Category: Festus Eriye

 Festus Eriye

How times have changed! It wasn’t too long ago that President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman was defending his silence at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak as a matter of style. Now, in the space of four weeks he has delivered three broadcasts!

I never thought the day would come when people would look forward so expectantly to a Buhari speech. Given rising tension over the four-week lockdown, such was the anticipation that someone in Aso Rock leaked a rough draft of the address and it was all over social media in minutes.

Two weeks ago, the president warned the ‘lockdown would last as long as was necessary’. He said lifting it would depend largely on what science had to say. On Monday, as he announced a gradual easing in Lagos, Ogun and FCT, it was clear economics had trumped science.

For weeks in this diary, I had reported how widespread poverty was undermining the lockdown.

So while he talked up the positives of the shutdown, Buhari admitted Nigeria couldn’t pay the economic price.

For now, those who made the case that hunger would kill more people than the virus may have had their way, but it could very well turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.

It is certain that as the population mingles more, the rate of infection would spike. It is good talking about wearing masks, washing hands and keeping a safe distance, but as we have seen during the lockdown enforcing these things is a tall order. If we couldn’t curtail massive violations of the stay-at-home directives, I doubt whether we can be too optimistic about policing curfew and wearing of face masks.

We don’t have adequate public transportation in key cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano and Abuja. Mass transit remains in the realm of futuristic planning. So, today, it is a fond hope to expect any form of distancing in our danfo and molue buses, or in our cramped slums.

Knowing this, and knowing the nightmare scenarios that could play out, the government buckled under pressure and took away the only measure which, for now, appears to be blunting the virus.

Critical to this decision was the position of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), mostly politicians, who have to contend with pressure from a restive population.

To be fair, the coronavirus emergency caught many nations and governments by surprise. For most the experience has been akin to feeling their way about in the dark.

Many governors are rushing around issuing decrees about a situation they haven’t taken time to understand. In Ebonyi State, Governor Dave Umahi, threatened those who wouldn’t wear face coverings with floggings. I understand his need to look busy, but for a while it felt like being in a time warp listening to a military governor.

On television recently, the Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, was asked what magic has kept his state out of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control’s (NCDC) daily Covid-19 rankings. He replied that they had an app for monitoring the situation! Oh, really!

His state is like a few others who appear to think that the coronavirus infection is some badge of shame to be avoided at all cost! It’s as if they are in a beauty contest and any outbreak would mar their looks.

Take the case of Akwa Ibom State which at the outset was virtually forced to shut down schools. When the NCDC announced the first set of cases in the state, the Health Commissioner disputed the figures with such vehemence you feared he would head for the Supreme Court to challenge them. Just the other day, the state’s chief epidemiologist was fired for ordering 30 tests which his boss felt was excessive. Amazing!

It’s like a man who shuts his eyes all morning just to deny that day has broken.

In Kano State, it’s a similar scenario. With over 600 people dying in matter of days, the authorities were struggling to blame it all on malaria, diabetes and assorted maladies. Some equally pointed out Covid-19 wasn’t such a swift executioner.

But given that there was no functioning testing facility on ground and the government was playing religious and political games when drastic action was called for, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that coronavirus has been reaping a grim harvest here.

Elsewhere, the constant refrain about hunger made the federal government’s offers of help a hot topic. Oyo and Akwa Ibom States which were given 1,800 bags of rice each as ‘palliatives’, looked the gift horse squarely in the mouth and said no, thanks. According to them the items were weevil-infested, expired and unsafe for human consumption.

It’s been a tough time for vulnerable groups. Take the almajiris – children street beggars across the north. Kano and Kaduna have ordered their expulsion to curtail the spread of coronavirus. When I see northern governors taking such steps it makes me wonder whatever happened to regional, ethnic or religious solidarity.

Apparently, in the time of coronavirus self-preservation has buried the same regional identity deployed for many dubious political ends at other times. Now, it’s every state for itself!

