BETWEEN TAMBUWAL & GBAJABIAMILA.

It does not take a genius to know why the All Progressives Congress (APC) is in crisis. From the look of things, the situation may not change within the foreseeable future. If care is not taken, APC may not rule for more than one term of office, at least not in the current format. It may have to undergo drastic metamorphoses before it can become a political party with the capacity to whip its adherents into line and keep them obedient.

The APC may thus end up being the ruling party with the shortest stint, compared to the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), which ruled from October 1960 to January 1966; the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) which ruled from October 1979 to December 1983 and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which reigned from May 1999 to May 2015. The reason for the new ruling party’s woes is that, unlike the defunct NPC, NPN and the defeated PDP, it does not REALLY have a leadership.

What it has is a crop of powerful chieftains who came together to wrest power from the PDP and are now slugging it out to assert their supremacies. These include President Muhammadu Buhari, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. There are other strong but minor stakeholders, such as Senator Bukola Saraki, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, Senator Ahmed Yerima, Governor Aminu Tambuwal, Governor Rochas Okorocha, Governor Adams Oshiomhole, former Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the lot, who are more or less in the shadows of Buhari, Tinubu and Atiku.

Secondly, unlike the three afore-mentioned parties, the APC does not have policies and principles by which it operates. At least, the PDP, in its power sharing arrangement, operated the policy of zoning of principal offices in the Legislature and Executive to reflect federal character and give its stakeholders a sense of belonging. It also effectively implemented power rotation, which started the Presidency from the South in 1999, went North in 2007, came back to the South in 2011 due to constitutional exigencies and would have gone back to the North in 2019 if former President Goodluck Jonathan had been re-elected.

The APC, on the other hand, sometimes says it does not believe in zoning, yet it zoned its National Chairmanship to the South to accommodate Tinubu’s lackey, Dr. John Oyegun. It zoned the presidency to the North to benefit Buhari who had the largest electoral capital in the North. Even in the sharing of the principal offices in the National Assembly, it zoned President of the Senate to North East and Speaker, House of Representatives to South West. If that arrangement had worked, the South East and South-South would have been excluded in the National Assembly. APC would have justified this (as they are doing right now) by saying that they (especially South East) did not “qualify” to produce principal officers as they did not elect “ranking” lawmakers in the APC. It is this chaotic atmosphere that has given way to the free-for-all that we have been witnessing.

Beyond all this is the ghost of political morality, which is now haunting the camp of Tinubu and his loyalists. They say there is no morality in politics. It is true, provided you commit political immorality and get away with it.

In 2011, Tinubu felt on top of the world when he succeeded in fouling the zoning policy of the PDP. The Party wanted to make Hon. Mulikat Akande the Speaker of the House Reps to complete a national power sharing formula that went thus: President: South-South, Vice President, North West; Senate President, North Central; Deputy Senate President, South East; Speaker House of Reps, South West and Deputy Speaker, North East. Tinubu’s intervention in PDP’s affairs threw the party’s power sharing formula out of kilter. Tambuwal’s anti-PDP coup deprived the South West and North East of their rightful dues and instead gave the North West Vice President and Speaker, while the South East got Deputy Senate President and Deputy Speaker.

But Tinubu and his supporters were elated with their own political wizardry. Incidentally, the warrior at the centre of that drama pushing Tinubu’s pieces on the House Representatives political chessboard was Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, the then daredevil Minority Leader. When Tambuwal was successfully enthroned, Gbajabiamila told the media that it was based on “merit”. On Tuesday, June 9th 2015, the ghost of political morality came knocking on Gbajabiamila’s door. He was defeated by Hon. Yakubu Doraga with the help of PDP lawmakers following a poetic re-enactment of the 2011 scenario.

What was rhapsodically romanticised as “merit” in 2011 now became “treachery” for Tinubu’s faction of the APC. Rather than being wise and swallowing their pride as PDP did to allow governance to proceed, Tinubu and the APC “Loyalists” opted to brazen it out and fight to assert what they now called “party supremacy”. Tinubu and Gbajabiamila were exhilarated to destroy the principle of “party supremacy” in the PDP in 2011, but when it came to their turn to have a taste of that medicine, they opted for a fight. It is this emphasis on power grabbing rather than operating based on credible principled policies that has turned the APC into a free-for-all ruling party.

After the June 25th brawling, which led to the postponement of the House of Representatives till July 21st, the APC set up series of initiatives to make peace among its warring factions. Funny enough, former Speaker, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who is now the Governor of Sokoto State, was asked to go and look for harmony between Speaker Dogara and Gbajabiamila’s groups. After protracted negotiations, Dogara’s group offered to concede the Majority Leader position to the Gbajabiamila group, provided that the beneficiaries did not come from the South West and North East. Their argument was, to me, impeccable. South West already has the Deputy Speaker and cannot also produce the Majority Leader in the same chamber. North East also has the Speaker and cannot produce any other principal officer when the South East and South-South are yet to get anything. Dogara insisted on the constitutional imperative of federal character. This effectively edges out Gbajabiamila, the real reason that Tinubu and his loyalists are pushing for “party supremacy”.

When Tambuwal was appointed for this difficult job, I became very curious. I wondered what he would advise Gbajabiamila to do as a way of ending the feud. Did he ask Gbaja to follow the enduring principle of “merit” which produced him in 2011 and enthroned Dogara in 2015? In fact, how could Tambuwal head such a peace mission when he had boldly and openly sided with Dogara during his June 9th election?

Well, no one told us  how the conversation went between Tambuwal and Gbaja. But we did hear how it went when Tambuwal led his peace mission to the Asokoro, Abuja residence of the Lion of Bourdillon, Asiwaju Tinubu. Livid with rage, Tinubu told Tambuwal that for betraying Gbaja on June 9th, he had shut his door to the South West in case he has a future presidential ambition in mind. Tambuwal reportedly excused himself and left.

The prospect for peace in the APC thus hangs in the balance. In eight days, the House will reconvene, and if the two sides refuse to budge from their obstinate positions we might be in for some serious royal rumble. We hope another Aminu Safana tragedy will not happen – ever again.