APC, the obvious lead horse – Esin iwaju – amongst Nigerian political parties has, through its own byzantine decoys, so outsmarted itself that had INEC not gone back on its words about not amending its time table, it just might have failed to meet the deadlines or just barely do. A day to its severally postponed screening of its presidential aspirants, Nigerians were still waiting to see the exercise begin.
Simply put, APC’s problems are self-inflicted and, truth be told, it has never been led as a political party apart from the tenure of its first national Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande. Its next, Chief John Oyegun was, at best, a mere place holder, buffeted by his shifting allegiance, not to the party, but to several of its leaders. Adams Oshiomhole, who was apparently keen on putting the party on a firmer ground, turned out unduly abrasive and ambitious elements within the party, who already had their eyes set on 2023, soon showed up, and had him for dinner. All these would, however, not have mattered much if the party leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, had any time for a party he probably saw as no more than a special purpose vehicle to finally clinch the diadem.
That done, nothing mattered any more, until, that is, he had a dream of who to succeed him.
The result: APC has simply drifted, and drifted, until it became the turn of His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni, the drafted Yobe State governor who, under the direction of a trio of Northern governors, completely turned the party to a play thing, daily birthing, and dispensing, with succession plots.
The reader should please bear that background in mind as I try to wade through the labyrinthine history of the party till where it is today, few days to its presidential primaries, now hopefully, finally scheduled for Monday, 6 June, 2023.
It is crystal clear, at least, to the attentive Nigerian, that unlike the People’s Democratic Party, APC affairs, at the national level, have always been at the behest of a cabal, made up of some members of the party but controlled, largely, by the very influential members of the Villa mafia, at least one of them, reported to be a much respected relation of the President.
This external control got accentuated particularly during this second and final term of President Muhammadu Buhari. It was not fortuitous. Rather, noticing very early in his administration that the president wasn’t going to be unduly tied down by party matters, some members of his kitchen cabinet, who thought of nothing more than to retain the presidency in the North, quickly seized the moment, and began to direct the government’s appointments, nearly all of which went, unidirectionally, in favour of the North. I never shied away from sounding the alarm bell on these pages. They, the North, control literally everything that with considerable justification, APC can be seen today as a Northern party, despite the contribution of other legacy parties. I doubt if Southeast parties among them can actually point to anything as dividend of their own contribution.
Many of these people – who knew nothing about how APC came about, as the First Lady alluded to in her BBC interview when she said some people were invited directly from their homes to come and take up appointments, thus reaping bountifully from where they did not sow – very quickly took up ringside seats.
With most appointments made, the next thing was to plot who, from the North, would succeed President Buhari. That was when they came up with poo- pooing zoning, the equitable desideratum in a multi- ethnic society.
This too, was the precursor to the emergence of Mai Mala Bunu as Chairman of the party’s Interim committee, whose real driving force was the trio of Northern governors that always escorted him to the Villa to, unfailingly, secure those amazing presidential extensions to the term of a committee that was programmed to last only 6 months only, but ended up spending nearly two years.
At a time, they surprisingly worked on getting surrogates from the Southwest failing which they headed towards the Southeast and Southsouth where they got two opposition state governors who rapidly kissed their parties bye to become presidents – in – waiting.
Apparently realising that either would spend two terms, which the North sees as too long a time to be out of power, they discarded them like wet rags and went romancing a man they once demonised, called ‘Clueless’ until they disgraced him out of office. His allure now is that he is constitutionally eligible to spend only one term of 4 years, a time which the North can grudgingly tolerate.
Unfortunately, rather than reflect and do an introspection, our man jumped on board and became a permanent feature of the APC succession story where he, a non- party man had, cluelessly, asked to be made the consensus candidate. Now he too has been discarded, hung up to dry. This should be an appropriate juncture to ask: what is the value of education if a Ph.D. degree holder would submit to such inane plot?
Additionally, the scheme also shows clearly that some people see APC as nothing other than their plaything which they can do with as they like.
God help us.
But things are getting curiouser still, as only this past week, President Buhari came up, begging APC governors to allow him nominate his successor as if Nigeria is the equivalent of Putin’s Russia or, indeed, a Monarchy, not forgetting that a king would even pass before jostling for his successor begins. Pray what do these people take this country for?
