The Anti Tinubu Mob, By Emmanuel Yawe
The newspapers on 10th July reported Bode George, the Lagos PDP henchman gloating gleefully over elections at the National Assembly the previous day.
“You know I predicted weeks ago that the APC is just a congregation of strange bedfellows. The most beautiful thing about what has happened is that Bola Tinubu’s political influence in Nigeria is coming to a sunset and it is about five minutes to midnight for him.
“If he cannot see this now, then it will be foolish of him. He brought in the APC national chairman and the vice-president and he thinks Nigeria belongs to him. So, he thought what he did in Lagos was what he could replicate at the national level and they have shown him that he cannot continue to be the lord of the manor.”
It is of course common knowledge that there is no love lost between Bode George and Bola Tinubu. During the Obasanjo years while Tinubu was governor of Lagos State and George was the leader of the PDP in the South West, we heard repeated threats from him that the PDP was going to ‘capture’ Lagos. This almost happened when his party launched a lightening blitzkrieg in the South West against the states controlled by the Alliance for Democracy, AD.
While the other governors were cajoled by Obasanjo’s wily ways to lay down their guards, Tinubu was street wise enough to read the old soldier correctly and survived. Thus began the career of a calculating political actor that has blossomed today into a national government; a career Bode george says is “five minutes to midnight.”
From the one surviving state in 2003, Tinubu has over the past ten years plus built up a formidable political network of great national significance. He recovered most of the states lost to the PDP in the South West in subsequent elections and made significant in roads into the North and East of the country. The AD, now rechristened ACN was a major partner in the mega alliance that metamorphosed into the APC and led to Buharis victory at this years polls. To predict whimsicaly as Bode George did that this man is politically finished because of one set back calls to question his skills in political analysis.
In the march towards the 2015 elections, analysts sympathetic to the PDP predicted that the APC merger could not win a national election because historically the North and the South West on which it was hinged have never travelled together. This was only partially true because in 1992, the North dicthed her son Tofa and voted emeses for Abiola. Those who peddled this theory of ‘no north / south west’ political marriage overlooked this fact maybe because June 12 was not consummated. They hoped that the Yoruba’s for their historic antagonism against the Hausa Fulani would not support Buhari.
This was a complete mis reading of history. Anybody who has read Alhaji Babatunde Jose’s well informed book – Walking a Tight Rope – will agree with me that in the days preceding Nigerias Independence in 1960, the North and the West almost went into an alliance to form a National government. Babatunde Jose who was the Correspondent of the Daily Times in Kaduna, covering the whole North in the 50’s wrote as a well informed journalist, which he was untill his death. He was in a position to know because he was on first name basis with all the major political players from both the north and the west.
Additionally, he wrote that there were cultural and religious grounds to lay a solid foundation for that alliance. The Yoruba’s like the Hausa Fulanis have a well entrenched cultural tradition of respect for traditional institutions. In terms of religion, they both have a huge Muslim population. That this alliance did not work out in the 50’s does not mean it is an impossibility. It was only a matter of time. And no force can stop an idea whose time has come. The time came in 2015.
But the Olubode George rump of the decimated PDP are not acting alone. They have their spies and collaborators in the APC. He was therefore right when he spoke about the APC as a “congregation of strange bed fellows.” In the dying days of the PDP, the smart alecs like Dr Saraki who saw the Titanic heading towards the iceberg jumped ship. Their body is in the APC but their soul is in the cesspool of humanity otherwise known as the PDP.
The earlier they are sent back home the better for the APC. I read with great interest an interview granted by Buba Galadima to the SundayTrust yesterday. Saraki and co should be suspended or expelled from the party. In his own words; “it is dangerous going about on the streets with a scorpion in your pocket”.
The anti Tinubu mob do not mean well for the APC or the country. They do not know the significance of the APC victory this year and the heroic role played by Tinubu. What is all this nonsense talk about Tinubu wanting to grab everything? It is too early in the day. Buhari has not even formed a government. If they pluck Tinubu’s wings today, they will go for Buhari’s own tomorrow.
Tinubu’s silence in all this is ominous and eloquent. The South west APC state Chairmen have spoken; Bisi Akande has spoken. With the resurrection of Radio Biafra in the East and Boko Haram pounding the North, Buhari should not go in search of additional enemies. Without the Tinubu group, he is crippled.