As the nation enters the next phase of the battle against the pandemic, I am struck by the prevalent lack of understanding of our new reality. For many, easing the lockdown means a return to life as we knew it. Not so. It is actually the beginning of the journey into an uncertain future.

The lockdown didn’t kill the virus; unlocking it won’t make it disappear. The pandemic still lives with us; that’s why certain countries are insisting there would be no easing up until infections drop to certain levels. Two weeks ago the national total in Nigeria was a little over 300. As of yesterday that figure was 1,337. Who knows what further testing in hotspots like Lagos and Kano would reveal?

Now we can dart around from 6.00am to 8.00pm until the curfew kicks in. But it is doubtful what good this would do because even in normal times vehicular movements and human interactions diminish as night falls. Our populations are actually locked down nightly, making this new curfew superfluous.

Festus Eriye

As the initial 14-day lockdown ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja, drew to a close last week, pent up frustrations began to boil over. One 30-something man’s road rage captured in a viral video somewhere in the federal capital summed up the feelings of many.

Security agents had just impounded his taxi for breaching the stay-at-home order to eke out something for his family to feed. Cue the most unusual one-man protest you would ever see. Ranting and raving about the injustice that had been meted to him, he starts shedding clothes until he was left with just his boxers.

Reporters who recorded the bizarre striptease asked why he was out when the government had expressly asked people to stay home. He retorted that he couldn’t remain indoors as he had a wife and two kids to feed.

Reminded that the lockdown directive was for his wellbeing, he replied that he wasn’t worried about death by coronavirus as the ‘hunger virus’ would probably finish him off before Covid-19 has the pleasure.

In another surreal video filmed in Igbore, Abeokuta, Ogun State, an elderly woman of indeterminate age was captured offering sex to any man who would pay N500 so she could feed her children! The footage was posted last Friday by journalist Kolawale Atanda Adejojo on his Instagram page.

Incredulous, her interviewer wondered if she could still be involved in such amorous activity at her age just to feed. “Why not”, she replied matter-of-factly. This poor woman’s desperate deployment of her last remaining asset just to keep hunger at bay for another day attracted the attention of the likes of celebrity music producer, Don Jazzy, who despatched N100,000 to her as an act of mercy.

The lockdown threw up many other acts of desperation revolving round the themes of hunger and poverty. In the last 72 hours newspapers were awash with tales of street gangs swarming all over neighbourhoods in Lagos and Ogun States, dispossessing hapless citizens of their possessions.

Some of these teenage criminal gangs with names like ‘One Million Boys’, ‘Awawa Boys,’ are not spontaneous by-products of the coronavirus crisis. They have long operated in different areas of Lagos where they are noted for their proclivity for violence.

For those who had been groaning about the deprivations of the shutdown, the sudden rash of robberies was the perfect storm of misery. Many cowered in their homes and sent SOS to the police who most times were of no help. In one particular case, a caller got through but was told that their cells were already full!

Quickly grasping that help wasn’t coming from the security agencies any time soon, communities rose up as one in self-help. Young and old turned vigilantes patrolling their streets all night to ward off would-be invaders. By weekend many who had been moaning about hunger now had sleep starvation to add to their woes.

Underlying these dramatic incidents is the very real dilemma of how to balance the benefits of the lockdown against the need for people earn a living. Several countries are battling with this. There have been protests in India where the nationwide lockdown has been extended to May 3; in the US people who are conscious of the dangers of the virus, are just as terrified of losing their jobs.

President Donald Trump doesn’t want to see too many deaths arising from the pandemic, but is concerned about the damage being done to the economy by the extended shutdown. He has openly wondered whether the cure may not be more devastating than the ailment.

It was the same question President Muhammadu Buhari had to address in his second national address in two weeks. Acknowledging the sufferings of millions who survive on a daily income, he warned that the pandemic was ‘not a joke’ and called on people to endure.

