A junior staff in the Presidential Villa, whose name was not immediately known, had the privilege of leading President Muhammadu Buhari in the late noon Muslim prayer today. The President, who emerged from a marathon meeting with service chiefs, walked into the Mosque shortly after the Imam had completed the prayer with many Muslims in rows. However, Buhari quickly joined a few of those who arrived late and formed yet another row. The prayer was led by a junior staff who did not even know that President Buhari was behind him. [myad]
The change Nigerians yearned, even fought for, eventually came as an omelet on the breakfast table – the Senate Presidency. To the surprise, even embarrassment of many, President Buhari and the APC made a mess of eating it. Buhari said he has nothing to do with it. I think that was the most naïve thing for an elected President to say. Buhari has been struggling these past thirteen years to be President of Nigeria. Was he doing it for a ceremony? Nigerians voted for him because he said and they saw that things were going wrong. He wanted change and Nigerians supported him because they felt he possessed the capacity to change things. Can Buhari change things without legislative support? Certainly, no President under our current constitutional arrangement can do that. How then can he pretend not to be interested in what is going on in the senate? The statement that he is not interested in the power tussle and will work with anybody elected to lead the legislature was the most reckless and ill informed thing to say. What if the Senators are planning to impeach him? Will he say what is going on there is not his problem and he cannot interfere with it? Faced with a similar, even worse scenario, Shehu Shagari, the taciturn President elect in 1979 did not say anything. He moved. Awolowo, his arch political foe was already on the move. At the conclusion of the elections, Shagari’s party the NPN was in serious dilemma. He was President elect by mathematical interpretation – 12 2/3. His party had 36 Senators. The UPN had 28, the NPP 16, GNPP 8, PRP 7. After he lost at the Supreme Court, an angry Awolowo was mobilizing the other parties to cripple Shagari’s government using the legislature. If all the other parties came together, his government would be still born. Shagari quickened his steps. That was how the NPN/NPP accord came up. The NPP demanded a pond of flesh. First they wanted the Vice Presidency. Shagari refused to dump Ekwueme so they came down to Senate. Shagari refused to allow an opposition party to take control of the Legislature. They settled for the House Speaker. The struggle for Senate Presidency returned to an NPN thing. Joseph Tarka wanted it – had been promised it by Shagari after he lost the Presidential primaries. But after the elections, Shagari, the astute politician took a look at the figures and decided to reward the southern minorities in place of his friend Tarka. He broke his promise and turned his support for Joseph Wayas. He did it nicely and Tarka was in complete agreement with him. Alhaji Ishaku Ibrahim, the political strategist from Nassarawa State owes Nigerians an explanation as to how at Shagari’s behest he got Tarka to support Wayas. At the negotiations with the NPP Shagari was on top. He told the NPN delegates what to concede and what to hold tightly. He did not call a press conference to give an account of what he was doing. He did not call a press conference to disclaim what he was not doing. He simply moved fast – stealthily. If Buhari messed up the situation in the Senate, his party, the APC did worse. The normal thing in a democracy – parliamentary or presidential – is that when a party graduates from minority status to majority status, the minority leader is promoted. In our own case Senator George Akume who was minority leader ought to have been given a lift to the status of Senate President. In the same vein, Hon Gbajambila, the minority leader of the House of Representatives deserved elevation to the status of Speaker. For some strange reasons, the APC could not uphold this simple democratic convention. The party fumbled and bungled; it could not stand on principle to support Akume’s claim to Senate Presidency. Another collateral blunder was the mumbo jumbo pronounced by its founding National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande; ‘the APC was not going to embark on zoning because it was invented by PDP’. Could a man, so high up tell such a bare faced lie? The NPN started zoning, way back in 1978. The PDP copied it in 1999. The APC also copied it in 2014. At the APC presidential primaries last year, the party had four aspirants viz Buhari, Atiku, Kwankwaso and Isaiah – all of them were northerners. Was this not zoning? In the search for a Vice Presidential candidate to run with Buhari, the party went for a suitable southerner, a Christian. The party fished out a Pastor from a big Church with marital connections with the Awolowo family and made sure Buhari posed for a picture with Pastor Adeboye, the head of