Before the All Progressives Congress (APC), happened on the political scene, ‘one chance’ as a street lingo, had a tinge of notorious prominence, in our cities. It referred to those buses or cars, whose driver and primary occupants are pick-pockets on the prowl, but who pretend that the car or bus is nearly filled up by genuine passengers, and they are looking for few more passengers before they hit the highway to a determined destination. So, while the driver of the car or the bus conductor is shouting the destination, he will for effect, add that it is ‘one chance’, to fill up.
Then came APC with its change agenda and a promise to take Nigerians to the destination of choice. Unfortunately, with the journey turning chaotic, many Nigerians now believe they made a wrong choice. In fact, many have begun to deride the party as a ‘one chance’ vehicle, with all the stinging derision, for party members and sympathizers. To add to APC’s injury, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, last week fired a tornado, to decimate what remains of the party’s reputation. But luckily, the committee headed by Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, has thrown a life boat, and it is my earnest hope that President Muhammadu Buhari and other party leaders will scramble onto this ‘one chance’, for party and country.
Whether the President is re-contesting in 2019 or not, he can only ignore the queries raised in Obasanjo’s letter at his own peril. To ignore the warning signs of the tornado, dramatically emblematized by the former President’s epistle is to play an ostrich. So, the president should heed the warning of the former president and put his house in order. Luckily, the gravest allegation against the president is clannish parochialism and that can be resolved within 24 hours if the will is there. The president merely needs to re-jig our nation’s security chiefs and make it nationalistic in outlook. He would then give a matching order to the new chiefs to rout the criminals who have given president’s ethnic group a bad name.
The same he can do about other key officials which give him away as a sectional leader. I do not buy by the excuse that President Buhari is provincial, or that his circle of friends is limited to those from his region of the country, or who practice the same religion with him as justification for the lopsided appointments. To win the election in 2015, the president relied on leaders from across the country and so, to govern, he has to rely on fellow leaders to nominate credible persons from across the country. Once he deals with those two principal charges, the party’s fortunes will ricochet, while the el-Rufai life boat will re-float the party’s fortune.
If the president is interested in how history will judge his presidency, he must wean himself of the parasites who lie to him that they can save his presidency even if he retains the ongoing trajectory. El-Rufai would have seen the futility of deriding those asking for a more workable federation, to allow his committee make the far reaching suggestions, submitted to the party leadership, last week. Few months ago, he had talked down on those advocating for restructuring, but the report of the committee he chaired is spot on with respect to some of the changes we need to make to save our country. To recommend otherwise, would have been foolish. After all, few years ago, while Goodluck Jonathan was president, some Ijaws saw themselves as privileged, but now, few years down the line, many of them are on the run from the law.
So, it will be unreasonable for the Fulani elite to allow the so-called Bororo Fulani, who have been fingered as the cause of the ethnic cleansing in parts of the Middle Belt to make them endangered species in Nigeria at the end of Buhari’s government sooner or later. For it should be obvious to these elites that the privileges they currently enjoy while their kit and kin dominate positions of authority, as security chiefs, will end someday. Of note, barring the challenges which Obasanjo’s letter succinctly enumerated, Buhari has the discipline to make Nigeria great and he should rise up to the challenge.
To show how bad things are, the grand larceny committed against our country by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 16 years it held power is now being dressed as a better period than this era by some Nigerians; and that is a result of the twin challenge of clannish parochialism and herdsmen inspired attacks. Yet, PDP was a party, which could not differentiate the nation’s purse from that of the party; a party whose officials instead of seeing a public appointment as an opportunity to serve, saw it as an opportunity to come and eat, as late Chief Sunday Afolabi, famously reminded Chief Bola Ige.
As things are, the PDP losers in 2015, who were scorned as wailing wailers, have begun to regain their voice, and now call the APC experiment, a fiasco. The APC must therefore wake up from its slumber, and galvanise the National Assembly to amend relevant portions of the 1999 constitution, the Land Use Act, the Oil Minerals and Mining Act, as well as the Petroleum Profit Act, as recommended by the el-Rufai led committee, set up by the party last year, and which just submitted its report. Thankfully, El-Rufai said the relevant amendment bills are ready; so the party should prevail on the president to send the proposals to the National Assembly as executive bills.
There is a school of thought that says the El-Rufai’s committee’s sudden favourable report, is just to deflate the crisis caused by the herdsmen attack. Such conspiracy theorists also dismiss the claim by the DSS last week, that members of the Islamic State were arrested in Benue, calling the press statement, a decoy to diffuse the failings of our security agencies and their alleged sympathy for the herdsmen. These are grave allegations, which I hope is a lie.
For if those allegations are true, then our country may be in far deeper crisis than we imagine. What I think is unfortunately going on is that like in the past, some members of the president’s ethnic group are merely fantasizing about their ethnic exceptional-ism and are doing terrible things to progress it. But as our history bears out, those efforts instead of bringing long term progress to the ethnic group, rather brings pain and frustration, sooner or later.
My take is that Buhari’s presidency, despite its unforced errors, should be encouraged by Nigerians to implement El-Rufais’s committee’s report and to stop the descent into anarchy, across the country. That report is the real ‘one chance’ to make a difference. The consequences of failings to do so may be too grievous for our country – polarised along tribe and religion.