To underline the seriousness of the situation, he pointed to examples of mosques in Mecca and Medina which have been shut throughout this period, as well as the Pope delivering his Easter homily to an empty St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

But his examples were foreign ones too far-removed for millions of his listeners to relate. In today’s Nigeria not too many are impressed about the severity of Covid-19. It doesn’t matter how much preaching is done by public officials.

A colleague told me of an encounter with a middle level police officer mid-week. He was dismissive when she made a case for sustaining the current measures. His every word dripping cynicism, he asked if she had encountered any Covid-19 patient. He then declared that it was just a ruse by people in power to embezzle money!

We face a massive task of getting people to take the pandemic seriously. Evidence all over the world suggests that many don’t stop to take notice until things get to a crisis point.

Even in the UK where people are dying by the hundreds every day, newspapers have been forced into shaming ‘covidiots’ who keep flouting lockdown guidelines. Imagine how much harder it is to drive home your message when officially total fatalities in Nigeria are just 10.

Even worse, I sense dwindling enthusiasm for enforcing the restrictions on the part of security agents. If the lockdown is being increasingly compromised you wonder what good it is doing. Are we just going through the motions or truly aiming to achieve an end?

Buhari and the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 have stated that great progress was made slowing the spread of the virus in the last fortnight. This suggests that more of the same medicine in the next two weeks could result in further improvements.

Unless there is a sudden deterioration, we must begin to prepare for life post-shutdown.

Given the strains and stresses on the populace in the areas affected by the lockdown, it is hard to see how this measure can be sustained for much longer. Irrespective of the uncertainties, pressure is bound to increase on government to ease the restrictions unless it can show that things are worse than we thought.

Festus Eriye

Tuesday, March 31, 2020: it’s the first day of the shutdown of Lagos ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari, as the government battles to rein in the coronavirus outbreak before it deteriorates into community transmission stage.

My work allows me to move about. As I coasted down the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, the commute which, on the best of days, takes a little over an hour to get to the office is accomplished in under 30 minutes.

A strange serenity has descended upon this notoriously boisterous city. Even police at the only checkpoint I encounter are unusually polite and respectful. Was it something about me or just the cops showing due deference to a deadly microbe?

The female among them held up an authoritative hand to halt my journey, but she kept a healthy distance and asked that I identify myself. I brandish my identity card and offer it to her for a more thorough examination. She declines, asking that I just flash it before her.

The last time I ran into some of her colleagues in the good old pre-COVID-19 days, the officer who went through my particulars with a fine toothcomb, was half inside my car and half outside. Truly, this virus is changing our world – perhaps for the better.

But even as it goes about its assignment in wrecking ball fashion, everyone from scientist to politician is trying to understand it. In a way, the outbreak is like the mythical elephant which several blind men touched and tried to describe. We’ll explore this more in future diaries.

It is, of course, a pandemic. Such phenomena are not new and people react to them according to their environment and times.

At a time when entertainment of all sorts has been shuttered up, the coronavirus crisis has become spectator sport on Nigerian social media. Those who haven’t been infected, and assume they will never pick it up, gleefully share updates about the latest celebrity or politician who has been struck down.

It is a chance for the embittered and disenfranchised to vent their frustration and wish the most evil outcomes on the afflicted rich and powerful.

I recall being shocked by some comments under a post announcing that Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, had tested positive. With a barely disguised ‘serves him right’ air one commentator asked the poster “What about the other person? I hope you understand who I mean by the ‘other person’?”

I am sure you also have a clue as to who the ‘other person’ being referred to is. It is just beyond the pale not to know where to draw the line no matter how bitter we are against our leaders.

For their part, the elite need to take a good look at themselves and ask ‘Why are we so hated?’ They should go beyond the bile spewed in their direction and analyse the underlying message.

As hatred has boiled over, the better amongst us have wondered what happened to our humanity. Well, it took flight the moment it became evident the virus meant business. Automatically, man’s innate instinct for self-preservation kicked in. Even your closest family members would give you a suspicious look were you to cough ever so lightly these days.

