May the promise of change not become a mere change of promise. And so, it happens that the All Progressives Congress has learnt nothing ennobling from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s 16 years dominance! Ironically, the APC had so often claimed that the PDP spent 16 years dragging Nigeria down the rudder of political infamy! If anything, the APC is serially perfecting some of the imperfections that ultimately led to the resounding failure that the PDP suffered in the 2015 poll. Just yesterday, the APC was at the forefront in sweeping out the remnants of the torn umbrella from the seat of power. Then, the sing-song was that PDP’s leadership was not only bereft of democratic ethos, but also utterly unschooled in the principle of internal democracy. Add that to the crying cluelessness at the centre and what you get is a perfect mix of the intoxicating tequila that broke the wings of the PDP. It would not have been out of place if one had thought that a party that rode into power on the crest of citizens’ displeasure with another party’s bland arrogance would be humble enough to learn from such missteps. Clearly, it is now obvious that expecting such now, would amount to scoring the APC far above its capacity.
As night breaks into dawn, it is becoming clearer that the pooling together of these strange bedfellows into one, united bunch of broomstick was nothing more than a common artificial means to an end. It was just a potent power-grabbing strategy. With the bigger prize in its stead, the real scramble for the partitioning of the APC has just begun. The forces that coalesced into a whole are gradually disintegrating into pieces by centrifugal forces and equally centrifugal interests, with sharpened daggers thrust right towards the soul of the party. Of course, the signs had been there right from when Senate President Bukola Saraki and his partner-in-arms at the House of Representatives, Speaker Yakubu Dogara, threw their noses in the air; pulled the rugs off the feet of the party’s elders and plotted their ways into the leadership positions of the National Assembly. One had thought that the party swallowed that gratuitous insult with befuddling equanimity with the hope that it was doing everything within its power to put an end to the clear and present danger that such radical divergence poses to its general survival.
If recent developments are anything to go by, it is safe to say that the greatest threat to the survival of the APC is the APC itself. In fact, nothing exposes the dangerous rumblings in the workings of the party’s internal crisis resolution mechanism than the pathetic handling of the Kogi State debacle following the sudden death of Prince Abubakar Audu, its governorship candidate in the November 21, 2015 election. It is shocking that, in record time, the APC has retrogressively progressed in error since that unfortunate incident in its drive to wilfully self-destruct. It beggars every logical belief that a simple matter that required common sense has culminated into an endless maze of contraption. It’s as if the late Audu left with the original bunch of broom that once held the Kogi chapter together. Now that he is gone, each member is holding aloft a personal broomstick of shame, as the macabre dance gets messier.
Of course, there were sights and sounds indicative of how bad things have gone. The early signs that the party’s symbol of unity was under threat started manifesting when the late Audu’s son, Mohammed, pushed through those deft political moves to succeed his father even while shouting at the top of his voice that his major concern was to mourn the huge loss. The ‘painful’ tears did not blur his vision to take over Lugard House perhaps as an extension of his patrimony. Is it not obvious that things have irretrievably fallen apart when, after series of meetings by the conclave of elders, the party is still swimming in the ocean of deep-seated strife, political uncertainty and a harvest of litigations? So Audu died and what has Kogi State gained from that death other than this shameless display of political mercantilism?
Just the other day, these same self-styled political gadflies gathered at Audu’s graveside, feigning sombreness and offering the finest eulogies to celebrate the death of a colleague that would be sorely missed. Today, they have thrown all caution to the winds in readiness to wrestle with pigs if need be. The sad part is that the leadership at the centre, for some queer political reason, appears to be adding fuel to the raging fire. How, for example, did the party arrive at picking Yahaya Bello as a replacement for Audu in an election that was declared inconclusive without considering the feelings of James Faleke who shared a joint ticket in that poll? Would it have been wrong if, in the course of adopting a doctrine of necessity, the party had settled for a Faleke/Bello ticket based on the fact that the former was already a candidate for Lugard’s House courtesy of the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission? By the way, would it have been possible to suggest that Faleke should continue as deputy governor had Audu died in office?
With all the combatants wielding different shapes and forms of broomsticks snatched from the scattered bunch, it is apparent that the APC is sliding into the abyss of disintegration. The centre is bursting at the seams and things have fallen apart. Finally, the plastic laughter of a marriage many had thought was made in heaven has been pierced by a combination of skin-deep primordial sentiments and raw greed. Why would Wada, who apparently stood no chance in the election, give up when he sees a window of opportunity to retain the governor’s seat through the backdoor? Why won’t Bello grin from ear to ear when he has been given the governorship on a platter by the Abuja forces in the party? And why should Faleke surrender a mandate that he fully participated in till the last breath of Audu? Why should Kogi not hang on the tenterhooks ad-infinitum as long as the personal ambitions of these powerful individuals are concerned?
Sadly, the classic victims remain the Kogi electorate each time the fleecing elite play their silly games. Now that those who once constituted a powerful movement have chosen to break into fragments, we can only wait to see how they hope to clear the mess with the disjointed broomsticks in their hands without inflicting a lasting dent on the psyche of a party that is barely struggling to set its footprints on the sands of time. Will Kogi ever exhale after today’s supplementary election or will it remain a theatre of litigations and counter-litigations with a sad reminder of the narrative of the scattered broom? Only time will tell.
NATION
END
I concur.
A wonderful piece.