The Saraki Janjaweed group must be chased out of town. As Buba Galadima Buhari’s old friend put it: “It is dangerous going about the streets with a scorpion in your pocket.” [myad]
Senate Leadership Saga: Between Politics And Morality, By Ariyo Dare
It is indeed heartwarming that partisan Abba Mahmood, in his Thursday column in Leadership newspaper titled: “Urine Cannot Clean Faeces,” decided to cite celestial factors- righteousness and justice- as the forces that will win the final political battle in the All Progressives Congress (APC). Very gratifying! The implication of this is that the writer fully understands the place of truth and fairness in the complex game of politics; meaning, we can x-ray and place what transpired before and on June 9, 2015 in the National Assembly on a moral pedestal.
But before looking at the intricacies surrounding all that led to the legislative leadership tussle in the APC, a simple check with recent history could have saved the writer the needles journey through the path of political religiousness. Less than eight months ago, APC which was in a hurry to grab government at the center, consolidated its gradual incursion into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led government through the former Speaker, House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal (now Governor of Sokoto State). A proxy of the minority party succeeded in presiding over the majority. I will dwell more on this later.
Another worrying aspect of the July 9, 2015 column was the subtle attack on the person of the Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA), Salisu Maikasuwa, who has ever remained impartial in the legislative enterprise of the federal lawmakers. The CNA is largely concerned with the administration of the NASS bureaucracy. The Clerk to the Senate and his counterpart in the House of Representatives tend to the legislators’ lawmaking business on the floor, including providing guidance on issues of legislative rules. It is important to make this point so that people like Mahmood will refocus when they try to point finger of guilt to quarters in the alleged alteration of standing rules.
Now, let us look at another perspective in the legislative saga: if Maikasuwa is so powerful to the extent that it was within his bureaucratic powers to shut out some lawmakers from the Senate chamber, can we then safely conclude that Maikasuwa colluded with the APC to allow Tambuwal to gain access into the Green Chamber, when a PDP-led government was against him (Tambuwal)? But here is a bureaucrat that understands how to rise above politics, partisanship and pettiness in the discharge of his duties, perhaps always guided by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as demonstrated on June 9, 2015.
From all indications, the modest measure of stability in the National Assembly is still due to the wisdom and good conscience of the CNA, who I will like to meet one day. If Maikasuwa had allowed himself to be used for politics sans morality and refused to open the 8th Assembly for business after the President had conveyed his proclamation to him, possibly, NASS would have been caught in a serious disaster and worse situation; and, without any other corresponding letter from the President directing him to suspend or shift the date of the inauguration from 10am on June 9, 2015, the leadership of APC would have denied him and the whole world would have been asking for his head. It is therefore not Maikasuwa yaci kasuwarsa kawai (Maikasuwa just ate his market) as Mahmood magisterially declared in his treatise but Maikasuwa ya gyara kasuwan democratiyan Nigeria (Maikasuwa has succeeded in helping to strengthen democracy in Nigeria).
Back to the leadership matter: that Mahmood did not capture a very recent episode for justice to be complete beggars belief. Can we then safely say he sanctioned the Tambuwal incident? Of course, like the APC camp, the PDP too was not happy with that development. It employed all manner of tactics to stop Tambuwal but several Nigerians, galvanized by the APC, stood against the PDP and Tambuwal had his way. It was then that “they” made us to realize that there was nothing wrong in the minority presiding over the majority. We had Tambuwal (APC) as Speaker and Emeka Ihedioha (PDP) as Deputy Speaker. The question now is: did Tambuwal act based on righteousness, justice and progress according to the editorial parlance of Mahmood?
Maybe the PDP should even be blamed for having a rare opportunity to take the bigger apple; but had, instead, humbly elected to go for the smaller one in the 8th Assembly, to wit: deputy senate presidency. Heaven would not have fallen if David Mark, for instance, had returned as the Senate President like some hawks in the PDP had wished and even advised. It would have been so easy for the PDP to have played a smart political coup d’état against Bukola Saraki on the floor of the Senate and beat him to it. Validation: the House was already convened and quorum formed, yet the 49 PDP senators, out of magnanimity, decided to honour an earlier pact, as widely reported in the media, to take the Deputy Senate President.
To conclude with the alleged doctoring of the Senate Standing Rules, I would like to posit that the APC has scored another first by externalising an internal matter that should have been left for the Senators to resolve. I can understand the desperation of the other camp in the APC to vitiate, at all cost, the process that produced Saraki and Ekweremadu as Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively. Its only strategy is to externalize the issue and seek to heap a moral burden on the senate leadership. But the other camp should know that inequity cannot be fought with chicanery.
I will counsel Mahmood to be prepared to, in the months ahead, write a similar piece to criticise police involvement in an issue that could later affect those on his side of interest in the National Assembly. Yes, what goes around comes around. I hope when it eventually happens, he will not forget this current episode.