No one wants you to mess up their nice lives with an inconvenient infection. But let’s all remember that COVID-19 only brings sickness. Anyone can contract it and when the shoe is on the other foot we would expect to be treated with compassion.

Coronavirus has sparked a festival of fear across the globe. The world is buckling under an overload of scary news. It is coming at you by bucket load via every digital or mainstream media platform known to man. On Whatsapp you are bombarded with a steady stream of unsolicited ‘helpful’ videos, all trying to teach you everything from staving off the disease, to how to know when it has come upon you!

Death is so unattractive, so a people who are not famous for orderliness and obeying rules are suddenly falling over themselves to follow instructions. They are washing their hands fastidiously and coating same with sanitiser.

Everywhere you go men and women have face masks over their mouths and noses. The crowds look like participants in a costume party with a horror movie theme. It is corona fashion and it has come to stay because no one wants to die. How I wish that flimsy mask on its own is enough to stave off this deadly nuisance!

Amidst all the gloom and doom, a young woman, Miss Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi, who has just been discharged after coming down with COVID-19, has been reminding us that the disease is not necessarily a death sentence.

Osowobi’s story is important – not just as an encouraging tale of triumph in the face of unrelenting flood of doomsday updates, it is significant because she wasn’t afraid of being stigmatised. It bears repeating that this is just illness and not some crime to be ashamed of.

The fear of stigma has driven too many who may be infected underground within our communities. They are a ticking time bomb that should do the right thing: own up, isolate and receive proper care.

As of Tuesday, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) updates put the total number of known cases in Nigeria at 135. This is still relatively low given what is happening in Spain, Italy, Iran and the US. It may be God’s way of buying us time to ramp up provisions for testing, ventilators and isolation facilities.

The level of poverty in our society makes it imperative that we move fast to head off further spread within communities. Social distancing has its place but there’s a limit to what it can accomplish in this environment.

It is virtually impossible to practise it in some of the poorest neighbourhoods where, households of up to seven persons may be cramped in a small room within bungalow housing up to 10 such family groups.

Festus Eriye

I searched frantically for something positive to report about the novel coronavirus pandemic but with little success. The grim death toll in parts of the world like Italy, Iran and Spain; the rapid rate of infections and the increasingly tough steps governments are taking to contain the disease, seem more like something out of a Hollywood epic.

‘Contagion, ‘Quarantine’, ‘Outbreak’, ‘Cabin Fever’ are just some of those popular virus-related movies that capture the sort of scenarios we are living through – a clear case of life imitating art.

I doubt whether Hollywood’s best could have scripted what is playing out globally. Movies are entertaining, but the times are anything but amusing.

Put simply the world as we know it has been shut down by a virus! Humans who are social beings by nature are being forced into isolation and, in some instances, solitary confinement, by a microbe.

Sport, travel, entertainment have all been outlawed indefinitely. No one can hazard when normalcy would return. The estimates range from weeks to months. The future has become one hazy maze.

Here in the Nigeria, the swift upturning of life as we know it is gathering pace. Workers are being sent home, offices and factories are shutting down, an intensely religious people are being told they can’t congregate in mosques and churches if they love their lives. It’s enough for one to start tweeting #BringBackOurWorld!

More frightening than the prospect of infection is the fact that despite the posturing and valiant attempts to project leadership, governments across the world are just making up ‘solutions’ as they go along.

Without a cure, without a vaccine in sight, many are reduced to holding press conferences that offer little more than hope and encouragement.

But in situations like these hope and encouragement are not to be sneered at. Human beings live for hope, for without it they are hopeless. Everyone wants to believe that there would be light at the end of the long, dark tunnel.

That was the point President Muhammadu Buhari’s minders missed when Nigerians were asking him to speak up. His defenders cynically asked whether it was his speech or action that mattered. They both count. A leader not only acts, he engages his people regularly to ensure they buy into his actions.

