By Ikeddy Isiguzo
STRANGE bed fellows are common in politics, more so Nigerian politics. While they are at it, however, they make an effort at common interests. Nigerian politicians are different.
The All Progressives Congress, APC, keeps out-performing itself in the ridiculousness it visits on the public in its internal affairs. Nothing any longer is beyond APC and the members as they clobber their way to what could be Nigeria’s most defining elections since independence.
Nigerians want change. APC wants wants change. Yet we are saying different things.
We are have a ruling party in majority at the National Assembly and in most States setting upon itself, becoming the main opposition. It is not a new thing though APC has put Nigeria on a firm path to nowhere in its running of the country.
Peoples Democratic Party had a similar end in 2015. The difference is that APC’s presidential candidate is not the sitting President. He is unsparing of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The stakes are high and more evidently centre on the belief of the self-acclaimed national leader of APC, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Jagaban Borgu, that the party he partly owns does not support his presidential ambition. He has complained loudly about the matter. If it is blackmail, it has failed.
The decibels went a notch up with his running mate Kashim Shettima adding that the North – assumed to have the votes to decide the elections – do not support him. The reason is more interesting. He is Kanuri. Did Tinubu make a mistake in choosing Shettima? Which North did Tinubu consult to arrive at his choice?
Shettima’s challenges are deeper. He has not disproved his alleged links with Boko Haram. Northern farmers and ordinary people hold them responsible for heightened insecurity that make their domains unsafe. Farming is directly affected.
APC’s muffled squabbles have blown open in the past few weeks. Members attack each other. The fights are over obstacles that Tinubu says his own party places on his way to an assumed victory in the election. They are worse, more public, and more intriguing by the day.
What started with the occasional concerns about President Muhammadu Buhari’s tepid interests in Tinubu’s campaigns has blown to full confrontations among the divisions in APC. The intensity of the disagreement is out of control.
It is the equivalent of an army attacking itself in the midst of battle, not by subterfuge, not by coy, but by unleashing direct arsenals on its members.
Tinubu lists fuel scarcity, a perennial issue that pre-dates APC by decades, as one instance of sabotage against him. Why should the Minister of Petroleum be unconcerned? The President is the Minister of Petroleum. The last time Jagaban complained about fuel scarcity, Goodluck Jonathan was President.
What has happened to APC? Not much except the divisive trappings that many warned awaited a Tinubu candidacy which is subsumed in entitlement and a remarkable indifference about what others feel.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket may not have been the beginning of Tinubu’s troubles, but it marked the beginning of new waffles about what Tinubu stood for, if ever he stands. The ticket appears to have been handed to him to demystify the Jagaban.
He estranged many with his belief that he was enough to win the election. He claimed support in the North. He had capacities to win without anyone’s assistance Everywhere was his. A long list of Tinubu acolytes sprouted. The part-takers in Tinubu’s moments were jostling for positions, a prelude for places in the anticipated government at the centre.
Tinubu remains a hard sell. His wobbling campaigns are attacked daily by Tinubu’s endless drivel that bother on imponderables. Cloudy identities mark every explanation he makes about himself. The only one who knows Tinubu, we can assume, is Tinubu.
His slurry speech is no longer the challenge. He now says embarrassing things, mostly meaningless, further confirmations that his impairments are degenerative.
Tinubu is isolated. His allies have shifted the gears of their relationship. One wonders why they supported him. Maybe they acted as great party men and women. Or were they playing out the script?
Desperation and frustration have set in as Tinubu realises the futility of his quest. He had believed the North owed him a return of a favour. He has just discovered that the North has no such plans.
His belief that his war chest was adequate weapon has failed him. Which individual rolled bullion vans into his residence on the eve of election without consequence? Tinubu did in 2019.
The watery defence that it was his money was another proof of his defiance, and disdain for the law. Is he above money-laundering laws?
Nobody should be surprised that Tinubu insists that the change of Naira targeted him. This should count as partial admission that Tinubu wanted to use money to win the election. Who would not?
Among the presidential candidates, he is the most acerbic public critic of Buhari and his policies. The tension Tinubu’s diatribes cause for the government he still proudly claims he made, wins him different sympathies in different measures.
Concerns keep rising about his health. If his gaffes may not be a reason for his departing grip on the prize, they have given many a glimpse of the mind of the candidate. He cannot co-ordinate thoughts on the simplest levels, and deliver them.
Some days he mounts the podium and we see a different Tinubu without “bala blue”. Those occasions are rare.
Nigerians need a President who will be present with presence of mind. Tinubu’s allies agree that the damage Buhari did has to be mended or at least ameliorated, not by Tinubu who has promised to continued with Buhari’s policies, including non-policies.
The same forces that Tinubu rallied to disrupt our lives since 2015 are now aligned against him. He wants a payback – that is his payback, a payback he truly deserves.
Finally…
TALKS of the elections being postponed are regular conversations these days. The elections should run as scheduled. That Goodluck Jonathan postponed elections in 2015 does not mean we should follow that precedent.
AIR Commodore Dan Sulieman, 80, military Governor of Plateau State in 1976, who passed 1 February was one of the activists who bore the brunt of the struggles of the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO against Gen. Sani Abacha’s government. May the Almighty rest him.
THE anger on the streets is mounting. Everything thing is scarce except troubles. No money, no fuel, no food, no security, even to collect PVCs is a task. What can government do? A lot, if it wants.
/Ikeddy ISIGUZO
A Major Commentator on Minor Issues