Osinbanjo’s Church. Why didn’t Buhari pick Kwankwaso, Atiku or even Nda Isaiah who is a Christian? Is it not because all of them are northerners? Which APC is Akande telling us does not believe in zoning? In 1978, Chief Awolowo made the tragic political miscalculation of picking Philip Umeadi a southern Christian as his running mate in the presidential race of 1979. The result was that his party was boxed into a tribal cocoon. In 1983, he did better by coming to Bauchi to pick a northern Muslim. If the great sage was taught a lesson in zoning, who is Akande to tell us that the policy is anachronistic and unprogressive? With its present architecture, the Buhari government badly needs a northern Christian to lead one of its third arms. Senator Akume fitted the bill. I have said so before on this page. Why did Buhari and the APC shy away from giving him the chance? Nigeria needs a strong leader with a capacity to hold us together and a strong party to act as a vehicle of national and rational mobilization. Nigerians thought they had both in the Buhari/ APC tally. But at the first test, they messed everything up. They handed the stage over to Yeriman Bakura, the man with the Taliban like beard. In the year 1999 he set this country on the slippery road to religious war by declaring Sharia as State law in his Zamfara state. He, it was who prepared the ground for some misguided young men to believe that theocracy is possible in Nigeria. The roots of Boko Haram are not too deep. On the 9th of June, he raised a motion in the Senate which is bound to frustrate the change Nigerians voted for. [myad]
Some have described what happened in the National Assembly on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, with the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki and Honourable Yakubu Dogara as Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively, as the demystification of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, by some of the elements who once worshipped and adored him. They called him the emancipator of Nigeria from the clutches of ultra-conservative hegemonists who had, in the noxious garb of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), maintained a vicious grip on the polity since 1999. The easily irritating, yet vociferous voice of Dino Melaye (now senator representing Kogi West) as he chanted the praise of Tinubu: “the Jagaban of Africa” in his capacity as MC on a number of APC occasions televised live, keeps ricocheting in my ears. It is unbelievable that it is the same man, acclaimed as their leader, the promoter of “common sense revolution” that dislodged PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan from power, who has been undercut and worsted by bi-partisan political intrigues and subterfuge, orchestrated by Melaye’s group of Like-minds Senators, which promoted and supported Saraki’s senate presidency. The group had been commonsensical (more than Tinubu) in its bid to clinch the plum position. Members of the group had proved to be good students of our recent history, wonderful emulators of the ways of the Jagaban himself. It was in 2011 that Tinubu deployed his strategy of disrupting the PDP zoning plan in the House of Representatives that would have produced Mulikat Akande Adeola from the southwest zone as speaker. Tinubu had lined all Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) legislators in the House to support the candidature of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal from the northwest as speaker in defiance of the PDP decision. Tambuwal won along with Emeka Ihedioha as deputy speaker. The rest is now history. Tinubu succeeded in planting the seed, nay wind of treachery, watered and nurtured by disloyalty and disdain for party discipline in the House of Representatives, just four years ago. He did not care about anything as long as his interest was not threatened or injured. He was propelled by selfish agenda to bolster his political and pecuniary interests after the decimation of the PDP and dislodgement of Jonathan. That seed rapidly geminated and was ripe for harvest on June 9, this year; and as fate would have it, Tinubu was primed to become the greatest beneficiary of the whirlwind that was produced as typified by the defeat of his candidates, nay the APC decisions, in the race for the positions of presiding officers in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Senator Ahmad Lawan was the party’s choice for the senate presidency while Femi Gbajabiamila was the choice for speakership. Both had emerged at different straw polls conducted by the party prelude to the inauguration of the National Assembly. The APC had even gone as far as choosing through the straw polls George Akume (Benue State) as deputy senate president and Tahir Mongunu (Borno State) as deputy speaker. Both Saraki and Dogara boycotted the processes. They had their own counter-plans, with their eyes fixed on the PDP legislators to produce some jokers. In the senate, the number is quite significant for the PDP which has 49 of the 109 Senators. The