A Week in the Life of a Ruling Party
The week began on a rather optimistic note that the crisis that beset the governing party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), over the election of principal officers of the National Assembly will soon be set aside. This optimism was echoed by the National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, when he told reporters in his office in Abuja that return of peace and normalcy is underway. Oyegun, has assured that the party is working around the clock to resolve the crisis that has rocked it in recent times, to pave the way for the party to fulfill its campaign promises to Nigerians.
In a statement he issued in Abuja last two Fridays, Oyegun said the party had reached out to all interested parties, and that when the National Assembly resumed sitting, Nigerians will see one harmonious, happy APC family.
‘’We owe it to our party, our teeming members and supporters and indeed all Nigerians who reposed so much confidence in us by voting us into office to quickly put the unfortunate incidents of the recent past behind us and forge ahead.
Also within the week the APC National Chairman rose in the defence of the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is being vilified in his home state of Kwara for signing the statement conveying the party’s reaction to the election of the National Assembly leadership. Mohammed had issued a statement immediately after the emergence of the new National Assembly leadership rejecting it thereby attracting the ire of supporters of Saraki mainly from his home state in Kwara. Oyegun therefore stepped in to rescue Mohammed, saying his statement was issued with the knowledge and consent of the party and hence it would be wrong for anyone to make him a sacrificial lamb for carrying out his party responsibilities.
‘’The party is aware that its National Publicity Secretary has been grossly misunderstood by virtually everyone, especially in his state, just because he carried out his duty by signing the said statement by the party. At a personal risk and putting the party’s interest above his own, he issued that statement which reflected the position of the party at that particular time. The party is solidly behind him, and it will be wrong for anyone to interpret the statement as representing his personal opinion.”
Oyegun said though the party saw what transpired during the inaugural legislative sitting as a misnomer, it nonetheless felt the urgent need to accept the reality and quickly reconcile its members so as not allow it to cripple governance. Oyegun tried to give hope to Nigerians and indeed many of the party supporters by saying that the party is gradually arriving at amicable settlement of the situation.
“All the party has decided to do is to re-unify as quickly as possible our members in both chambers of the National Assembly under the existing realities. That is the first priority. Every other thing, will follow. All other things will have to wait. For instance, this is because, if for instance, the president says he wants to present his list of ministerial nominees to the Senate, we don’t want a situation whereby the senate will be divided”.
“Let me assure the public that peace is on the way. We had a problem in the family, no doubt about that, but we are moving quickly to resolve it. As you can see, we are working hard to see that the leaders and rank and file don’t start throwing punches”.
In order to match words with action, the National Working Committee of APC swung into action summoning the warring parties, including the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, to appear before a peace committee led by the National Secretary, Mai Mala Buni. The consultations by the peace committee was going on almost simultaneously with the deliberations by the National Working Committee which later mandated Oyegun, Buni and a few others to lead another round of discussion with the lawmakers on both sides of the divide in a bid to reaching agreement on terms of settlement of the raging crisis in the Federal legislature. However, at the end of the peace meeting which took place at Oyegun’s residence in Asokoro, Abuja, the warring parties failed to reach agreement on the sharing of the outstanding principal offices.
The party made yet another effort by convening a meeting with its senate members to get them to agree on a plan to use the remaining principal offices of the Majority Leader, Deputy Leader, Chief Whip and his deputy to compensate those who lost out in the inaugural election where Senate President and Speaker emerged. Under the move to broker peace between feuding members of the Senate Unity Forum and Senators of Like Mind, an agreement on the zoning of leadership positions was proposed. At the meeting of the party with APC senators on Monday night, the office of Senate Leader was zoned to the North-east with Senator Ahmad Lawan as the candidate, while the Chief Whip’s office was zoned to the South-west, with Senator Olusola Adeyeye (Osun Central) as the candidate. In the same vein, the Deputy Senate Leader’s office was zoned to the North-central and Senator George Akume (Benue North-west) was tipped for the office, while Senator Abu Ibrahim (Katsina South, North-west) was tipped for the office of Deputy Chief Whip. But the hope that the face-off between the two factions would be brought to an end with the latest intervention was completely dashed. The meeting ended in a fiasco, as the senators could not agree on the modalities for sharing outstanding principal positions in the upper chamber.
