained in the bottomless pits dotting the states under their control. But by opting for an elective convention and later embracing the devil’s metaphysics of direct and indirect primaries, it was clear to them that all the demons congregating under their fragile roof would soon break out in open revolt. They were not disappointed. But they were surprised that the revolts were much fiercer than they had hoped, and lasted longer than is good for their political objectives.
The party made a lot of money through their obscene pricing of nomination forms, and as the ruling party, they will have more access to free cash for their campaigns than the opposition. Above all, while their spooks and anti-graft agencies will sniff around the finances of the opposition to put a cog in the wheel of their campaigns, the finances of the ruling party will permanently smell of roses. Soon the president and his party will close ranks and train their guns on the opposition, but their mutual suspicion and rivalries will never really go away. The opposition is battling its own demons, perhaps hamstrung by shortage of cash and lacking the kind of confidence and daredevilry the APC summoned in 2015 to telling effect. But in the next one or two weeks, as the campaigns shape out, it will become a little clearer whether the APC has been hurt by its internal turmoil and unending brinkmanship, and the opposition helped by the country’s powermongers and the meddlesome coalition of foreign and domestic forces convinced that President Buhari had in his first term given his all and can do no other and go no further.
Should the APC win, it is expected that the party will eventually find its feet. Mr Oshiomhole’s cataclysmic ideas and political antecedents seem to imply that tempting possibility. He has been accused of running the party with the brutal firmness and candour of a chief executive officer, and he seems to have made up his mind on most things, and those things have often grated on the nerves of those disadvantaged by his decisions. And though he sometimes sounded conciliatory, they allege that more often than not he seems to court and relish a fight. The Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, loathes him with a passion, and was caught on tape recently swearing at him. Ogun State’s Ibikunle Amosun cannot stand him, and Imo State’s Rochas Okorocha regards him as the devil incarnate. Many more goblins lurking in diverse recesses in the party are bidding their time for the opportune moment to floor or incinerate him. Notwithstanding this fiery opposition, Mr Oshiomhole has made up his mind to reposition the party and mould it after his likeness. He has survived the attempt to unseat him, and will very likely lead the party through the coming campaigns, his enemies be damned.
But in this excessively turbulent party that seethes with plots and revolts, a party headed by a president who would rather be deified than cast in the image of a wholesome democrat and primus inter pares, nothing is guaranteed. The only thing that will be guaranteed will be the president’s position and his amorphous ideas and policies — not the chairman’s position, nor the party’s constitution, nor their detached manifesto, nor their convoluted and unreliable succession plan. They do not have an administrator par excellence in their midst — Mr Oshimohole is a unionist — nor an ideologue, nor a visionary. This was why right from the beginning they struggled to stand for something but ended up standing for nothing, and had had to submit to wholesale confusion and spawned small-minded imperators. There is no proof that even electoral success can mitigate their maladies.
- Next week: PDP’s unlimited brinkmanship
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