APC has 59 (one of its members had died shortly before inauguration). In the House of Representatives, out of the 360 members, the APC has 210 (minus one that died shortly before inauguration) as against the PDP’s 150 members; the stakes were quite high. Saraki and Dogara decided to reenact Tinubu’s sordid stratagem in 2011 by shunning their party decision and reaching out to the PDP lawmakers for strategic alliance in the Senate and solid support in the House of Representatives. The PDP was game. The leadership asked Saraki what was in the alliance for the party. Apparently determined to rubbish any obstacle on his way to the senate presidency, he readily accepted the proposal by the PDP to cede the deputy senate president to it (PDP). What that meant was a solid PDP bloc vote for him. That left the APC in disarray. The APC knew that with the number of senators behind him, there was no way it could stop him; which was why he (Saraki) spurned all entreaties and invitations for meetings with leaders of APC. Gloatingly, the PDP sealed the deal with Saraki, who was once in its fold. The party did not also hesitate to perfect the Dogara deal in the House. Dogara was, also, once upon a time, in the PDP. He, in fact, belonged to the Adamu Mu’azu faction of the PDP in Bauchi state. While the PDP settled for the deputy senate president, it allowed Dogara to pick a deputy speaker from APC and from any state in the southwest, provided that the candidate was not a stooge of Tinubu. In a way, the PDP was mindful of geo-political zone balancing in its counter plots to the APC’s plot. Indeed, the APC, according to some PDP leaders, got it wrong with the coupling of Lawan-Akume ticket, both of them coming from the north. Saraki, on that score, outwitted them by settling for an alliance with a southeast senator of the PDP in the person of Ike Ekweremadu, which effectively took care of the south in the arrangement. And for Dogara, his being a Christian from Bauchi combined pretty well with the choice of Lasun Yusuf, a Muslim, from Osun state. Dogara’s religious background also balances out the Muslim religious background of President Muhammadu Buhari (executive head) and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed (head of the Judiciary) and Saraki (Head of the Legislature). Had Gbajabiamila emerged as speaker, all the heads of arms of government plus the speaker would have been Muslims. Unfortunately, the APC leadership had ignored the concerns expressed by some Nigerians that their choices showed insensitivity to another religion. Back to the man-Tinubu-who, in 2011,sowed the wind of treachery, nurtured by the water of disloyalty and indiscipline to party supremacy in the election of National Assembly leadership. It was learnt that he tried his best possible to avert the tragedy that befell him and his party. He actually put last minutes call to some PDP leaders to see how they could be of help to his interest. One of them reportedly told him that there was no way the Lawan-Akume ticket would be acceptable to the South. True, there is no way, according to top insiders in the PDP who were privy to the Saraki-Ekweremadu deal, the Lawan-Akume ticket would be overlooked for any other promise. Tinubu was said to have promised that there would be adjustment after the National Assembly inauguration, but he was advised to make the adjustment before the inauguration. His reach-out to the PDP was on the eve of the inauguration, which was pretty late to effect any adjustment. And, the Jagaban could not do anything to save his subsequent humiliation and demystification. All the theatrics that went into the mix have become history. Tinubu, wherever he may be today, must be ruing his defeat. If the loss in the senate was monumental, a Gbajabiamila victory in the House would have mitigated, to some extent, his loss of the senate presidency. But with the defeat of Gbajabiamila, his political son from Lagos, Tinubu can be safely said to have almost suffered a collateral damage. His saving grace is that he had already produced a candidate for the vice presidential slot in the person of Professor Yemi Osinbajo. Regardless, the Jagaban has been swept up in the whirlwind of politicking in the National Assembly, where it matters most in a democracy. His imprimatur is missing in the Legislature. Perhaps, if he had succeeded in installing his candidates in the National Assembly, he might have been in a pole position pile subtle pressure on some power centres in furtherance of some selfish agenda and demands put together in the confines of his Bourdilon home in Lagos. Meanwhile, I am waiting to see how Asiwaju would be able to recover from this set-back and forcefully reinvent himself between now and 2019, especially now that Saraki has grabbed the senate presidency, which he (Tinubu) had wanted to frustrate in order to ensure that the Ilorin-born politician’s presidential aspiration in 2019 is not bolstered. If Saraki is able to keep his seat, it will certainly be salutary to whatever his aspiration is for 2019. Gbam!
