WAKE UP: If your vote for APC was for President Buhari #StandWithPMB (I)
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“Immediately after APC won election and General Muhammadu Buhari was inaugurated as substantive President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it was time for political gladiators in Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar to fight for the control of the government which they sought the grip of National Assembly to do. But the question was, controlling the government by grip of National Assembly for what?
We have come to reality of another season. We thank the Almighty Allah that we once again have surmounted the challenges and delivered President Muhammadu Buhari for the All Progressives Congress (APC). However, I want to warn by calling our attention to imminent danger ahead of us and which we must all watch in the manner the leaders of APC that is the ruling party handles the internal crisis within the party, which landed the country in a mess in 2015 until President Buhari saved it much vehement as the opposition within and from out. They have started it again and so, if you supported APC to win this last election because of General Muhammadu Buhari, #StandWithBuhari but if you supported APC because of APC, then you can join in swimming along.
In the mid 2018 the APC, like other political parties, had its congresses across the country. Surprisingly a party, which all eyes including the evil eyes of those who had predicted it would not last beyond one year as a party in 2014 before it crashed, returned with a sham it called ward and state congresses. That led to primaries at all levels. Issues generated from those congresses, primaries and for reason best know to the leaders, despite directives by President Buhari to reconcile with all members and not allow any aggrieved person to slip out of the party, some people within the party made sure that those issues were unresolved.
The problem I have with this is that, in Yoruba Land where I come from, some of the people I have listened to see those issues as one of the things that happen in politics. It is unfortunate thing to say. If President Buhari were to take the project of fixing Nigeria with levity saying corruption particularly judiciary corruption, infrastructural deficit and insecurity are part of the things that society witnesses in a democratic setting, he would not take governance as a thing to dedicate his life to as he has done in the last four years. That brought about the CHANGE that he promised.
But in the North where do-or-die is hardly the case because of their religious inclination, they don’t see it that way. They believe that once things are wrong they are wrong. That was why particularly the Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, disagreed seriously with Oshiomhole’s handling of the primaries. He showed its anger over those irregularities to the extent that he threatened Oshiomhole not to visit his state to campaign if he loved himself.
Yari and Oshiomhole now (I don’t know whether it is politicking or true reconciliation) are together. But can we turn deaf ears to the costs of those primaries mishandlings of APC and say we want to move forward like nothing happened? Anyway, that is the problem of the politicians. I am talking about it because, I have a stake in the installation of Nigeria’s Presidency both in 2015 and 2019 and it will be mischievous of anyone to query or puncture that rights to have a say against the misdirection that some people put into it.
President of the country, against the existing order where under Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the president did anything he liked with the party, Muhammadu Buhari, who should be Leader of the Party, gave much power to the APC to exist as real party. It is therefore easy for those in the National Working Committee (NWC) to think that they have the party structure in their hands and can look at some favourable aspect of the party constitution and law guiding political activities to tilt things towards themselves. That is what has happened. And it is the reason the NWC is wielding the big stick not acceptable to some other leaders of the party and some other people are claiming it is ‘party supremacy’.
In many of my media interviews with Senator Gbenga Kaka, the former Ogun State Deputy Governor had proffered party discipline as solution to issues associated with governance in Nigeria, which he said started from 1999 when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, as president, took charge as Leader of the party and thereby rubbishing the supremacy of his party, PDP, at that time. I was in total agreement with Senator Kaka on this. But now we have opportunity to have party supremacy, why are those who should use it well misusing it?
In Ogun for instance, you accused Governor Ibikunle Amosun of pre-selecting candidates for primaries but that accusation becomes a matter of hate, unacceptable when the people you tell such story discover that, “Yes, pre-selecting or handpicking candidates for elections is wrong, but when did you start to discover this wrong within your party? Whereas that has been your own stock-in-trade as leader!”
Truly, can somebody, having read this piece, point to when in Lagos State Alliance for Democracy (AD), Action Congress (AC) and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)ever held primary elections until the merger that brought about All Progressives Congress (APC) in the build up to 2015 general elections? Okay, did they do it in Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, where? Did we not know how Senator Abiola Ajimobi emerged as candidate of ACN for the 2011 election in Oyo State? I don’t want to remind anybody the number of water satchets that were thrown at him and Papa Lam Adesina at the stadium venue of the supposed announcement, when the party members saw he was a choice not of generality of the party.
Do we also remember that President Buhari had refused for sometimes to merge with any of the parties such as ACN until it dawned on him and other Northern politicians who saw it as must-do project to unseat the destructively corrupt administration of Goodluck Jonathan. They then approached, not only the ACN (Bola Tinubu) but also the ANPP (Ogbonnaya Onu) and a faction of APGA (Rochas Okorocha) and the originating party was CPC (Tony Momoh), to commence a merger arrangement. The idea was that, to unseat a big party in power, there was the need for the opposition parties to merge, which was what they did. It was the reason Buhari’s CPC eventually succumbed to the long suggested idea of merger if it would bring about rescuing Nigeria to help Nigerians kill corruption and impunity before they killed them. Along the line, the New PDP politicians joined hence Bukola Saraki, Aliyu Wamakko, Aminu Waziri Tambuwwal, Rotimi Amaechi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Murtala Nyako’s entrance into the APC after it had been formed.
Give it to PDP they always went through primaries to choose their candidates for elections. They might eventually land themselves in courts but they did primaries. Of course, CPC, which was also on ground consistently with its own electoral successes like ANPP (North) and ACN (South West), always chose its candidates via primaries. ACN was never known to choose its candidates via primary elections. Yes, it was like an all-rosy thing for them because, they, under the leadership of one man, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (and commendable though), operated within one region singularly dominated by one tribe. There were no issues with ACN not doing primaries. But we should know that Bola Tinubu, before the APC merger, never played national politics; automatically he would naturally have problem when he became one of the topmost callers of shots in APC.
Therefore, it would be impossible for such party as ACN led by such man, who does not believe in primary elections as means of choosing candidates for participation in general elections, to operate without stepping on toes. That was the first issue that bedeviled the APC but because they had a common enemy being PDP. And because of that, “few owners of Nigeria” like Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, TY Danjuma, who saw Jonathan as a disaster no longer fit to stay in power, parties in the APC merger saw and pretended like they did not see and heard and pretended like they did not hear. Obasanjo tore his PDP membership card and, even when Jonathan and his PDP in power wanted to stage coup against the outcome of the presidential election, the “retired Generals” using foreign collaborators took charge until President Buhari was announced and that was how APC ably unseated the PDP.
But because character is like smoke, no matter how covered, it must find a way to come out, immediately after APC won election and General Muhammadu Buhari was inaugurated as substantive President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it was time for political gladiators in Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar to fight for the control of the government which they sought the grip of National Assembly to do.
But the question was, controlling the government by grip of National Assembly for what? It was definitely no longer national but individual interest. People in APC are fighting Amosun, Okorocha and others today for not succumbing to their whims and caprices. But the text message, which caused disorientation among Senate and House of Representatives lawmakers leading to how Saraki and Dogara took charge backed by Atiku, was sent by somebody who impersonated the President Muhammadu Buhari, yet the President, who was at the time was struggling in Germany to return home same day preparatory to inauguration of the National Assembly the next day, did not get angry. And I am aware that impersonation has a sentence not less than two years of imprisonment, can be crosschecked.
…To be continued.
*WAKE UP is strictly the personal opinion of Prince Bashir Adefaka, Journalist and media proprietor living in Nigeria. Reach him via omope72@gmail.com or Text: 08163323906.
