Law of Karma and Kwankwaso’s Fear of Tambuwalization
So, party in discipline led to the emergence of Saraki then? Ifso, what was responsible for Tambuwal’s emergence? What was Kwankwaso’s role in it? If Kwankwaso believed in party discipline and championed it in the PDP, would he have led the new PDP out of
There is a Nigerian adage, which goes thus: “The headhunter never allows machete carrier to go behind his back”. This is the context that can help place the All Progressives Congress, APC’s fear over developments at the inauguration of the 8th Senate in proper perspectives. The Immediate past governor of Kano State and now Senator-elect for Kano Central Senatorial District (since he has not submitted himself for swearing-in), Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has said the election of a Deputy Senate President from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ike Ekweremadu will create problems for the APC federal government and will ultimately lead to the ‘tambuwalization’ of the Senate.
For those who do not quite understand the new word, ‘tambuwalization’ and ‘tambuwalising’, it is adjectival for the politics of the erstwhile Speaker of House of Representatives, now Governor of Sokoto State, Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, whose rebellion against the zoning of poitical offices after the 2011 general election inspired the balkanization of PDP. The Speaker also ultimately dumped the party at the verge of the 2015 general election, for the opposition party, the APC, which elements facilitated his rebellion in the first place. So, when Kwankwaso said Ekweremadu’s emergence as Deputy Senate President would ‘tambuwalize’ the Senate, he was expressing the fear that what APC elements helped Tambuwal to do to the PDP could also happen to the APC.
To put the fear in perspective, we need to complete the whole circles of lexicology, which is the science of minting new words or admitting new words into the dictionary. If ‘Tambuwalization’ is the process of balkanizing a politcal party, to ‘tambuwalize’ would be to bring on such an act, while ‘tambuwalism’ is the condition or state of being ‘tanbuwalized; or a situation that is ‘tambuwalizable’ or ‘tambuwalistic’. We can take the exercise even further by examining ‘tambuwalscopy’. A friend who supplied this last one has not said exactly what it means but I guess, like endoscopy, it is looking at some kind of anatomy. From the foregoing, it is also safe to say that ‘Tambuwalizers’ are those who have the capacity to ‘tambuwalize’ a given polity or politcal party and that is the suspicion of Musa Kwankwaso about the senate and perhaps the entire National Assembly under the trio of Saraki, Ekweremadu, and Yakubu Dogara et al.
So, we can see that the former Speaker, Tambuwal, has made an invaluable contribution to the development of democracy in Nigeria and ultimately, to political lexicon.
Beyond polemics, Kwankwaso’s fears may or may not be germane. First, Ekweremadu is of the PDP and Kwankwaso is now of the APC. The breaking of the APC by the trio would reverse the former governor’s dreams of seeing PDP dead. In fact Kwankwaso has repeatedly called the PDP dead party, so one can see his worry is about the breaking of the APC.
Since this is the case, it then means his worry is about the new Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who he described as over 50% PDP. Kwankwaso’s words: “What complicated the whole matter is that the situation now is that more than 50 percent of Bukola is in PDP. If you take the position of the senate president it becomes more difficult. The implication is that very soon the leadership of the Senate will start ‘Tambuwalising’ the party and of course the government as we have seen in 2011”.
In other words, Kwankwaso is looking at his presumed unholy alliance of Ekweremadu and Saraki who he now sees as ‘tambuwalizers’ and therefore capable of ‘tambuwalizing’ the Senate, to use his word again. For this presumption, he is calling on the APC National Chairman to write a letter of reprimand to Saraki and the other Senators who are members of the party in order to ensure party discipline. He also wants the position of the Deputy Senate President to be retrieved from Ike Ekweremadu.