Ojeifo is Editor-in-Chief of The Congresswatch magazine in Abuja. [myad]
About three weeks after his inauguration, President Muhammadu Buhari has finally moved into the presidential Villa. The President had been operating and performing official duties from the Defence House in Maitama area of Abuja since he was declared President-elect in the March 28 Presidential election. Buhari continued to perform his official duty at the Defence House after he was sworn in as President on May 29. Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu confirmed today that Buhari has moved to the Presidential Villa. Shehu had earlier in a statement issued on June 9, said there was no truth in the rumours that Buhari refused to move into the Presidential Villa because of purported advice from Senegalese spiritualists. [myad]
Former Nigeria Vice President and chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar has vehemently denounced the increasing determination by some people whom he referred to as hatchet men within APC to draw a wedge between President Buhari and himself. His media chief, Mazi Paul Ibe quoted Atiku in a statement today as saying: “it has become crystal clear even to the blind that the motives of these hatchet men who are desperate to take every available newspaper space is to insult, vilify and calumniate me with the President. “We cannot allow liars, denigrators and blackmailers and their sponsors to use me as platform to ingratiate themselves with President Buhari and hijack his presidency under the pretext of loving him more than anyone else. These political ventriloquists are hiding behind the cover of anonymity to achieve their sinister agenda of making me the fall guy in the unfolding political developments.” The former Vice President’s statement was made against the backdrop of developments in the polity, which he notes are interplay of forces and interests that are dynamic, which he said must not be promoted to the point of being a threat to our democracy and the new administration. He acknowledged that it is legitimate and desirable for individuals or groups to seek to pursue their interest, but that it must be done with the benefit of sustaining our democracy and promoting equity, fair play and justice in mind. “Anything to the contrary may jeopardise our hard-earned democracy and constitute a clog in the wheel of the new administration.” Atiku made it clear that it is dangerous for any individual or group in the ranks of the ruling party to constitute themselves into an opposition even before the constitution and take off President Buhari’s government. According to him, because of the historic nature of the mandate of President Buhari and the arduous challenges ahead to deliver on making Nigeria work for all Nigerians, it is important, especially for members of his own party, to rally behind him in the quest to enthrone good governance, that will bring about security and stability, economic and social development, job creation, infrastructure renewal and above all a better life for Nigerians. The former Vice President call on the members of APC to emulate the unity of all the presidential contestants after the party’s Lagos primaries and support the President to form his government and get to work. Atiku exonerated himself from the purported hijack of the party and the National Assembly towards 2019, saying that it is figment of the imagination of those promoting it and asked Nigerians to ignore all such insinuation. He said that the recent outcomes of the National Assembly election, contrary to insinuations, are products of interplay of politics which is itself in constant motion. “In politics, it is a mistake to expect fixed outcomes. As the President has done, let’s all come to terms with what has happened in the interest of the system and move on. “Suffice it to say that the new administration should be allowed a smooth take off and be allowed the atmosphere to deliver. On this, I stand with President Buhari.” Atiku, who is the Turaki Adamawa restated his unalloyed commitment to the Buhari administration and pledged to back this commitment with all of the assets at his disposal. “Not only did Atiku Abubakar congratulate Buhari after his emergence as the presidential candidate of the APC at the party’s national convention in Lagos, he also handed over his best assets to the Buhari Presidential Campaign. The former Vice President enthusiastically handled the diplomatic assignment of seeking endorsement for Dr. Adesina as the President of the African Development Bank on behalf of President Buhari and would be available for any other assignments as the President pleases. “Make no mistake about it, Atiku Abubakar holds Buhari in the highest esteem, and would always remain loyal to him, and support him in every endeavour to succeed as president.” The APC chieftain called on Nigerians with members of the President’s own party to take the lead in giving their undiluted support to Buhari administration. “We, the members of the President’s own family need to lead in this direction for others to follow for the good of our nation and its peoples.” [myad]
Nigeria military has fallen for the international pressure and is set to investigate allegations of 8,000 people detained during a crackdown against Boko Hrama Islamist militant group who were killed.
The Army leaders initially rejected the allegations of prisoners being executed and mistreated, published earlier this month, as “biased and concocted”. Amnesty International had said weeks ago that Nigerian troops had rounded up thousands of men and boys, some as young as nine, in Boko Haram strongholds. The report said that many some prisoners had died due to starvation, overcrowding, torture and denial of medical care. But international pressure has been mounting on Nigeria to examine its tactics, and soon after the report’s release, recently-elected President Muhammadu Buhari promised his office would study it and “act accordingly”.
