Rolling stones gather no moss; they are rootless, and do no one any good. So, it will likely be with the Reformed All Progressives Congress, the breakaway faction of the extremely fractious All Progressives Congress.
Hafsat Abiola-Costello, the activist daughter of the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, MKO Abiola, observes that “Nigeria’s political system is often an aggregation of interests. Most of them, short-term in horizon… And it continues to lend itself to brittle alliances that cannot withstand the pressures of political debate and the contestation of interests.” Ile ti a fi’tomo, iriniowo,a house moulded with spittle will fall to the morning dew.
Captain T.Y. Danjuma, who later became a Lt. Gen. reportedly said in 1959: “Nigerians should no longer support politicians who do not base their party organisations on national interests and democratic and constitutional principles.”
The R-APC defectors who went back to the Peoples Democratic Party include 14 senators, 37 members of the House of Representatives, some members of state Houses of Assembly, and 13 Benue State Local Government Chairmen.
The R-APC legislators are not altruistic or benign ideological demagogues. They left for three major reasons: First, the Congress for Progressive Change, All Nigeria People’s Party, and Action Congress of Nigeria, the legacy parties of the APC dominate the juicier Executive Branch, while the New PDP folks are consigned to the relatively arid legislature, whose leadership they obtained by stealth.
Second, some nPDP legislators, like Senate President Bukola Saraki, Senator Dino Melaye, and the PDP’s Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, have been unwilling guests or hosts of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Code of Conduct Tribunal, and other security agencies that are controlled by the Executive Branch.
And finally, the Executive Branch has consistently disapproved of the National Assembly’s practice of insisting on unilaterally inserting constituency projects that the Presidency did not include in the annual national budgets.
The APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, engineered a meeting between the defecting senators and President Muhammadu Buhari the other day. He disclosed that some senators, like Lanre Tejuosho, were willing to return to the APC, though they have no assurances of a return ticket to the Senate.
Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, who is facing an impeachment storm, has jumped ship to the PDP. His Sokoto and Kwara counterparts, Aminu Tambuwal, who wants to be President, and Abdufattah Ahmed, Saraki’s protégé, are watching the political weathercock to determine their next move.
Publicity savvy Governor Ortom stage-managed a “My people want me in the PDP” stunt. His Special Adviser on Media, Tahav Aferzua, reports that “The major stakeholders in the state advised Governor Ortom to leave the APC because of the Federal Government’s alleged complicity in the ongoing killings in the country, including Benue State.”
But discerning observers insist that Aferzua’s comments, “You have a situation where a powerful individual (former Benue State Governor George Akume) hijacked every structure of the (APC in Benue State), “ is proof positive that Chairman Oshiomhole did not guarantee Ortom a return ticket.
While some governors want a second term, those who will be ending their second terms want to displace some sitting senators, while yet others want assurances of a sinecure after the 2019 General Elections are concluded.
Failure to deliver on the great expectations invested in him by the electorate has provided cinder for the fire that the defectors are stoking under President Buhari’s administration. The PDP has taken advantage of this to form the Coalition of United Political Parties to wrest power from the APC.
Some politicians think that former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria Movement may swing the tide against President Buhari in 2019. Attempts to shift the National Assembly elections ahead of the presidential election were to avoid a bandwagon effect if President Buhari loses.
A thread common to all these skirmishes, betrayals, breakups, alliances, and makeups, is the need of all the actors to make political hay. So, no one need fret about the beeline of the R-APC, or nPDP by other names, to the PDP.
Those with a good memory will remember that these jobbers left the PDP, to form the nPDP to join then emerging APC that was used as a vehicle to wrest the Presidency from former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Though someone has said that a rolling stone has no home, the R-APC is nonetheless returning to where it originally belonged. Check out the not-so-strange lyrics of Senator Dino Melaye’s nostalgic song: “O my home. When shall I see my home? PDP!”
These attempts at dumping political parties are not strange to Nigeria, which adopted the presidential system, but is still fixated to the parliamentary system, where the leader of the party who commands the majority in the legislature’s Lower House forms the government.
Nigeria’s politics and government have always been characterised by alliances and coalitions. In 1952, some members of the National Council of Nigerians and the Cameroons, who had won elections into the Western Nigerian House of Assembly, crossed the carpet to the Action Group.
The motivation for their action is reflected in their preference for a “shon of the shoil,” a Yoruba, Obafemi Awolowo, to have the privilege of emerging as the Leader of Government Business in Western Nigeria.
Nnamdi Azikiwe, who lost out in this political skirmish, contrived a bye-election, to displace Eyo Ita, and became Leader of Government Business of Eastern Nigeria. Ita left the NCNC, to form the National Independence Party, which led agitation for the creation of Calabar, Ogoja and Rivers State.
After the 1960 Independence, the AG unravelled: Its Deputy Leader, Ladoke Akintola, who had fallen out with Awolowo, his Leader, gathered a coalition of his United Peoples Party, and the Western Nigerian wing of the NCNC, to form the Nigerian National Democratic Party. In the North, the Northern Elements Progressive Union allied with the NCNC, while the United Middle Belt Congress and the Borno Youth Movement, allied with the AG.
The rump of the NCNC in Western Nigeria, and the NCNC in Eastern Nigeria, joined forces with the rump of the AG, which was in opposition in Western Nigeria, to form the United People’s Grand Alliance, to attempt to wrest political power at the centre. Akintola’s NNDP and the Northern People’s Congress formed the Nigeria National Alliance.
Things didn’t improve in the Second Republic: The Nigerian People’s Party preferred Azikiwe as presidential candidate, over its founder and financier, Waziri Ibrahim, who went on to form the Great Nigerian People’s Party, of whom he became its presidential torchbearer.
The NPP joined President Shehu Shagari’s Federal Government. The Unity Party of Nigeria later sutured a loose collective of itself, GNPP, NPP, and Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party, to form The Progressive Alliance.
But the UPN cracked, and Oyo State Deputy Governor, Sunday Afolabi, joined the National Party of Nigeria, to become President Shagari’s Minister of Education. Ondo State Deputy Governor, Akin Omoboriowo, joined the NPN, to contest against his boss, Michael Ajasin.
What will keep these turncoats in line is the requirement of Sections 65(2b), 106(d), 131(c), and 177(c) of the Constitution that a Nigerian can contest to the National Assembly, state Houses of Assembly, offices of President, and Governor, if “he is a member of a political party, and is sponsored by that party.”
The need to be in the winning party may compel the R-APC members to reverse their truculent much ado about self-interest, because there is no realistic contender against President Buhari in sight yet.
–Twitter @lekansote1
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