APC and Buhari: Too early start of discordant play

Not long ago, I expressed my thoughts on how the Buhari tenure would play out as it ends. Never mind that we are through only five of eight years. I am thinking about it now because most of our past civilian regimes had very untidy ends, and the current discordant play in the APC is reminiscent of what we saw and heard from the 2nd Republic in 1983. At the start of his 2nd term, President Shehu Shagari was checkmated by his party men, in the jostle for Ministerial appointments. In 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice Atiku Abubakar were at each other’s throat and arrived at that debacle in which Obasanjo feels Atiku scuttled his third term attempt, and Atiku feels Obasanjo in turn, scuttled his ambition to attain being President. We settled for ailing Umaru Musa Yar’adua at whose death, green horn Goodluck Jonathan finished their tenure and managed to contest and win his own. As incumbent, he lost to President Muhammadu Buhari, the outcome of discordant play in the then ruling party.

Already, I see similar discordance unfolding just one year into Buhari’s second tenure as it seems history is again repeating itself. It is not good. I say to myself that an implosion for the ruling All Progressives Congress is easily predictable mainly because of the way the party was formed in the first place. This is not a political party that was formed by any ideological conviction of the members save for wresting power from the hands of the Peoples Democratic Party the PDP. In 2015 the PDP faced it’s own crisis and denied some politicians their ambitions mainly from fear that they could not support President Goodluck Jonathan win his primaries for a second term. President Buhari then was a viable candidate without a party. The APC itself was an opposition party without a viable candidate. The twain consummated a marriage of convenience and added to its swelling fold, rebels from the PDP some of who are APC Governors, National legislators, and Ministers today. Such a contraption of strange bedfellows can only implode when the one binding tie loses its elastic value. In this case - the APC is living the reality that President Muhammadu Buhari with each day that passes is burning up as its lighthouse candle. The hot molten candle wax is dropping on APC Chairman Oshiomole’s head, in office as Chairman today, and out on suspension tomorrow, repetitively. As labour leader by pedigree, his incompetence at negotiation with contending forces is a legendary contradiction. It is owed to him that today APC has 18 States against PDP’s 17, a tally that could still worsen. His effort to bare his teeth in his home state Edo has pitched the ruling party awkwardly on a cliff. He has acted typically of a drowning man clutching at the straw and now sits in limbo, his Chairmanship of the Party, suspended by the courts. His fate it seems is sealed. Party Leader Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu, keeping aloof of the fray, put it brutally when he said that jostling for the Presidency come 2023 was killing the party more than the corona virus. Brutal because truly, political wrangling has taken government attention off the awesome impending corona virus and all other governance challenges. Post Buhari Nigeria is the preoccupying thought. The politicians have learnt nothing, and have forgotten little.

One can say any day, that to the average Nigerian politician, nothing matters like political power, under the guise of service to the nation, and even less so for succour to the common man. It is all about political power how to grab it and having grabbed it, how to hold it, and having held it, how to transit to the next pedestal. Those who offer a difference are rare and few. A Governor or even a President spends his first term working for the second term. When he, in the case of Governor gets the second term, he spends it working for transitioning to the Senate. The President struggles with finding a protégée to hand over to, if he does not mull over a third term in contravention of the Constitution. The Nigerian politician hugs political power like life support luggage and watches time running out.

Given the continuing violence in the North of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari had sent Military Service Chiefs to his traumatised home state Katsina in the North West where bandits have ran amuck killing rural folk, plundering, and kidnapping for ransom. It was upon their return to Abuja, that they faced a disappointed President Buhari and at a briefing immediately after, the National Security Adviser retired General Monguno addressed the Press and gave newspapers headlines that spoke the minds of the people. Angst over failures in security had disturbed President Buhari and the nation was told that Buhari was of the view that their “best was not good enough”. I do not imagine the faces with which the Service Chiefs left the President’s presence at the villa. I put myself in their place and I feel as terribly embarrassed as they must have felt. I also wonder what they discussed between them if they ever reviewed the President’s dissatisfaction with their failure to achieve his goals in the security situation. Worse is that with the naturally dampened morale of our castigated service chiefs, insurgents could exploit a lapse to embarrass the nation even further. Typically, a media altercation is now running between writers in favour of the Service Chiefs on one side, and the National Security Adviser on the other.

Meanwhile, Minister of Justice Malami drove a knife through the administration’s underbelly when he was reported to have written President Buhari levelling serious accusation against EFCC Executive Chairman Ibrahim Magu, alleging a squandering of funds recovered in the anti corruption fight. For the Buhari Government confronted by its lowest rating, this is a daunting negative. It is like killed demons are coming back to life at closing time. Bickering between public officers becoming public, just as embarrassing documents are leaked to the press are some of these demons.

APC Governors have met with the President. The rocking vessel of state in turbulent waters was the discourse. The buck stops at Buhari’s desk. But as I write this piece, so far from the Presidential Villa, it is silence of the graveyard.