Those whom the gods wish
to destroy, they first make mad. The APC plan for a Muslim/Muslim ticket
in this day and age in Nigeria is nothing short of madness.
Bola Tinubu is standing on the horns of a dilemma. He became the
godfather of the APC out of burning personal ambition to seek greener
political pastures for himself in Abuja. The APC calculus
is to present a Northern presidential and Southern vice-presidential
ticket against the PDP’s Jonathan/Sambo ticket in the 2015 presidential
election. If that APC vice-presidential candidate is not Tinubu himself,
then all bets are off as far as Tinubu is concerned. However, the
prospect of a ticket with Tinubu as vice-president is already ensuring
that the APC is badly in need of aspirin.
An APC vice-president
that is not Tinubu poses grave political danger to Tinubu. It means
Tinubu has been sowing for somebody else to reap. If that person happens
to be Yoruba, he or she could quickly become a contender for Tinubu’s
much-vaunted position as the Asiwaju of South-West politics in Nigeria.
That is the reason why Tinubu schemed against Mulikat Akande becoming
the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Therefore, all systems are
“go.” Tinubu must be APC’s vice-presidential candidate by hook or crook.
If not, it is most likely Tinubu will end up by scheming against the
APC in the coming presidential election.
Truncated democracy
The first imperative is to ensure that the chairman of the APC must be
someone Tinubu can manipulate. Therefore, he insisted that Bisi Akande,
the former ACN chairman well-schooled in Tinubu’s gamesmanship, must be
retained as APC chairman. Those were the days when Tinubu’s word was law
in ACN. But now in APC, he got into a shouting match with Tom Ikimi,
who insisted the APC chairman must come from the South-South. Tinubu
lost out to the new power-brokers of the APC governors. Bisi Akande
resigned and the post was zoned to the South-South.
Then phase
two of the battle began. Tinubu needed to ensure that the APC chairman
is not his new arch-enemy, Tom Ikimi, a known Atiku Abubakar man. So he
shopped for a more malleable alternative. He finally settled on John
Odigie-Oyegun, former governor of Edo State. But when the permutations
were done, Odigie-Oyegun could not be assured of victory in a democratic
poll. The answer, therefore, in typical Asiwaju fashion, was to
truncate democracy in APC.
Tinubu engaged in backroom deals
whereby, instead of electing a new APC chairman, Odigie-Oyegun was
rigged into the office. APC governors went along with this charade out
of fear Tinubu might otherwise lose interest in the APC and deny it of
valuable South-West support. The lie was sold to the convention that all
other candidates had agreed to step down for Odigie-Oyegun. As a
result, he was declared the new consensus chairman of the party.
Ikimi’s exposure
However, Tom Ikimi refused to play ball. He not only boycotted the
convention, he announced that the whole thing was 419, ACN style. Ikimi
declared that the election was rigged principally by Tinubu, who he
claimed “unilaterally” appointed Odigie-Oyegun as party-chairman. Said
Ikimi: “I did not step down for anybody. When it became clear to me and
many others, including my supporters, that the outcome of the contest
would not be determined by a free and fair vote at the convention, most
of the delegates, tired and weary after waiting for more than 24 hours
for accreditation all day at Eagle Square, departed.”
Ikimi
went further to reveal that the entire scam is designed to pave the way
for a Muslim/Muslim APC presidential ticket with the Asiwaju himself as
Muslim vice-presidential candidate. Hear Ikimi: “I felt strongly that if
we were bound to proceed on the basis of zoning that both party offices
as well as key offices in government such as President, Vice President
etc., should be put on the table and zoned at the same time. My
suggestion was motivated by strong information I had received of plots
being hatched to steamroll a Muslim/Muslim Presidential and Vice
Presidential ticket for the APC in the 2015 election and with specific
individuals in mind as the beneficiaries.”
This plot is not
just thickening: it is also unraveling. Tom Ikimi is not just an
ordinary member of the APC. He is one of the founding-members. As a
matter of fact, he presided over the negotiations leading to the merger
of the different parties that make up the congress. So what we have here
is more than speculative. It is coming from one of the APC insiders.
APC delusion
Femi Fani-Kayode also left the APC for the same reason. Stating
publicly the reason for his departure, Fani-Kayode declared: “I am a
devout and committed Christian and I cannot remain in a party where a
handful of people that have sympathies for Boko Haram and that have a
clear Islamic agenda are playing a leading role. This is made all the
more untenable when some of those people are working hard silently and
behind the scenes to impose a Muslim/Muslim ticket on the party for the
Presidential elections next year.”