So, party indiscipline led to the emergence of Saraki then? If so, what was responsible for Tambuwal’s emergence? What was Kwankwaso’s role in it? If Kwankwaso believed in party discipline and championed it in the PDP, would he have led the new PDP out of the PDP, of which Tambuwal was then but a smaller player compared to Kwankwaso? Is it not a fact that the new PDP led by Kwankwaso led ultimately to the defeat of the PDP in the last general election? What party indiscipline could be worse than this ingratitude to a party that made Kwankwaso a two-time governor and minister?
Also false is Kwankwaso’s claim that the circumstances under which the current Senate leadership was put in place is worse than the circumstances that led to the emergence of Tambuwal as speaker of the House of Representatives in 2011 and his defection to APC. This is simply turning history upside down. In fact, it is a repeat of history we are witnessing at the National Assembly and democracy is at its peak in Nigeria.
In 2011, Tambuwal went against the PDP’s choice of Mulikat Akande as Speaker and reached out to the opposition politicians (the legacy parties that make up the APC today), which teamed up with Tambuwal’s supporters to enthrone him as Speaker. That was exactly what Saraki has done four years after. If it was right then, why is it wrong today? The former governor said the APC should do all it could to reclaim its mandate, saying the position of the Deputy Senate President rightly belongs to the ruling party. He recalled that for the five times the PDP controlled the government at the centre, it did not share the leadership positions in the National Assembly with any other party.
The APC leadership has conveniently chosen to ignore the provisions of the 1999 Constitution, which without any ambiguity, states that “the Senators shall elect from among themselves…” What this presupposes is that the Constitution envisages the possibility and even desirability of a minority party producing the leadership of any of the two Chambers of the National Assembly. This has happened in and outside Nigeria. In the US, for example, the President of their Senate is even the Vice President. The APC also ensured that its lawmakers emerged Speakers of Plateau and Benue States Houses of Assembly even though PDP is the majority party in the two Assemblies. They were even installed on Monday, while the event of the National Assembly happened on Tuesday. So, the APC even set the example. Yet Kwakwanso did not raise objection to APC producing Speaker in Assemblies where PDP controls the majority.
In Nigeria, in 1999, the Cross River State House of Assembly elected an APP (now part of APC) lawmaker as Speaker whereas the PDP had both the majority in parliament and also produced the State Governor. Tambuwal defected to the APC, then a minority Party in the House of Representatives and yet kept his seat. PDP challenged it and lost because the Constitution allows bipartisanship in the Legislature and does not bar minority Parties from producing presiding officers. This is a constitutional provision the APC cannot wish away unless they want to continue living in denial.
So, contrary to Kwankwaso’s claim, it was not wrong for a group to have gone to the extent of negotiating away the seat of the Deputy Senate President to a member of the opposition party (assuming they did). And if that was the only way to give democracy the ventilation it deserves at the National Assembly, to God be the glory. All elections are a game of numbers and the APC is paying for ignoring the potency of the 49 Senators belonging to the PDP. The APC has carried on as if the opposition does not count at all and it has just been proved how fatal that assumption could be. What this also means is that it was not just a matter Saraki; PDP has the number and requisite experience to even make one of their own the Senate President under the circumstance. They had cohesion in their ranks, which APC clearly lacked.
In the face of all this, it is sad that rather than admit its lousiness and unpreparedness to lead the country, some APC elements have continued to ask for sanction against Saraki and aim to remove Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. Short of calling these moves a wild goose chase, it is important to remind such agitators that the National Assembly belongs to all those who won seats to represent all Nigerians. Therefore, only they, by a simple majority, can decide who leads them, regardless of political affiliation.
Furthermore, since the APC is enjoying only slim majorities in both Houses of the National Assembly, especially the senate, the only option left for the APC is to embrace consensus building or be prepared to disappoint Nigerians who are impatiently waiting for their magic wand to wipe away all their troubles.
APC is indeed suffering from the Law of Karma or retributive justice. Kwankwaso should stop crying wolf because what goes around comes around. As one Zacchaeus Adebayo recently wrote, if they Tambuwa led PDP in 2011, PDP also has the right to Sakaki, Dogara, and Ekweremadu them in 2015.