The armed forces called a press conference today to say investigations had started. “The military has a constitutional and moral responsibility to protect Nigerian citizens and cannot suddenly engage in mass murder as portrayed by Amnesty International allegations,” said Major General Adamu Baba Abubakar. He said Amnesty had not accepted an offer from the military to provide a representative to sit on the investigation panel – an offer he said was made to ensure fairness and show “the military has nothing to hide”. Boko Haram has killed thousands and forced about 1.5 million people to flee in a six-year battle to set up an Islamic state in the remote northeast of the country. The military initially struggled to contain the militants and their guerilla-style attacks and kidnappings. But Nigeria has recently had more success in pushing Boko Haram back, with the help of troops from neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon. [myad]
Senate President, Bukola Saraki has ran to the former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo to intervene in what looks like a silent war between him and his party, All Progressives Congress (APC) on one hand, and between him and President Muhammadu Buhari on the other.
Senator Saraki, who had a close-door meeting with Obasanjo at his hilltop mansion, Abeokuta, Ogun state today, along with his colleagues in the Senate, was said to have asked Obasanjo to reconcile him with President Buhari and his APC.
It was learnt that Senator Saraki complained to Obasanjo that even though the party leaders have indicated that they have accepted his emergence, but there has been a“complete communication breakdown between him, the president and the party.”
Obasanjo was said to have told Saraki and his delegation, in his usual jocular self: “ you children of nowadays only run to elders when you have finished making the damage.” He however assured them that he would do his best to “ensure that there is communication between all parties.”
Saraki emerged President of the Senate a couple of weeks ago against the decision of APC leaders. He was elected unopposed at the time most Senators from the APC were at the International Conference Centre waiting to hold a meeting with President Buhari to discuss the election of the Senate president and Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The national chairman of the APC, John Oyegun, had abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with Mr. Saraki last week without giving another appointment.
It was gathered that Saraki had tried severally to meet with Buhari after his emergence, but was always denied audience.
The President is believed to be angry with Saraki and the management of the national assembly for going ahead with their election despite adequate knowledge of an invitation for a meeting with Mr. Saraki and his colleagues.
“The president considered it as a mark of disrespect for his office for Saraki to ignore an invitation to meet with him and his colleagues.”
However, senior special adviser to President Buhari on media and publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said that the Senate President has never sought for a meeting with President Buhari since his election.
“I am not aware of any request for a meeting, the president would have seen him, he represents a key institution in our democracy,” he said.
Senator Saraki’s delegation to Abeukuta includes former governor of Gombe state, Danjuma Goje, Senator Andy Uba, former Zamfara governor, Ahmed Sani, and former Osun governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola.
Saraki and most members of his delegation are largely Obasanjo’s “boys,” a term loosely used in describing the former president’s staunch loyalists. [myad]
President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that nine of the Very Important Persons (VIP) transport aircraft under the presidential fleet should be sold. It was gathered that it was part of the Federal Government’s measures to cut costs.
The presidential fleet is said to be one of the largest in Africa and the third largest in Nigeria after Arik Air and Aerocontractors.
It was learnt that the presidency has a number of serviceable and unserviceable aircraft that need to be sold to reduce Federal Government’s spending on maintenance.
It was gathered that the Federal Government has spent over N12 billion annually for the maintenance of the presidential fleet. [myad
President Muhammadu Buhari has sent a congratulatory message to Mama Eunice Ibilola Williams who celebrates her 100th birthday tomorrow, Saturday, June 20.
A statement by Femi Adesina, special adviser to President Buhari on media and publicity, quoted the President as rejoicing with Mama Ibilola on the happy occasion of her attainment of the very rare age of 100 years.
President Buhari said that Mama Williams, popularly known as “Mama Palm Church” that Mama Ibilola lived a very fulfilled life of commendable service to her family and society in various capacities.
President Buhari wished Mama Ibilolas, an aunt to Mrs. Bunmi Anyaoku, wife of the former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, many more years of good health and life in the midst of her beloved family and friends.
He prayed to God to further bless Mama Palm Church, whose devoutness and good deeds are celebrated, with more years of inspirational living for the benefit of present and coming generations. [myad]
Indications have emerged that President Muhammadu Buhari may listen to the Ahmed Joda-led transition committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) which recommended the pruning down of the federal ministries from 28 to 19.