In the end Buhari was dragged kicking and screaming to make a belated speech – the essence of which was lost in the mocking chorus about a pronunciation malfunction. Even worse, it felt like a soulless attempt at fulfilling all righteousness because the moment when it would have mattered and made a connection with the people had been missed.

To understand the powerful impact of statements by leaders in times like these, you only have to look at the effect the rash announcement by US President Donald Trump that chloroquine had been approved for treating coronavirus and could be the ‘game-changer’ in dealing with the crisis, had on people around the world.

His careless utterance, despite being contradicted on live television by his top medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was lapped up by excitable Nigerians who swiftly mopped up the drug, and started bingeing on it in firm assurance that they would conquer the virus. Their misadventure landed many in hospital with cases of chloroquine poisoning.

But credit must go to the Lagos and Ogun State governments who right from when the index case was identified took proactive steps while the Federal Government slept. Even when countries started acting to delay the spread by introducing flight restrictions, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, inexplicably declared that our doors would remain open because the transmission risk wasn’t yet high.

Less than a week after his curious statement, the government banned flights from 13 countries. Tardy, but better late than never. Today, there’s a presidential task force in place attempting to deal with issue.

Unfortunately, the cavalier attitude to the problem which has been on display for weeks is already having dire repercussions. Yesterday, news broke that the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari, had tested positive to COVID-19.

It has emerged that after he returned from a trip to Germany he didn’t immediately self-isolate as is required, but interacted and held meetings with other senior officials of the administration until he began displaying suspicious symptoms last Sunday.

The upshot is that all who had contact with him in that period – family members inclusive – could have been infected.

At least Kyari willingly submitted himself for testing even if belatedly. A few days ago Ehanire complained that some people who returned to the country and were believed to have been infected while overseas, had gone into hiding.

This suggests that the 42 cases so far reported by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) may be grossly understated.

One of the worst aspects of the COVID-19 crisis is adults behaving badly. Social distancing has become a familiar phrase but in many circles it is a concept some are yet to embrace. They have simply ignored advice that constricts their lifestyle or warns against mixing with crowds.

People need to understand that the coronavirus at this point can only be defeated by delaying the rate of its spread. This ensures that too many people don’t fall sick at the same time – overwhelming limited facilities. For that to happen we all need to make the sacrifices required to protect our families and communities from this rampaging plague.

On the bright side, the outbreak provides an opportunity for government to build up healthcare infrastructure in anticipation of the next pandemic.

It seems like such an obvious lesson because even the well-heeled who can afford to flee to the ends of the earth for the best medical care cannot do so now because the world is locked down. They are forced to make do with local facilities and solutions. But given our history, I am not convinced that the lesson would be internalised by those who should.

Festus Eriye

On many fronts, Nigeria is a disaster waiting to happen. We are confronted with evidence daily but those who can make a difference appear powerless or have the wrong priorities.

Sunday’s explosion at the Abule-Ado suburb of Lagos which has already claimed 20 lives and left scores injured, is a reminder of how cheap life is in Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari has called the incident “unfortunate.” Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu rushed off to Abuja with pictorial evidence perhaps to drive home the scale of the calamity. Hopefully, federal assistance may be forthcoming as a result of the trip.

There are natural disasters over which little or nothing can be done – earthquakes, flood, mudslides, volcanic eruptions and the like. Accidents will happen but some are avoidable. Was this an avoidable incident or a man-made disaster?

A senior official of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has revealed that an eight-tonne truck laden with core stone was parked on the pipeline and exerted too much pressure on it for an extended period. Fuel that escaped from it soon saturated the atmosphere, creating the setting for one almighty explosion.

The chain of events leading to the Abule-Ado disaster are repeated every day in cities across the country. You have people building on drainage channels, under high tension electricity lines or next to pipelines carrying petrol.

Those who should check these infractions simply turn the other way. Were another “unfortunate” Nigerian disaster to occur would such government officials be guilty of incompetence, negligence, corruption or manslaughter? You be the judge.

