New Telegraph

2023, Buhari and APC’s illegalities

The lure for 2023 presidency has started gaining traction. The plots are becoming obvious, some kind of all-comers game, by those who feel they possess the know-how to lead the country, especially at a time when the nation has been castrated by poor leadership.

 

The party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), is apparently rudderless at present, driven by base instincts of those who are plotting to upstage the applecart in the build-up to the 2023 presidency.

 

It illegally dissolved the National Working Committee (NWC), by a virtual meeting attended by a few members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), sent the executive members packing, and installed an unelected Caretaker Committee headed by the Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mallam Buni.

 

The APC is working from answer to question, in desperate move by some aspirants to undo the power nexus of the APC. Six governors are the protagonists of this well-scripted plot to derobe some people and supplant their surrogates: Governors Lalong, Badaru, Yahaya Bello, Atiku, El-rufai, Fayemi, assisted by Rotimi Amaechi. In APC’s world, illegality has become the normative order. How do you remove or dissolve an elected body and replace it by sheer fiat, a hand-picked Caretaker Committee?

 

It is understood that politics in Nigeria is a game without honour. It is a game where processes are driven from the binoculars of the C-in-C, what he alone desires, what he intends and what he wishes.

 

Procedures are often broken and decisions are taken by the whimsical strokes of those who have the ears of the president. Nigerian politics is not just a dirty game, it is one where illegalities are cultivated with relish just to please the bulbous ego of the power apparatchik.

 

According to the relevant sections of the APC constitution, all elected party executives are statutorily bound to spend four years in any given position, just like the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria guarantees a four-year tenure for all elected persons in the various categories of election, including that of the president.

 

When there are erring members or executives, there are organs and committees of the party that are vested with the responsibilities to rein in members through constructive engagement to sustain decorum within the party.

 

The APC internal weakness became manifest since the president, is often looked upon to give a sense of direction. For a president who is presently encumbered by numerous challenges facing the country, getting actively involved in the running of the party, was going to be another political hara-kiri. Yet, he literarily sent the NWC packing and brought in a serving governor, who is also overwhelmed by insecurity in Yobe State, to preside over an illegal body unknown to the APC constitution.

 

The Governor of Yobe has inadvertently become a visiting Governor of Yobe State as a result of the needless assignment he was given by a few members called in the name of National Executive Committee (NEC). Buni does not spend quality time any longer in Yobe, a state that is presently ravaged by insurgents and kidnappers, the latest being the reported kidnap of 35 travellers along Damaturu-Maiduguri road four days ago.

 

The Yobe Governor is more interested in the power process of APC than offer leadership to a people that are desirous of his leadership. He shuttles between Damaturu and Abuja. He hardly spends 24 hours in Damaturu.

 

He runs the state from Abuja and seems more involved in the power play of APC than any meaningful contribution on how to unravel the insecurity that has held the state hostage for over 13 years. Aside from him being a meddlesome interloper if the ideal was to be the norm, the Yobe State Governor’s present assignment is grossly undemocratic and manifestly illegal.

 

How do you explain such a “fatwa” pronounced on all state chapters of the party, to replace elected executives with unelected, handpicked members, turning legality to illegality by the stroke of the pen?

 

That is the present reality of a ruling party that truly wants Nigeria to take it serious. Because the president is involved, you can feel the eerie silence from all quarters, even when there are murmurs and grumbles. Not done, the six months life span of the illegal Caretaker Committee was extended for another six months, during which time it is expected to conduct a national convention where executive officers of the party would be elected.

 

How do we run a democracy where decisions are taken by the stroke of the pen without due consultations amongst members and leaders of the party? How do you replace elected party executives with a four-year tenure with persons who were handpicked? Is President Buhari aware of the colossal damage that has been done to the psyche of the members? Does he understand the implications of his action and endorsement?

 

If the country is not running well, can’t the ruling party run well? Can’t the APC showcase itself as a democratic party to the admiration of its critics? Can’t the party, for once, prove bookmakers wrong in its terms of engagement and public conduct? Why must the party rub injury on its own face?

 

You have a case of double jeopardy at hand; a country that is crumbling and a party that is on the part of self-destruct. As a member, if you seek the legal option, you get expelled.

 

Hillard Etta, its erstwhile zonal vice chairman, is a handy reference. For seeking legal redress over the dissolution of the NWC, the party showed him the exit door. When a party is drunk with power, it sends her members away. PDP did such in 2014, by craving de-registration and re-registration and got its fingers burnt in 2015. It is yet to recover from that madness.

 

There is too much of arrogance oozing from APC’s oven of power, but it needs be reminded that power does not last forever. Just a day is enough to do a 360 degree about-turn. And I see that happening. My ears are loaded with soundbites from the grapevine that the sole motive for tinkering with the power equation of the APC is to undo Asiwaju Tinubu, the leader of the APC, who is rumoured to be interested in the 2023 presidential election.

 

But for Tinubu, the 2015 historical turning point of President Buhari would not have materialise. Having contested on three previous occasions, General Buhari was already becoming a political retiree until Tinubu railroaded his foot-soldiers to birth a Buhari presidency that has now become a monumental albatross. My experience in politics reminds me that no political structure is foolproof, only interest sustains.

 

Those you think are your foot-soldiers in any political contest or structure building, might end up as your nemesis. Some leaders in APC who are interested in the 2023 project may be plotting the downfall of a Tinubu, and may end up in his stomach when the time is ripe for real politics. I have seen so much in Nigeria’s political engineering that nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises me any longer.

 

The Tinubu that I know and saw as a former foundation member of the APC, is a long distance runner and consummate strategist, which he generously deployed in Lagos in 2014, to deliver General Muhammadu Buhari at the Teslim Balogun stadium of the convention. The rest, as they say, is now history.

 

Though not a fan of Asiwaju Tinubu, history must be stated correctly by those eye witness accounts. No matter what the latest political warlords may say, Tinubu was the prime factor that made the Buhari presidency feasible.

The APC-led Federal Government has been one of failure and driven by failed leadership. The party has become rudderless and voiceless in the affairs of the nation.

The party has abandoned its 41-item manifesto, surrendered its structures to the dictates of the president, and allowed some desperate presidential aspirants, to assume the role of new cabals. In the heat of insecurity, they go about, reaching out to political leaders, marketing their vaulting ambition.

 

Rather than secure the country first, so we could own a country before aspiring to govern it, this category of modern day aspirants especially those who have failed to lead their states successfully, have become blinded by their aspirations. The APC is caught in its own web.

 

By May next year, it will come up with another excuse to extend the tenure of Buni-led illegal Caretaker Committee, plot a graph of self-glorification, and works from answer to questions to commence a marathon race on its presidential track. In politics, if you think you are plotting the downfall of a man, you may end up strengthening his resolve. Party structures are never cast in iron and stones. Human capacity to derail, disappoint, betray and alter permutations makes politics and political calculation very fluid.

 

This is why the effort of the APC to work from answer to question may come to nought, if the party is unable to deliver leadership to a nation that is quagmire in the labyrinth of insecurity, poverty and hunger. If APC must show leadership, it must respect its own constitution and article of faith captured in its several rules of engagement. APC has shown itself as a covenant breaker.

 

All the items in its manifesto have been jettisoned, no thanks to a president that cares less about promises, but strong on rhetorics. A strong party-based democracy will help to promote democratic processes that would further strengthen internal democracies within political parties.

 

This latest effort at imposing the whims of the presidency through platforms that are not consultative enough, defeats the whole essence of inclusive and participatory democracy. The fact that it is the ruling party blazing that trail, makes the thought more impaired and unfortunate.

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