Wonders shall never end as majority of the youths touted as leaders of tomorrow, are now into political thuggery, character assassination, blackmail, crude and unintelligent sycophancy typical of village tyrants on a rampage within the political space for peanuts.
They have consciously mortgaged their tomorrow today for a bowl of porridge. But the larger society is to share the blame.
A promise is a powerful part of credibility even in the mouths of politicians who are known for being famous for not keeping to promises. If it could be recalled, Nigerians enthusiastically embraced the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015 because of its trumpeted promise of ‘Change’. A change Nigerians are forced in tolerating, regretting and grumbling in pains for foolishly endorsing poverty, absence of infrastructure, insecurity, marginalization, escalation of corruption and total collapse of the economy as the change they were deceived to have voted.
After 16 years of over familiarity with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) alleged incompetence, corruption and power drunkenness at the federal level, they were ready for a leap of faith even if they weren’t sure how they would land.
Indeed, one of the most memorable lines from that 2015 electioneering campaign was the phrase ‘anything, but Jonathan.’ But much more profound was the ability of the opposition to zero in on the prevailing sentiment— a hunger for change.
Change then was a simple but loaded word that meant different things to all manner of people. For some it implied their economic condition would be transformed for the better in short order. For others, it meant it would no longer be business as usual in politics and the public space; the PDP way was to be jettisoned for something much better as claimed. The something much better till date remains on the APC drawing board as an imagination not for execution. It was all lies from the bottom pit of hell!
But early in the life of President Buhari’s administration, Nigerians struggled to come to terms with the shock of the new. For those who were used to PDP style of governance cobbling their teams together in weeks, it was a rude shock when it took the new helmsman almost six months to constitute his cabinet—nonchalantly justifying his tardiness at some point with the throwaway comment about ministers being ‘noisemakers’.
Over nine years after the APC took over the reins of government the jury is still out as to how much change it has so far delivered. Few months ago, one of the serving senators, Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano Central Senatorial District, a man who dipped his feet in both waters, declared that there is no difference between the two strongest parties, APC and PDP. Whatever motivated his remark is difficult to disagree given the regularity with which their members, switch allegiance, and ease of adaption once they land on their new defection home.
It is actually naïve to expect that a party that had a healthy dose of PDP in its DNA would so easily purge itself, of the ways of the old ruling party. After all, one of the legacy blocs of APC was a group of rebels rallying under the so called nPDP banner. The rebel group of the PDP in virtually all the states had finally hijacked the APC from the hands of other components of the cobbled mega-merger. Name them, Adams Oshiomhole, Abdullahi Adamu, Umar Ganduje, GodsWill Akpabio etc.
Within the APC top echelon, apart from the President who defected from Alliance for Democracy (AD) to the disbanded Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Vice-president Kashim Shettima and Maimala Buni that defected from ANPP and very few others, who again matters in leadership of the APC other than the nPDP and APGA factional rebels?
The present national chairman of APC, Umar Ganduje was nurtured by the PDP and its card carrying member as deputy governor in Kano State, so are majority of APC leaders. Today, the ruling party finds itself in a quandary simply because it has not only failed to learn the ways of those it supplanted but is clearly unenthusiastic and insincere to give a robust government to Nigerians spiced with security to lives and property.
Until after when Adams Oshiomhole was toppled in a judicial coup d’etat, APC as the ruling party could not install a substantive National Working Committee (NWC). No thanks to relentless intriguing, a caretaker committee under Mai Mala Buni that was to quickly organize a national convention to elect new leaders, soon morphed into a permanent high command for the furtherance of the ambitions of its members until it was sacked with fiat and replaced with another former PDP chieftain, Senator Abdullahi Adamu who relinquished the position and replaced by another PDP erstwhile member, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
Amazingly and without any sense of irony, its leading lights worked against their reason for being—only capitulating in the face of imminent revolt by party stakeholders.
Now, courtesy of the newly-minted Electoral Act, APC was forced to hold a convention, ‘elected’ new national executive members and held its primaries to pick candidates for the 2023 general elections.
The opposition PDP which had its own internal issues had, at least, managed despite the odds to enthrone a proper leadership under Prof Iyorchia Ayu through a transparent national convention that produced Atiku Abubakar as its presidential flag bearer for the 2023 election.
APC’s inability to have chosen its leaders earlier was certainly not an advertisement of competence. It was down to the different tendencies scheming for advantage. Everyone had a preferred presidential candidate to succeed Buhari in 2023 and erroneously believed they could only deliver their candidates by first seizing control of the party’s national chairmanship. There was nothing wrong with that as long as the right of other groups to hold same aspiration was acknowledged.
Politics, after all, is a game of interests. Democracy, more specifically, allows for contestation. It recognizes the right of people to have different views and present such to the electorate to make their final choice. Strangely, we saw a pattern in APC that’s against free contest, ostensibly because that could have created rancor and fractured the cobbled entity into shreds.
