THE uproar that emerged from the recent National Assembly leadership elections is presently subdued by a pretense: The pretense is like that of the ashes’ calmness on top of a burning coal. As a matter of fact, it makes sense to assume that the only reason the issue has been prevented from escalating is because there is a consoling feeling that a lot of political offices have not been appropriated.
Moreover, we cannot foreclose the occasions of further interests being hurt by the way President Muhammadu Buhari could go about sharing of the other things in APC’s official wardrobe; even now that he prefers keeping the key of the ‘wardrobe’ inside his ‘underwear’.
After all, he (President Buhari) has from the onset warned that nobody should assume ownership of him or attempt to wield an overbearing power of influence over him – which as events unfold could prove that the leadership of APC was not exempted from the stern warning.
Notwithstanding how any person feels about now, the success of APC is benchmarked on three inseparable factors. Firstly, the common will of a majority of Nigerians to have a political leadership change owing to PDP’s serial failures. Secondly, the availability of APC and its astute managers such as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu strongly supported by the States’ coordinators – embodied in the APC States’ governors, who made APC a formidable front to drive the people’s quest for change. Thirdly, the untainted personality of President Muhammadu Buhari which assured the yearning public that the mission would deliver their desires.
The public stir generated by NASS leadership elections is not without a genuine cause. In the first instance, it is not just about NASS and their internal affairs. It is also about testing the people’s faith in APC and their presumption that the APC has all it takes to actualise their common desires; which of course cannot be achieved within a divided house.
On a more quizzical side, some persons are jittering with the believe that, the NASS leadership elections is an early unveiling of certain characters who joined the APC as a convenient platform to berth their interests after been bruised in the raging inferno of PDP’s brinkmanship; and nothing more than the constant blustering of such personal interest: Coupled with those suffering from highly ubiquitous ambitions, currently scheming to join the victorious APC camp by default.
On another hand, it is also revealing that APC might actually not have the right compost, cool headedness and harmony to handle their interpersonal differences as much as it can muster the concerted efforts to degrade their political opponents.
Interestingly, the bringing of Senator Ike Ekweremadu and Senator David Mark into relevance at so early a time within the APC fold is tantamount to assisting those who have eaten their cakes to also keep brandishing the cakes in mockery of most Nigerians – The NASS Elections is like ingratiating those who have largely ignored Nigerians in their oppressed state with a fresh mandate to keep on.
The question now is whether the outcome is not tending to make the ‘Change’ philosophy die a stillbirth as some of the elected principal officers in the highly influential National Assembly could use their entrenched interests to undermine APC’s efforts in order to revive PDP’s.
From good senses, the patriotic clamour of today is that the present Federal government is more than just an APC thing. Importantly, it is a test case of whether the essence of Nigeria as a united entity is necessary, possible and profitable by focusing on only the right and necessary things.
For once, let us observe whether the unity of Nigeria is not like aiming to produce grains from rocks even when we choose to apply the needed fertilizer. And as important as this experimentation is, Nigerians may be justifiably worried to find those who saw nothing wrong with forestalling about forty-six humanity enhancement bills until such a time their parliamentary-life was almost entering the morgue of history, been empowered to keep laying down the laws. The laws Nigerians would rather prefer being planted by those with copious populist sentiments.
In any case, the NASS leadership elections seem to have been challenged more by the attempt of APC leadership to reinvent and strengthen party discipline. Today, there is no gainsaying that the lack of party discipline was a major flaw that led the elected and appointed members of the PDP to operate without recourse to the directives or advice of the party structure with itinerant capacity to notice and remonstrate over the feelings of the public.
Instead, such appraisal of public feelings was left to the whims of elected and appointed PDP members who sat on their official high horses and avoided the giddiness of looking below to observe the masses’ plight.
However, party discipline is not about making the dictates or intentions of any man to become the divine order. It is also not about putting up with the antics of the middlemen political jobbers who eke out a living by constituting themselves into political commission houses where they snitch on what other party members have committed or omitted.
Presently, the goodwill that APC enjoys is because Nigerians cannot see any credible alternative in sight. It is the lone one to be treasured, guided and prayed for to succeed. It is what Nigerians got when they decided to go along with the Yiddish proverb “Let it be worse, so long as it’s a change”.
The threat of an election that could go awry is not as dangerous as the outcome of Nigerians getting to understand that the APC was only a ploy to remove the tension from the former oppressive order; and that the ‘Change’ philosophy is always going to remain unchanged.
But even as some may blame Dr. Olusola Saraki and his fellow elected NASS officers for what seems like a deliberate attempt to exclude some members from voting, we should also be mindful that such a stand may not have been his wish from the onset. Perhaps he only resorted to the ploy when we felt his right to be ambitious and aspire for a higher platform of delivering more to his people, being conspiratorially undermined.
Added to that, he could also have considered that he was only contesting against one of his mates, and not directly against any of APC’s national leaders. And as such, he had a choice of taking certain personal actions that could appear like making God and not APC to decide his fate.
As it is said in my place, Benin, if you choose not to be disturbed by a child’s wailing; you must refrain from spanking the child. So it would also seem that the APC pushed Dr. Saraki to take the actions that have not revealed a departure from the old ways of the PDP; and some Nigerians are kicking that the ‘Change’ may never change.
Taken together, it is also important to refrain from actions that seem like spiting Asiwaju Bola Tinubu within the APC camp because most other persons in the hierarchy of APC have tried without success to achieve what has now become like a political tsunami to the PDP until he (Asiwaju Tinubu) mustered the people, materials and courage to achieve the ‘Yes we can’. For this, members of the party should be careful about baying him with their ambitious actions.