The advisory committee recommended that Buhari should have only 19 senior ministers, while 17 ministers of state should be appointed, bringing the total to 36 in fulfillment of the constitutional requirement of one minister per state.
Previous governments, starting from 1999, appointed 42 ministers — picking one from each of the six geo-political zones in addition to one from each of the 36 states of the federation. Under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, there were 28 senior ministers and 14 ministers of state. Three of the ministries were directly under presidency.
The Joda transition committee submitted its report to Buhari on June 12, but the details, which the president is expected to evaluate before taking his initial key steps, are yet to be made public. With Joda committee’s proposals, nine ministries will not be affected in the pruning exercise. They are: industry, trade and investment; education; defence; FCT; finance; labour and productivity; justice; foreign affairs and (9) national planning.
“There is no direct relationship between the number of ministries and efficacy of service delivery. The US with a population of 316 million and with GDP of $17,328 trillion (30 times Nigeria’s GDP) has 15 ministries. India has 24 ministries, while the UK has 17.
Joda committee’s report went on thus: “the current structure of the FGN with 28 ministries and 542 agencies (50 of which have no enabling laws) [results in] very high cost of governance. The portfolios of ministries are not responsive to all the major critical national challenges such as family and child affairs; religious affairs; vulnerable and elderly group affairs as well as the North-eastern crisis. “[There is an] apparent conflict between the desire of reducing the cost of governance through cabinet downsize and the constitutional requirement of a cabinet-level ministerial appointment from each of the 36 states of the federation.” [myad]
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National Assembly Leadership: A Harvest Of Whirlwind, By Sufuyan Ojeifo
Some have described what happened in the National Assembly on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, with the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki and Honourable Yakubu Dogara as Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively, as the demystification of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, by some of the elements who once worshipped and adored him. They called him the emancipator of Nigeria from the clutches of ultra-conservative hegemonists who had, in the noxious garb of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), maintained a vicious grip on the polity since 1999.
The easily irritating, yet vociferous voice of Dino Melaye (now senator representing Kogi West) as he chanted the praise of Tinubu: “the Jagaban of Africa” in his capacity as MC on a number of APC occasions televised live, keeps ricocheting in my ears. It is unbelievable that it is the same man, acclaimed as their leader, the promoter of “common sense revolution” that dislodged PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan from power, who has been undercut and worsted by bi-partisan political intrigues and subterfuge, orchestrated by Melaye’s group of Like-minds Senators, which promoted and supported Saraki’s senate presidency.
The group had been commonsensical (more than Tinubu) in its bid to clinch the plum position. Members of the group had proved to be good students of our recent history, wonderful emulators of the ways of the Jagaban himself. It was in 2011 that Tinubu deployed his strategy of disrupting the PDP zoning plan in the House of Representatives that would have produced Mulikat Akande Adeola from the southwest zone as speaker. Tinubu had lined all Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) legislators in the House to support the candidature of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal from the northwest as speaker in defiance of the PDP decision. Tambuwal won along with Emeka Ihedioha as deputy speaker. The rest is now history.
Tinubu succeeded in planting the seed, nay wind of treachery, watered and nurtured by disloyalty and disdain for party discipline in the House of Representatives, just four years ago. He did not care about anything as long as his interest was not threatened or injured. He was propelled by selfish agenda to bolster his political and pecuniary interests after the decimation of the PDP and dislodgement of Jonathan. That seed rapidly geminated and was ripe for harvest on June 9, this year; and as fate would have it, Tinubu was primed to become the greatest beneficiary of the whirlwind that was produced as typified by the defeat of his candidates, nay the APC decisions, in the race for the positions of presiding officers in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Senator Ahmad Lawan was the party’s choice for the senate presidency while Femi Gbajabiamila was the choice for speakership. Both had emerged at different straw polls conducted by the party prelude to the inauguration of the National Assembly. The APC had even gone as far as choosing through the straw polls George Akume (Benue State) as deputy senate president and Tahir Mongunu (Borno State) as deputy speaker. Both Saraki and Dogara boycotted the processes. They had their own counter-plans, with their eyes fixed on the PDP legislators to produce some jokers. In the senate, the number is quite significant for the PDP which has 49 of the 109 Senators. The APC has 59 (one of its members had died shortly before inauguration). In the House of Representatives, out of the 360 members, the APC has 210 (minus one that died shortly before inauguration) as against the PDP’s 150 members; the stakes were quite high.
