FEATURE ARTICLE

Babs AjayiTuesday, July 14, 2015
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Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

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THE WRANGLING WITHIN APC

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here is so much disaffection and squabbling within the new ruling party, the APC. At least two camps are very visible and dissent is out in the open. The position of President Buhari on this matter is still quite unclear. Personal interests are now being raised by those concerned and the zeal to protect the "investment" of godfathers is heating up the polity at the highest level of the party. Many with filthy hands and dubious past in the PDP suddenly have the audacity to talk, particularly Mr. Bode George. Though many of us do not really care about events inside the APC, but what concerns us the most is how the wrangling and its aftermath will affect the promises made to the electorate and the running of the affairs of the nation, the states and the local governments. The battle for control and for positions at the National Assembly appeared to have triggered the in-fighting. It makes everyone to begin to wonder if the fight for positions by these individuals in the APC is because they are determined to serve and to do good by our people or if they are only out to grab power and some filthy lucre. I do not think nor expect that the will to serve the people should push any of the players in this do-or-die battle cum drama to go to the extent we have witnessed in the last several weeks, slowing down the machinery of government in the process, and raising dust to boot.

The facts of the division inside the party are never published in the APC-controlled newspapers or in the newspaper of Bola Tinubu. Even news items and stories about the mismanagement of state funds, which have resulted in the inability of many APC governors to pay several months' salaries and pensions as terribly exemplied in Aregbesola's Osun State, have not made it into those newspapers with APC connection. Obviously, truth emerges in Nigerian newspapers from the opposition and/or independent newspapers than from the megaphones of the political party concerned. The columnists of The Nation have cleverly avoided the issue and the problem dodging the APC, preferring instead to write about other matters that are not as pressing as this single and terrible issue that is about to set the new government ablaze and rock the party to its foundation.

Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara assumed office as senate president and speaker respectfully after their party had ceded and chosen others for those positions. The two men waggled their way - by one scheme or the other - to the highest positions at the National Assembly while their party men were said to have been attending a party meeting elsewhere. Both men did not attend that party meeting and claimed that they were not even aware of the meeting. Some leaders of the APC have refused to recognize the two men. Though Mr. Bola Tinubu has not said a word about the emergence of both men, his silence has been very loud enough for everyone in the APC to know that he disapprove of them and he is not happy with them. Now the South West caucus of the party is said to have decided to boycott the activities of the party because Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila did not make it to the speakership.

The APC has suggested in no uncertain terms that Senator Saraki and Mr. Dogara are occupying positions reserved for other people. The party is supreme, they claim, and every one must tow party line and adhere to party directives. This resurrected my romance with Wole Soyinka's Kingi's Harvest. There are dozens of Aweris out there and endless streams of loyalists who are ready to die for the national leader and do his bidding, but there are also a few who are determined to forestall the agenda of the national leader - holding the view that the agenda of the national leader is narrow and selfish, and not in the best interest of the nation. The sincerity of Saraki and Dogara are also in doubt. At any rate, the two men have told stories that have borrowed from fables than from facts. I guess WS must be wondering if the drama we are beholding now is not even sweeter and loftier that what he created in Kongi's Harvest. Is Nigeria the new Ismaland of personal interests, bickering, backstabbing, greed, and the right to eat the fruits of electoral victory at the national level? The end to this APC drama will extract its price on the party, some of its top members and probably the nation.

But the whole exercise may amount to a fruitless labour by the masses of the Nigerian people who put their trust in the APC and voted for change. How will Tinubu and his co-travellers topple Saraki and Dogara now? Will the two men be asked to abdicate their positions with the swan song that the party is supreme? Or will they be impeached or excommunicated from the APC? With the Nation newspapers, the loud asoro magbesi and megaphone of the party leader that constantly pour out propaganda but never respond to new ideas nor offer open, transparent and honest analyses of the issues that plague and threaten the party, there is a danger of self-destruction and annihilation. Though the national leader once denied that he begged to be made the vice-presidential candidate, he is very much acting like the master puppeteer and the crooked tree that is stoking the fire, determined to derail the new national assembly and by extension, the new government. I just hope they will not hinder President Buhari and not stand in the way of his plans for the Nigerian people. If the National Assembly is not allowed to function very well and the members fail to share the dreams of Nigerians for a just, fair and equitable society, then the APC would be seen to have failed, and marked down as a party that sought power for selfish reasons and to gain access to the national cake. We can only hope that these folks will not hold Buhari to ransom in their determination to have their way.

The very corrupt folks right inside the APC are doing their best to preserve the way they have been doing things, determined to continue to use the same boys who have mastered the party process and who know how to get results that their master crave. The APC drama is just beginning and the intrigue playing out is toxic and will have consequences, which may lead to an encore of the Aweri laments:

This is the last
That we shall dance together
This is the last the hairs
Will lift on our skin
And draw together
When the gbedu rouses
The dead in Oshugbo

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