Trouble started when at a closed-door session held by the APC caucus later, Saraki told the senators that each zonal caucus should meet and present their choices for the offices. What started as a make-up move by the party leadership to mend the broken fences and reunite its members in the legislature later turned into another round of confrontation leading to an exchange of fisticuffs on the floor of the chamber of the House of Representatives.
The cat and mouse game continued among the legislators elected on the platform of APC in both chambers of the National Assembly on Wednesday, with the Senate’s plenary marred by embarrassing altercations resulting from incessant points of order raised by warring senators. Those senators not favoured by the tone of deliberations employeds tactics to frustrate and disrupt the smooth flow of proceedings in the Senate.
On the other hand, in the House of Representatives, APC members from the North-central and South-east regions took to similar action as in the senate and rejected the party’s nominees for principal positions in the House.
The governors of the APC-controlled state were not left of the saga as they made last spirited effort to steer the party out of trouble in the National Assembly including holding a breakfast consultative meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, all the interventions and reconciliation efforts appeared half-baked and ineffective as the party’s lawmakers failed to cue into the peace arrangement put forward by the leadership. Rather than bring about settlement of the crisis, the letter written by the party to the National sparked off further agitations and threw the House of Representatives chambers into chaos. The drama in the House chambers saw the aggrieved lawmakers of the APC disrupting the plenary session. The rampaging lawmakers insisted that the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, must respect the decision of the party on four of its nominees who had been selected to occupy principal positions in the House. Commotion started in the green chamber when Dogara called on a member, Hon. Oker Jeff, from Benue, to move for an executive session. But this was not to be as Hon. Abdullahi Salame from Sokoto moved in protest towards the mace, the symbol of the legislature, and attempted to grab it.
His action was swiftly checked as men of the sergeant-at-arms prevented the legislative coup from taking place.
The scuffle, which involved the attempted mace snatchers and men of the sergeantat-arms, was later joined by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers, with some of them forming a protective shield around Dogara.
The dash for the mace and the resulting scuffle went on for about 20 minutes until the sergeant-at-arms men aided by Dogara’s loyalists succeeded in moving the mace to a safer place. Their action was triggered by Dogara’s refusal to read a letter received from APC two days earlier informing the Speaker that it had nominated Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila (APC, Lagos) and Hon. Alhassan Ado Doguwa (APC, Kano) as Majority Leader and Deputy Majority Leader, respectively. The party also gave the names of Hon. Mohammed Tahir Monguno (APC, Borno) and Hon. Pally Iriase (APC Edo) as Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip, respectively.
In the Senate, the soft landing provided by the leadership of the APC for Senator Ahmad Lawan to emerge as Senate Leader was finally shattered when Senate President Bukola Saraki announced Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South, North-east) as the Majority Leader of the Eighth Senate after his zonal caucus had elected him. Saraki also named Bala Ibn Na’Allah (Kebbi South, North-west) as Deputy Majority Leader and Francis Alimikhena (Edo North, South-south) as the Chief Whip.
Following the intrigues in the Senate and fisticuffs in the House, both chambers adjourned for recess till July 21. From all indications, what has happened with the emergence of the leadership of the National Assembly is not unavoidable. Ardent observers of the political development in the country, especially as it relates to the in-fighting that has engulfed the ruling party, the APC, would wonder if it was indeed the same party that once mocked the PDP over its constant brawls. There are some who have said that they expected APC to have learnt enough lessons from the ugly experiences of the PDP and to act in a better way when confronted with the situation they found themselves in now. For instance, the origin of the present squabbles in the party could be traced to the mismanagement of the zoning process. Initially the party gave the impression that zoning had no place in its constitution and as such it would not apply it in any of its office sharing arrangement. So when the issue of zoning the principal offices in the National Assembly came up, the party became apparently caught unawares and undecided to the extent that it kept all its members- elect in suspense. This posture of the party continued even while those members with ambitions went ahead campaigning for support from across the country. The campaigns became very intense and sometimes acrimonious and causing a division among the party stakeholders. By the time the party finally came-up with a mock election as its selection arrangement, it was almost very late in the day to command a united house. Aspirants had broken into different camps and were now very suspicious of even the party’s leadership whose motives they no longer trust. One mistake the party may have made was not to have employed all the internal mechanisms of the party including summoning the National Executive Council (NEC) and Board of Trustees to help in resolving the initial disagreement over the zoning before allowing it to blossom into a major crisis.