It’s ironic that the governing All Peoples Congress is having a taste of its own medicine to toast the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly.
It is like 2011 all over again. At the time, the Action Congress of Nigeria, which had just regrouped after a failed merger attempt with the Congress for Progressive Change, dealt what was hailed as a strategic blow to the Peoples Democratic Party.
The ACN took advantage of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s indecision and teamed up with Aminu Tambuwal, Emeka Ihedioha and other renegades to defeat the PDP candidate for the speakership of the House of Representatives.
While some described ACN’s action as a masterstroke, complete with dramatic narratives of how it all happened, others have said that, that rebellion was the beginning of the end of the PDP.
It was after failing to produce its own preferred candidates not in one, but in the two legislative chambers, it would be seductive to think that the APC might suffer a worse fate from an overdose of its own medicine. But the party will survive this spell of misfortune.
The first thing is for it to go back to where the rain started beating it. APC ranking members, the most prominent of whom was Rabiu Kwankwaso, had warned publicly, more than once, that the delay in zoning party offices could be costly.
Not responding to that danger was a huge mistake. President Muhammadu Buhari’s public statement that he will not be involved in sharing party offices may have been well intended, but it was an invitation to internal chaos.
In a country where ethnicity and religion – compounded by an overbearing centre – are still major threats to nation building, zoning remains a necessary evil. It will remain so until fundamental restructuring takes place to weaken the centre and inspire competition, creativity and merit in the constituent states.
The president’s public posture of disinterestedness is obviously a valuable PR tool. In the real political world, however, deals and engagement are inevitable. You don’t belong to everyone and yet belong to no one; you belong to everyone but choose whom to engage, when and how, for the good of the most.
I have heard people say in the last few days that by maintaining his posture of neutrality during Tuesday’s vote at the National Assembly, Buhari killed three birds with a stone: weakened the hold of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu on the party; solved the potential emergence of two Muslims (Femi Gbajabiamila was born into a Muslim family) as the two top leaders of the legislature, and satisfied the clamour in the South East for inclusion – all without actually meaning to do so.
Maybe. But before the penny dropped, new problems had surfaced. The South South was already crying foul that, with what played out in both chambers, the region had been shut out from the first top six political offices; which potentially complicates how the president balances his first list of political appointees.
Disinterestedness breeds a vacuum and that vacuum has, regrettably, come to haunt the party leadership and the president.
In two days, there were two versions of the president’s role in the meeting with the APC senators-elect which clashed with the Tuesday vote. One version said he didn’t know about it; the other said he knew about it and actually advised Bukola Saraki and the clerk to change the time, but was ignored. Both versions came from the president’s office and, sadly, only one is true.
The PDP may be dead but its spirit lives on in its members who defected to the APC. It’s the members of this group, who felt hard done by in the sharing of offices, that have apparently decided through their Old Boys network to undermine the party and seize the vacuum created by the absence of leadership.
The APC did not help matters. Its response was at variance with the tone of the president’s letter and the mood of an anxious public that had invested in change, and not in party bickering.
How does the APC save itself from the error of the PDP – walking the tightrope between indulging rebellion and shunning arrogance? It must conduct a full and transparent investigation into: 1) who knew or did what in connection with the meeting of the senators elect; 2) the role of the police at the National Assembly in the early hours of Tuesday, and 3) whether or not Saraki and the clerk received any advice from the president or his agent on that day to shift the time of the inauguration.
I agree completely with, and understand, the need for party discipline. To ignore the events of Tuesday and just carry on would be dangerous. If the voters wanted to continue with business as usual, Jonathan and co. would have been returned to power. It must have come as a surprise to the president, if not the party, that in his inaugural address, the Senate president omitted any reference to the fight against corruption, the main reason why this government was elected to office.
Yet, the party must accept that its dithering and conflicting messages about how it intends to share its offices also compromised internal discipline and made it vulnerable.
Is the PDP about to rise again? I think the prospects are exaggerated. That party will complete its rite of passage to get its life back. The collapse, death and burial of the party did not occur from a single mishap. It was the fallout of many years of greed, arrogance and incompetence brought on by a small elite which gorged itself on easy oil money.
It’s a different world today, one in which the new governing party has far fewer resources and a very short time to show that it is serious to lead.
The APC must tackle its demons, desist from squandering its goodwill and quickly settle down to the serious business of governing.
LEADERSHIP
END
Right on point, the Apc made us focus on PDP and we failed to see their short comings, now the focus is on APC, and I know that very soon we will see what APC is all about.