The truck now blamed for the incident reportedly broke down and was abandoned by an individual who was probably ignorant of what his casual act could lead to.

He could have made an effort to get a van to tow his crippled vehicle away to safe ground. He didn’t and today at least 20 innocent souls are dead. Is this manslaughter or just another “unfortunate” Nigerian calamity? You be the judge.

Although the damaged houses in Abule-Ado were not exactly sitting on the pipeline, they were close enough to be eviscerated by the force of the blast. This raises the question of how casually we treat town planning laws. In Lagos and many other places it is no longer a strange sight to find a gas plant or petrol station sited in the midst of densely populated areas.

Some of these places are not mixed residential-industrial developments. But some official betrayed public trust and approved the siting of a station for dispensing flammable substances where it not only hinders traffic flow but endangers life.

In the light of a series of terrible disasters that have occurred in recent years when vandals broke into pipelines and sparked off infernos, we ought to reconsider what is a safe distance to build in the vicinity of pipelines and gas plants.

Although they mouth all the right platitudes, our approach to enforcement shows that public safety is not such a high priority for our governments. Today, we are mourning the hapless who perished last Sunday. But we continue to flirt with disaster in many other ways in Lagos.

In the past, I have argued that the dangerous act of driving against traffic has become almost cultural for road users. Many regard it as the normal thing to do at the least sign of inconvenience and over the years casual enforcement of the rules has reinforced this belief. That is until another disaster happens and public officials queue up to offer lame condolences that would have been unnecessary had the right things been done.

But then Lagos is way ahead of many states in its commitment to public safety. Its reforms are being copied by others. Former Governor Akinwumi Ambode invested heavily in the emergency services and the city is reaping the benefits. Still, we remain a long way off.

In many states and at federal level you can hardly find functional fire trucks and heavy duty equipment needed by the emergency and rescue agencies.

Yet the House of Representatives just voted billions to buy members shiny new automobiles. Fresh from his transformation from election loser to miracle governor, one of Senator Douye Diri’s first gubernatorial acts in Bayelsa State, was to expend a couple of billions for the purchase of new cars. How many ambulances or fire trucks does the state have?

The Federal Government’s response to the Coronavirus action is another example of how we flirt with disaster. President Buhari hasn’t thought it necessary to address Nigerians to drive home the gravity of the health challenge. From Ghana to Canada, US to UK, presidents and Prime Ministers are speaking words of comfort to their people.

These leaders recognize that the outbreak is almost a war situation and have been fronting up the campaigns to reassure their people.

Interestingly, we shut our borders because of rice smugglers, but won’t restrict access into our shores for people coming from coronavirus endemic countries. We shut the border against a threat to our income, but have left it wide open to a threat to life. Remember, only the living can earn an income.

Scientifically, there has been no clear explanation why the virus has not exploded in Africa. But cases have been reported in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt to name a few. So we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that our dark skin frightens the coronavirus.

If countries with more resources and better healthcare facilities are taking drastic steps to lockdown cities and restrict mass gatherings, it beggars belief that given the inadequacies of our system, presidential leadership is so lacking at a time it is sorely needed.

What is the contingency plan if there were an outbreak in a society where many people cannot afford to be quarantined or self-isolated because they cannot survive without eking out daily income? Is there a plan for enforcing lockdown of communities and towns if it comes to that?

It is already happening across the globe and any sense of Nigerian exceptionalism is just self-delusion.

By  Festus Eriye

Even if someone with character traits directly opposite to those of All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, were running the show, the civil war in the ruling party would still have been fought.

Among other things, some critics have dubbed the former labour leader an inflexible dictator who lacks the temperament to run an organisation as complex as a ruling party.

Oshiomhole’s predecessor, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, was the deliberate and diplomatic type. But he was perceived as weak and unable to get rebellious elements within APC to tow the party line.

Under his watch, former Senate President Bukola Saraki and House Speaker Yakubu Dogara, defied the party and emerged leaders of the National Assembly after cutting deals that virtually handed control of the legislature to the opposition.