Now that Mr Clueless is out, the project to retain the presidency in the North has bounced back. It had earlier got a new filip when Senator Abdullahi Adamu, a man who did not tell anybody he wanted to be party Chairman, became the party’s National Chairman. As if deliberately headhunted, he has so rapidly changed things that a member of the NWC has officially reported his undue exuberance to the President claiming that he acts alone, forgetting he is only primus inter pares.
He is reported to have since apologised to his colleagues and Nigerians have the ‘enfant terrible’, Salihu Lukman (National Vice-Chairman, Northwest) and Isaacs Kekemeke (National Vice-Chairman, Southwest) to thank before another centre of worship emerges in a rather timid party.
One of his earliest heady pronouncements was to say that there was no zoning in the party whereas, a mere two months ago, everything pointed to a presidential candidate coming from the South. Indeed, until Jigawa governor, Badaru Abubakar, and Senate President Ahmad Lawan were corralled into indicating interest, only Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello who, from all appearances probably saw it more like theatre, showed any interest from the entire North.
The untidy one man riot squad manner Adamu has been handling all matters pertaining to the presidential primaries obviously point to the fact that the Villa Mafia and some other Northern power mongers, remain unrelenting. We have just heard they are now trying to induce two Northern governors to buy forms long after the exercise has closed. I call this fake story anyway. But whatever it is, Nigerians are watching.
Any Northern APC presidential candidate, from the list we presently have, or even with the projected additions, will be shellacked beyond recognition by the Turakin Adamawa, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a veteran politician, whose network cannot be matched by any APC Northern politician besides President Buhari who, of course, would not be on the ballot in 2023. If APC does not allow elected delegates to perform their constitutionally prescribed role of electing the candidate, it will be an affirmation of the long held view, among Nigerians, that some people deliberately want to gift the presidency to the North since whether APC or PDP, the North wins. Nobody can easily forget, for instance, Mai Mala Buni and some others well publicised visit to the Turakin at a point. These decoys was the kernel of the article in which I questioned the rationale behind the intervention of Northern elders in trying to broker a PDP Northern consensus candidate which they, however, finally had in Atiku, right at the convention ground.
As mentioned earlier, it became known during the past week that President Buhari who, himself, went through a primary election to emerge the APC presidential candidate in 2014, is now begging APC governors to let him select his successor as if Nigeria is no longer a democracy. While he may succeed with the governors because of the reports the intelligence and the anti- corruption agencies may have on them, he will most probably fail to get this over the Nigerian electorate. The party will, therefore, at the appropriate time, be paid back in its own spineless coins.
Another fact which all those keen on making APC answerable only to President Buhari who did not singularly form the party, but actually rode to office on other peoples’ shoulders, is that this undemocratic rout will, almost certainly, sound the death knell of the APC given the fact that it lacks any organic cohesion. PDP was able to survive it’s two defeats simply because unlike APC, it is a highly homogenous party, not an ensemble of strange bed fellows which believe that it must be beholden to an individual. Nigerians must pray, and endeavour, to have political parties only, which would not see themselves held hostage by any one individual or group because it is simply not the norm, except in dictatorships, which Nigeria is not.
I hope that the schemers will factor into their serpentine plots the consequences of having in the 2023 presidential election candidates like Atiku, Kwankwaso, even Obi. In Kano, with President Buhari not being on the ballot, Kwankwaso will make mincemeat of any APC candidate from that part of the country, just as the emergence of Peter Obi will further lock the East away from a party that would have shown itself as a Northern party only, ala the NPC of old.
Also, given all that INEC has done of late, minus the sudden amendment of its time table, Nigerians can reasonably expect a far more credible election than hitherto, meaning that incumbency will count for nothing. I cannot, therefore, see the magic any Northern APC candidate will put on display to defeat either Atiku or Kwankwaso Kwankwaso who now has former governor Shekarau with him in the NPP.
Any APC presidential candidate from the North, if honest to himself, must also write himself off in the Middle Belt, especially in Benue State where they have been treated, not just like second class citizens, but as outright aliens. When they were killed in numbers, and had to do a mass burial for their dead, all they heard from the president, on a sympathy visit to them, was that they should learn to live with their neighbours, who incidentally are the killers. After that, several of their villages have been burnt down, their names changed and several others killed. They will be more than human to find the forging heart to vote an APC candidate who is from the geographical North. Ditto for Southern Kaduna where, apart from talk, Governor El Rufai is not known to have not done much to reduce the insecurity which has taken over the entire state. He seems to have simply given up once President Buhari refused his suggestion that these irritants be carpet bombed.
