Let’s make no mistake about it. The decision by a preponderant majority of members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at its February 27th, 2018, meeting to extend the tenure of the party’s Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC) by one year was a subtly designed and swiftly executed attempted coup d’état. It is a grand irony that it took a retired General who is himself not a stranger to military coups in Nigeria’s political history, President Muhammadu Buhari, whose political aloofness and taciturnity is legendary, to draw the array of experienced politicians, seasoned senior lawyers, other assorted professionals and astute administrators who make up the APC’s NEC to the path of legality and elevated morality and away from a potentially self-destructive lane strewn with legal landmines. This was at the March 27th meeting of the party’s NEC where the President had to diplomatically overrule the NEC on the matter.
Whatever, may have been the altruistic love of party garb in which the tenure elongation ambit may have been adorned, its purpose was all too obvious. It was to gift members of the NWC an elongated tenure beyond their legal term limits without their having to face any challenges from party members who ordinarily have the constitutional right to seek to actualize their legitimate aspirations in intra-party polls. This was in essence a forceful and abrasive abridgement of the rights of the latter. Was this because the brains behind this move loved the Oyegun-led NWC so much that they wouldn’t mind their continuing in office for as long as possible? Not on your life. The NWC beneficiaries of this gesture, it can be logically argued, would be naturally expected to demonstrate due gratitude to their benefactors when the latter, particularly aspirants to executive and legislative seats in forthcoming elections, were either contesting party primaries or sponsoring others to do so. Surely, one good turn deserves another?
And also naturally excited at the prospects of also benefitting from the tenure elongation bonus granted the NWC members, party officials at state and local government levels enthusiastically clambered aboard the one year extension life line. Was it not a character in one of the inimitable Chinua Achebe’s works who wondered if a man who was lucky enough to have a juicy morsel thrust in his mouth was expected to spew it out most foolishly? In all this self-seeking permutations and calculations, unfortunately, little thought was given to the ethical standing of the APC, a self-professed progressive party, in the estimation of at least a critical segment of the public.
With the Machiavellian ruthlessness and unflappable cynicism that leading lights of the APC have exhibited in the entire tenure elongation gambit, it is obvious that the so-called moral distinction that some seek to draw between the APC and PDP is entirely illusory. The APC’s tenure elongation misadventure is a form of political corruption no less opprobrious than the humongous fiscal malfeasance it has stridently criticized the PDP for.
Even more damagingly, it does not seem to occur to the APC and its tenure elongation constitutional witches, wizards, sorcerers and conjurers that if it cannot be seen to exercise fidelity to its own rules and processes in managing its own affairs, particularly intra-party contests, it cannot convince anyone that it possesses the integrity and faith in democracy to conduct free, fair, credible and generally acceptable elections for the country. In a bid to ensure his continuity in office through illegal tenure elongation rather than seeking the popular mandate of party members in intra-party polls, Chief Oyegun has suddenly been exhibiting a commendable burst of energy, dynamism, creative bureaucratic filibustering and deft political fox trotting. Pray, where were all these qualities in the last four years as the party tottered, fractured, decayed and degenerated under his distracted, inattentive and somnolent watch? The suspended chairman of the Ondo State chapter of the APC, Mr. Isaac Kekemeke, made the point vividly: “My problem is that there is no single place that the current National Chairman has been able to resolve crisis within the party; he is part of the crisis…For him, once you don’t have power or you don’t have money, you will be suppressed forever. That is why we have crisis everywhere…and he (Oyegun) has not been able to resolve any of them”.
As the model Officer/Gentleman that he is, President Buhari has been gingerly trying to carry every tendency in the party along without compromising his principled commitment to legality and fairness. Thus, addressing the party’s last NEC meeting before he travelled to the UK, Buhari stressed the need to grant members of NEC seeking re-election necessary constitutionally guaranteed waivers in order to enable them contest to realize their ambitions. Adumbrating on the President’s viewpoint, the Plateau State Governor and the APC Technical Committee on Tenure Elongation, Mr. Simon Lalong, also laid emphasis on the need to grant NWC members waivers to contest for party positions if they so desire without having to resign their positions 30 days before the date of nomination or the party primary as required by Article 31 1 (iii) of the APC constitution.
Citing Article 31 1 (iii) of the party constitution and the 21 days notice that must be served the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the party congresses and convention, Lalong said: “If we are going to comply with this, the constitution requires that certain waivers be granted to those who are crying they will be disenfranchised…we are not saints, we are not angels. It is assumed that in the course of doing things, there may be unforeseen circumstances that will stop you or you reach a brick wall and therefore fail to conclude the exercise. That was the option that was made by the party, in creating an opportunity for you when you get to that brick-wall”.
The governor seems to be engaged here in the linguistic equivalent of political glossolalia (speaking in tongues). It is difficult to decipher what he means. There are no unforeseen circumstances. There is no brick wall whatsoever. There can be no justifiable excuses for not concluding any party congresses and conventions within set time frames. All we have had is the inexcusable lethargy, complacency, indolence, and utter indifference and arrogance of the Oyegun-led NWC, the party leadership as a whole and the rank and file of party members in ensuring that the party is alive to its responsibilities.
In a memo to the APC NEC at its Monday meeting, published by this newspaper on Wednesday and which has not been denied, Oyegun quotes the Lalong committee’s report as concluding that the NEC’s tenure elongation decision of February 27th is constitutionally valid after citing relevant statutes and authorities. According to the Chairman, “In essence, APC is competent through its relevant organs, to constitute caretaker committees to run the affairs of the party upon the expiration of the tenure of its elected party officials, where, for some reasons, it is impracticable to hold elections before the requisite effluxion of time”. Rather than this sophistry, Oyegun should be apologizing profusely and remorsefully for leading the party to this sorry pass through sheer leadership ineptness.
Even then, the tenure of party executives expires on June 13. Between now and then are at least 60 days. This is sufficient time to meet the 21 days notice to be given INEC and the 30 days requirement for NWC members seeking re-election to resign. To ask NWC members who want to contest the primaries and return to their positions not to resign and thus be, indirectly, organizers and judges in a contest in which they are participants will be absolutely farcical. It will mean tenure elongation through the backdoor and the success of a coup that never ought to have been contemplated in the first place.
And why is pmb seeking re-election?
Whatever may have been the shortcomings and failings of his last three years in power, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has made some difficult to ignore strides in its three core areas of focus – enhancing security, fighting corruption and resuscitating the economy. The ascetic General certainly did not unsuccessfully seek re-election thrice – 2003, 2007 and 2011 – before the 2015 electoral triumph only for him to tamely give up after a single term and go back to Daura. A desire to improve upon and consolidate his first term performance should be sufficient reason for PMB to seek a second term without recourse to the so-called clamour by Nigerians for him to seek re-election. Otherwise, he could also easily have hearkened to the no less vocal voices asking him not to run. It is difficult to prove if one group is more or less selfish or selfless than the other. Since 1999, those who have always threatened to commit suicide if incumbents do not seek a second term largely include an assortment of ethnic entrepreneurs, political gamblers, spiritual speculators and religious investors, opportunistic emergency contractors, yet to be apprehended lunatics on the loose, palace sycophants, bootlickers and comedians as well as scavengers in the corridors of power. No rational decision can be predicated on advice from such company.