Those whom the gods wish to
destroy, they first make mad. The APC plan for a Muslim/Muslim ticket
in this day and age in Nigeria is nothing short of madness. It will not
fly. It will not only be rejected outright by Nigerians, it will tear
the APC apart. Indeed, it is already beginning to do so. Bola Tinubu
cannot be elected vice-president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He
cannot even win a free and fair election in Lagos today. That is how
unpopular he has become in his South-West heartland. It did not help
matters that he was quoted as insulting virtually all Yoruba traditional
rulers. The defeat of sitting APC governor of Ekiti State, Kayode
Fayemi, by opposition PDP candidate, Ayo Fayose, is surely handwriting
on the wall. Tinubu cannot deliver the South-West to the born-to-rule
Northern cabals of the APC.
It is amazing how the political
ambitions of some individuals can completely blind them to the political
reality of present-day Nigeria. A situation where some terrorists are
holding the country and 219 Christian girls hostage by insisting that
Nigeria must become an Islamic Republic does not permit the scheming of a
political party that insists power must return to the North to present a
presidential ticket where both the president and vice-president are
Muslims. This would surely be interpreted by Christians and Muslims
alike as capitulation to Boko Haram. It would also confirm the
suspicions of some that the APC is sympathetic to the Boko Haram cause.
Abiola/Kingibe precedence
The argument that the Muslim/Muslim ticket of Abiola/Kingibe was
accepted by Nigerians in 1993 is disingenuous. That ticket was accepted
because the presidential candidate, Abiola, was from the South; and he
was running against Bashir Tofa, another Muslim but from the North. 2014
is not 1993. A Muslim/Muslim APC ticket today would combine the
insistence that power must return to the predominantly Muslim North,
with yet another political incendiary; the Islamisation of Nigeria
according to a Boko Haram agenda.
This would not only fail, it
would be politically disastrous. It would ensure that the 2015 election
will be fought on religious grounds. It would then become apparent to
everyone, Christian and Muslim alike, that Nigeria needs to be protected
from the APC. The very fact that major power-brokers in the APC are
even seriously entertaining this idea is eloquent testimony that the APC
is up to no good. The religious situation in Nigeria today is
particularly delicate, especially given the malicious bombing of
churches and killing of Christians by Muslim insurgents in the North.
How then can a political party that aspires to rule the entire country
be so insensitive to the prevailing situation?
Elections are
not about choosing between the best alternatives. Most times, they are
about choosing between bad alternatives. The PDP and the APC are both
lousy options. If we had the druthers, we would say “a plague on both
their houses.” Unfortunately, they are the only viable choices available
to Nigerians in the coming elections. Forced to choose between the two,
there can be no question that the PDP is by far the lesser evil.
APC sectarianism
APC is a party of convenience. It is the party of autocratic political
masqueraders pretending to be democrats. It is the party of power-hungry
politicians with regional agendas. It is a party of those inclined to
plunge Nigeria into sectarianism because personal ambition is given
greater saliency over the national interest. It is the party of those
who have remained largely silent and complicit in the face of Boko Haram
insurgency. It is the party of those who are inclined to use the
national tragedy of the kidnapping of innocent Chibok schoolgirls for
party-political gain.
The very fact that Fani-Kayode felt the
need to protest to the powers-that-be in the APC that “the APC is not an
affiliate of Al Qaeda and neither is it a Boko Haram party, a Janjaweed
party or a Muslim Brotherhood Party” shows it is beginning to be
perceived as one or all of the above. In life, perceptions are often
more important than reality. It is a testament to the disdain with which
the APC holds Nigerians that it is doggedly refusing to address these
growing perceptions. On the contrary, it seems inclined to confirm them.
Catch-22
The APC is in a catch-22 situation. If it does not field Buhari as
presidential candidate, it will lose invaluable Northern support that
only Buhari seems able to guarantee. If it does not field Tinubu as its
vice-presidential candidate, it will lose Tinubu’s ostensible South-West
coattails. The answer is the political suicide of a Buhari/Tinubu
ticket, since both politicians are Muslims. Whatever the permutations,
an APC presidential ticket that includes Tinubu will end up as a
Muslim/Muslim ticket, because the APC does not have a viable Northern
Christian presidential candidate.
In the meantime, the APC is
going to provide the political Nollywood of the coming months. The
upshot of these shenanigans is not only that the APC will come to grief
in the coming presidential elections, but that Bola Tinubu will lose his
meal-ticket in the South-West.
(THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY FEMI ARIBISALA IN HIS COLUMN WITH PREMIUM TIMES AND IT WAS PUBLISHED ON 25th JUNE 2014)
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