Despite the outrage that greeted their manoeuvre, the offenders didn’t even get a tap on the wrist by way of censure.

By the time of Oyegun’s ouster APC was yearning for a national chairman who could restore order in a system where certain individuals – especially governors – had come to think that the rules didn’t apply to them and that it was their way or the highway.

They were used to that under Oyegun, but to actually see Oshiomhole make a stab of enforcing party supremacy was something of a culture shock. Ibikunle Amosun in Ogun State, Rochas Okorocha in Imo and Abdulaziz Yari in Zamfara are yet to come to terms with the fact that persons other than their preferred choices are now governors in their states.

What the present power struggle is exposing is that influential politicians in APC merely mouthed ‘change.’ What they wanted was a change of faces, but not a radical departure from business as usual.

This tussle is about control of the party and its structures for the short and long term. All sides would like a party chair who is beholden to them and always favours their interests. But that is impossible in a party with APC’s history, or in any democratic organisation where people are free to canvass differing agendas.

Under President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, faced similar opposition from governors who felt he didn’t sufficiently appreciate their relevance with the party and treated them like kindergarten kids.

This is not to suggest that Oshiomhole hasn’t made mistakes. His foes would hand you with a list of failings an arm long. Many find his longwinded style grating, but they had tried the gentler Oyegun and opted for change. APC leaders knew what they were getting when they went looking for the comrade.

However, the fierceness of the battle is down to the fact that whoever is chairman in the next 24 months could smoothen or derail the path to power for the ambitious.

Power intoxicates and amnesia is its key side-effect. That is the reason politicians repeat the mistakes that undid their predecessors.

The cocky PDP lost its grip on power not because its members were worse than those from other parties. They blew it because they could not manage internal contestation for power.

They dreamt of a 60-year hegemony and may still be in office but for a series of unforced errors. They became overfamiliar with power and the leaders arrogant and consumed with their own false sense of invincibility.

The divisions within lead to the dramatic exit from the party in one day of five governors and the likes of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Saraki.

Knowing how powerful state governors are in the Nigeria system, it was the height of haughtiness to let five depart your ranks and go on to strength the opposition, without bending over backwards to mollify them.

I remember Jonathan dismissing the departed as troublemakers who the party wouldn’t miss.

In reality the entrance of the five PDP governors transformed the APC into a totally different proposition. Imagine if the then ruling party had managed to retain the ‘Offended Five’? APC may never have won the 2015 polls because it would have struggled with the challenge of national spread.

Between 2014 and 2015, intractable internal battles messed up the ruling party. Now the APC which swept to power promising to do things differently are suddenly more interested in a fight to the death over the national chairmanship than in sustaining their grip on power.

Whether Oshiomhole remains chair or is ousted, the APC has already poisoned itself. Internal cohesion has been affected and the bitter fallout from this battle for control means the party could be weaker going into the next elections – unless it is able to heal its wounds quickly.

Given the manner of its formation it was inevitable that the current conflict would occur at some point. In 2015, the need to unseat PDP was such a powerful imperative that the gladiators temporarily sheathed their swords.

But APC leaders and members have now become so used to being in power. Life in opposition is a distant memory such that they are not bothered that their present free-for-all could lead to a speedy return to the political wilderness.

You get a sense of déjà vu that like the PDP circa 2014, some of the ruling party’s leaders have also reached that point where they have started believing their own invincibility.

The reality is if an upstart APC could topple an entrenched ruling party, nothing stops history from repeating itself. The main opposition party controls 15 out of 36 states. That is a much stronger position than APC was in when it started to challenge the PDP Goliath in 2013.

Also, in three years the Buhari factor that guaranteed 12 million votes in the North may no longer be there. The region would be open territory thereby changing the dynamics of the contest.

Rather than thinking of how it can produce another game-changer the way Buhari was in 2015, the APC with its current battles is letting in the football equivalent of an own goal. History would not be kind to the protagonists.