But it won’t be a democracy if contestation between different factions and tendencies doesn’t produce heat. Somehow, Nigerian politicians especially of the APC persuasion, think they have invented a novel political contrivance called ‘consensus’ that was to leave all aspirants chirping happily like birds, after one is picked and several others dumped, using the most opaque of parameters.
In reality, people are more likely to give peace a chance when they are beaten fair and square in a transparent contest. They would accept their fate and move on, rather than continuing to moon about what could have been after being out manoeuvred by some murky consensus arrangement.
President Buhari then on the saddle of power, declined to sign the amended Electoral Bill when it was first presented for his assent on the grounds that in mandating use of only the direct primary, the legislation denied parties freedom to consider and use other options.
Today, the Electoral Act has three methods of selecting candidates—-Direct and Indirect primaries as well as Consensus. But those who once moaned about limited options hate to hear of any other option other than the consensus mode which is the only way to achieve their diabolical ends within their party most especially that has to do with godfathers.
In some states and localities, APC has transformed to a ‘limited liability company’ owned by a few piloting the affairs of the party within fortified walls. You either bow before those masquerades for recognition and possibly for pecuniary gains or you stand to be expelled unjustifiably for not bending the rules and sycophancy. That’s APC in the hands of grave diggers brandishing diggers and shovels to bury their weak members alive. This forms part of the reasons offered by Nasiru El-Rufa’i, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State for his recent defection to the relatively unpopular, Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Unfortunately, under the new legislation this can only happen where all interested parties indicate in writing that they accept the so-called consensus pick. From what played out in APC convention of 2023 and that was not applied for the presidential candidate even under the threat of rancor.
Where there’s no consensus, the natural thing for democrats to do is to allow aspirants compete in an open contest. That may not be the style and wish of the APC. It prefers to load it on all than through the democratic process for fear of the obvious. There has never been internal democracy in the APC right from the onset. We are told that APC has a tradition of choosing its leaders by arrangement which is a convention not a law.
In any event, the same party also has a history of picking its presidential ticket by ballot. In 2014 at Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar, Rabi’u Kwankwaso and Rochas Okorocha faced party delegates and the majority backed Muhammadu Buhari. That’s part of APC’s tradition of doing things then.
But perhaps, the troubling thing about the power struggle within the ruling and exiting party is the overt attempt by their governors and others who transformed Buhari and now Tinubu into some sort of sole administrators, oracles or godfathers. The APC State Governors are same sole administrators, oracles and godfathers in their respective states, so are members of the national assembly in their senatorial and federal constituencies while PDP believes in inclusivity. That is the mess in the APC that is seriously affecting good governance in Nigeria.
Those within the APC who have been most vocal in denouncing and condemning the excesses of their governors and other leaders in their respective states, constituencies and local governments are usually tagged as party rebels or enjoying opposition party sponsorship and denied access to given palliatives and exercise of their franchise within the party.
It is part of APC tradition for its members to be sycophantic, blackmailers, witch-hunters, bootlickers, parochial liars, deceivers, pretenders and above all muster the strategies of rigging elections and thuggery before accorded due recognition as a party loyalist.
Again, without any sense of irony, they are usually too glad and sycophantic to shunt aside simple democratic processes for choosing leaders—-leaving the job to the president, governor and local champions to select and impose who are not all knowing, but mere mortals with weaknesses, preferences and prejudices.
Time and again, we’ve heard APC governors reaching to Aso Rock Villa not to party national secretariat and emerge to spew lame line: “Tinubu will decide, Tinubu will direct and guide us, Tinubu will show the light’ etc. The same show of shame is obtained at state levels as if other party chieftains are bereft of ideas to proffer solutions to internal party squabbles.
A real politician who knows his onions needs no godfather but survives the rigors with the support of the electorate. Such a politician is always prepared to confront political challenges with confidence and courage using his credibility platform and available resources. Let me refer to few politicians of substance that survive the odds without godfathers; Goodluck Jonathan, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki, Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, Abdul-Azeez Yari, DT Sango, Abdul Ahmed Ningi, Siminalayi Fubara, Ali Modu Sheriff, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, Bode George, Muhammed A. Abubakar SAN, Peter Odili, Yakubu Dogara, Obong Victor Attah, Musiliu Obanikoro, Hamza Al-Mustapha, Comrade Shehu Sani,  Donald Duke, Abdullahi Adamu, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Tanimu Turaki SAN, Ireti Kingbe, Rufus Ada- George, Nasiru Ahmed El-Rufa’i, Muhammed Garba Gololo and few others.
Neither The Constitution of Nigeria nor that of the APC gives powers to any President, Governor or other party chieftains to pick a contestant by fiat and load it on others; it was only a convention once crafted by the PDP in its trying time but suddenly and greedily swallowed hook line and sinker by the APC. It is now giving the APC heartburn and indigestion with the party left to lick its wound without solution at sight.
Should Nigerians continue to look up to such a cobbled entity for good governance beyond 2027? Your Guess is as good as mine if Nigerians sincerely yearn for good governance to successfully reach the coast in tandem with advanced world democracies!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.