Saraki and Dogara decided to reenact Tinubu’s sordid stratagem in 2011 by shunning their party decision and reaching out to the PDP lawmakers for strategic alliance in the Senate and solid support in the House of Representatives. The PDP was game. The leadership asked Saraki what was in the alliance for the party. Apparently determined to rubbish any obstacle on his way to the senate presidency, he readily accepted the proposal by the PDP to cede the deputy senate president to it (PDP). What that meant was a solid PDP bloc vote for him. That left the APC in disarray. The APC knew that with the number of senators behind him, there was no way it could stop him; which was why he (Saraki) spurned all entreaties and invitations for meetings with leaders of APC.
Gloatingly, the PDP sealed the deal with Saraki, who was once in its fold. The party did not also hesitate to perfect the Dogara deal in the House. Dogara was, also, once upon a time, in the PDP. He, in fact, belonged to the Adamu Mu’azu faction of the PDP in Bauchi state. While the PDP settled for the deputy senate president, it allowed Dogara to pick a deputy speaker from APC and from any state in the southwest, provided that the candidate was not a stooge of Tinubu. In a way, the PDP was mindful of geo-political zone balancing in its counter plots to the APC’s plot.
Indeed, the APC, according to some PDP leaders, got it wrong with the coupling of Lawan-Akume ticket, both of them coming from the north. Saraki, on that score, outwitted them by settling for an alliance with a southeast senator of the PDP in the person of Ike Ekweremadu, which effectively took care of the south in the arrangement. And for Dogara, his being a Christian from Bauchi combined pretty well with the choice of Lasun Yusuf, a Muslim, from Osun state. Dogara’s religious background also balances out the Muslim religious background of President Muhammadu Buhari (executive head) and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed (head of the Judiciary) and Saraki (Head of the Legislature). Had Gbajabiamila emerged as speaker, all the heads of arms of government plus the speaker would have been Muslims. Unfortunately, the APC leadership had ignored the concerns expressed by some Nigerians that their choices showed insensitivity to another religion.
Back to the man-Tinubu-who, in 2011,sowed the wind of treachery, nurtured by the water of disloyalty and indiscipline to party supremacy in the election of National Assembly leadership. It was learnt that he tried his best possible to avert the tragedy that befell him and his party. He actually put last minutes call to some PDP leaders to see how they could be of help to his interest. One of them reportedly told him that there was no way the Lawan-Akume ticket would be acceptable to the South. True, there is no way, according to top insiders in the PDP who were privy to the Saraki-Ekweremadu deal, the Lawan-Akume ticket would be overlooked for any other promise. Tinubu was said to have promised that there would be adjustment after the National Assembly inauguration, but he was advised to make the adjustment before the inauguration. His reach-out to the PDP was on the eve of the inauguration, which was pretty late to effect any adjustment. And, the Jagaban could not do anything to save his subsequent humiliation and demystification.
All the theatrics that went into the mix have become history. Tinubu, wherever he may be today, must be ruing his defeat. If the loss in the senate was monumental, a Gbajabiamila victory in the House would have mitigated, to some extent, his loss of the senate presidency. But with the defeat of Gbajabiamila, his political son from Lagos, Tinubu can be safely said to have almost suffered a collateral damage. His saving grace is that he had already produced a candidate for the vice presidential slot in the person of Professor Yemi Osinbajo. Regardless, the Jagaban has been swept up in the whirlwind of politicking in the National Assembly, where it matters most in a democracy. His imprimatur is missing in the Legislature. Perhaps, if he had succeeded in installing his candidates in the National Assembly, he might have been in a pole position pile subtle pressure on some power centres in furtherance of some selfish agenda and demands put together in the confines of his Bourdilon home in Lagos.
Meanwhile, I am waiting to see how Asiwaju would be able to recover from this set-back and forcefully reinvent himself between now and 2019, especially now that Saraki has grabbed the senate presidency, which he (Tinubu) had wanted to frustrate in order to ensure that the Ilorin-born politician’s presidential aspiration in 2019 is not bolstered. If Saraki is able to keep his seat, it will certainly be salutary to whatever his aspiration is for 2019. Gbam!
Ojeifo is Editor-in-Chief of The Congresswatch magazine in Abuja. [myad]