I hardly need mention the very discerning Southwest wher APC leaders in the region have been blamed for everything Nigeria has become under the current administration , top of it, the fact that we can no longer travel freely in what used to be the safest part of Nigeria.
One of the Methodist church prelates recently released by Fulani herdsmen after payment of a N100M ransom, told reporters this past week, that one of their captors specifically asked them whether they knew Lagos – Ibadan expressway, whose surrounding forests, he said, have all been taken over by Fulanis who are only waiting for the signal to attack everything in sight. It will be a herculean task to get the Southwest to vote a non -Southern APC candidate.
Yorubas are so discerning that were President Buhari minded to handpick one of the contestants from the region, they would still ask him to tow the democratic rout because Nigeria is not a banana republic.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why the APC governors cannot tell President Buhari that his proposal is unknown to democracy and, instead, remind him of the well organised primaries from which he emerged in 2014. This obsequiousness has been the bane of the APC, treating President Buhari like he owns a party with over 40 million Nigerians as members. And if care is not taken, having not been weaned on feudal baby milk, many a southern governor will commit errors that will torment him forever. There must be a limit to obsequiousness, no matter the short term benefit. Enough is enough. One is not preaching disrespect, but just show, for once, that your people elected you and that they too have a voice in Nigerian affairs as governor Wike recently said. If the governors still end up chickening out because of their private fears, forgetting that there was no talk of ‘nominating a successor’ when each contestant coughed out N100M each, they must be prepared for whatever result they get, come February, 2023. But it will not be pleasant.
And why do I say that?
It is simply because if the president goes ahead to nominate somebody who will continue from where he left, that candidate will have to come with all his baggage and can be guaranteed to lose the election because it will be asinine to think that Nigerians no longer wish to be able to sleep with their two eyes closed, nor that they no longer wish to move freely again, as if they are prisoners in their own country. Nor can farmers wish they can no longer go their farms without having to pay some forced taxes to some murderous elements. Add to these, the fact that every part of the country has become a killing field just as Nigeria itself has become the poverty capital of the world. To allow President Buhari nominate somebody who would continue in his footsteps as our next president, especially a candidate from the North, will be saying that parents would continue to see their children roaming the streets, or getting involved in all manner of criminalities because universities and polytechnics will continue to be shut down for months on end. It will mean a galloping inflation which has seen food prices soar beyond the reach of the average Nigerian and a Naira that is no longer worth the paper on which it is printed.
As I write this, power generation has dipped to 2000 plus megawatts. These and more are the legacies President Buhari will be leaving behind and, if these governors and other stakeholders will , at least be true to themselves, they should know that the party’s only path to victory in 2023 is to allow delegates freely elect a candidate, who would not, willy nilly, answer for all these.
Nigerians saw EFCC made a mess of itself when its staff went around parading PDP primaries’ grounds as if those intent on bribing delegates would haul dollars to the event. I doubt if they know how shamelessly they portrayed Nigeria. APC needs be told that if it continues to be as lackadaisical as it has always been, and grants the president his wish, it will only have itself to blame as it snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
PDP will merely say it is payback time. It is all in APC’s hands.
Fortunately, nobody has ever been reported dead because PDP lost election in 2015 and 2019. So as APC lays its bed, so will it lie on it
After weeks of colourful campaigning, probably the most charismatically conducted among the 12 contestants who jostled for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket, it became clear some two weeks to the convention that Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike would run a photo finish with ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar. The former vice president was initially the clear front-runner even though his campaign was uneventful, festooned as it was with predictable and unearthly promises instead of memorable one-liners to enliven and captivate the crowd. But days to the fateful primary, panic spread all over the North regarding the challenge presented by the irrepressible Mr Wike. Suddenly, Alhaji Atiku did not seem unbeatable anymore. Indeed, he seems awfully vulnerable, and Mr Wike remarkably invincible. If the North did not immediately circle the wagons, as clannish and parochial as that may sound, Mr Wike, they feared, could pull an upset.