Some leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had their egos bruised on Tuesday when, against commonsense, they intended to narrow the political space to favour some interests. Not many snorted when they used the same divisive ploy to win fair and square on June 6, 2011. Handpicking representatives is a democratic aberration and the faster we learn this, the better for all of us.
These awe-struck apostles of change must be bad students of history too. If they are being paid back in their own coins four years after, they also stand accused of not improving on their game. Why should they be so devastated to resort to name-calling? Have they forgotten that those who enjoy the luxury of riding at the back of the tiger could end in the belly of the same tiger when the animal has devoured all preys on sight? There is only one lesson in the new Nigeria they have brought: the voice of man is the voice of God. Those who thought they have a mastery of the game of plotting divisiveness, treachery and indiscipline in other camps to their own advantage must know that perfidy has consequences. If it boomerangs this way, it should be seen as one bad turn deserving a worse one.
Two things struck me when I heard of the election of Bukola Saraki as Senate President while the party apparatchiks were still holding talks to pacify his team and Yakubu Dogara’s at the International Conference Centre. I thought people must still be living in Dreamland to believe that dye-in-the-wool politicians in the race will fritter away the PDP ‘goodwill’ of endorsing against the grains of the interpretative and structured understanding of the dynamics of their party’s decision not to use them. The other is that this indiscretion highlights the cracks the APC had papered over in the rainbow coalition of strange bedfellows that brought President Muhammadu Buhari to power.
It also dawned on me that whoever the gods want to destroy they first make mad. Why on earth will the leaders call a meeting when the previous day the country’s Number 2 man was ignored by the rampaging forces of the wounded lions from the New PDP (or nPDP) who saw him as “a yesterday’s commissioner just drafted into politics”, or so they said one of the gladiators called the vice president.
With the president talking about neutrality and ‘the owners’ of the party conducting less-than-honest shadow elections, it was clear that cohesion was missing. Did the Holy Book not say a house divided against itself shall fall? My people also say that when there is crack in a wall, the lizard will make it a habitation?
I was more surprised that the APC could not see the log in their own eyes but saw the speck in PDP’s. Did the leaders from the mosaic of parties that formed APC not serve the same pills to PDP when, against the party’s zoning arrangement, Aminu Tambuwal and Emeka Ihedioha were turned into thespians and smuggled into NASS to be made Speaker and Deputy in the same hallowed chambers? Why won’t they take the dosage or get a remediation capsule to expurgate the bitter medication? It shows that those who do collegiate system do not know that there is a wide gap between the typewriter and the computer.
After reflecting on the Tuesday melodrama, I saw that hubris played a big role in the non-pacification process that caused APC victory. They should undergo a catharsis. After that, let them reconcile themselves with the reality of the Saraki/Dogara leadership of NASS.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s musing in an interview with me was revealing. He has admonished Nigerians not to write the PDP off. No wonder his house was the first port of call for Saraki after snatching victory from the jaws of the APC Turks.
The NASS Comeuppance
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