In a situation where 5 is equal to, and bigger than 15, it is certain that the hopes of President Muhammadu Buhari clenching the presidency in 2019 has no shadow of doubt around it. There is no basis to compare the damage done to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015 to the lightweight threats of dissenting lawmakers in the national assembly, and the governors of 2 northern States in disloyalty to the party that produced them: it is an ugly tradition taking root for particular politicians in this country. We will consider the political capital of the APC, in its loss or gain, by the present crisis, in this analysis.
However, and whatever way the matter of the incumbent defections goes, it remains that the collateral damage the APC will incur in the present defections suffered, is not comparatively severe to what the PDP suffered in 2015. In 2015 the PDP lost 5 States and their total legislative representations at all levels, also equivalent to 15 senatorial district e and more members than 33 from the House of Representatives. The present defections cover 15 senatorial districts in various States in the country, and none, except Kwara State, resembles the tsunami that hit the PDP in 2015, where the total legislative representation is captured in these defections. Just 1 in 5. Sokoto State may not give more than the governor and a very few Representatives.
Taking this in context with the power struggles currently been exposed by our present realities as a people, it is good to take note of, and realize that unless the political capital of the present crop of defectors, and their allies still hanging inside the executive arm of government outweighs that of Mr President: in sympathy appeals in his favour, his idolization by poor and vulnerable northerners: there are even more of those who believe strongly in him apolitically: Mr President will carry the day.
There will also be the rebound from the resultant effects the reception of defectors into the PDP generates. The strangle held south west, the new appeal for the President in the south east, the radical advance of the APC in South South, Nigeria, and various other factors not essential captured herein spells out good fortune for President Buhari’s second term administration, over whatever harm envisaged by pessimists predicting the fall of the APC because of the present crisis. It is very unlikely.
This struggle started on the night of the Lagos convention that produced Muhammadu Buhari as flag bearer of the APC. The crisis in the APC is clearly an unrepentant war, by the founding fathers, to take the APC back from the political scavengers who took the party over as a ready made, and garnished fresh fish barbecue, but rather chose to call it “kill and eat”, because they must be petty, than to call it “point and kill”, if they must be reasonable. The culprits and initiators of the present crisis in the APC are the nPDP members within its rank and file.
The APC will miss the defectors but with time, they will not matter to the party anymore, after all. They are better gone: time is now to prove the lie behind the claim that it was the inputs from the nPDP that won the Buhari presidency for the APC, Those Nigerians that cannot see the nomadic nature of these politicians and still invest in them politically, in 2019, will lose their political investments. None of them will remain in this country after June 12 2019. This is a prophecy.
These perpetually “aggrieved” men and women exploited the blind advance of the APC to take the Jonathan presidency, such that, unlike what they are doing now – horse trading between them and parties whose platform they seek to mount: there was no trading of interest, nor power sharing decisions between the APC and the nPDP when they joined the party: they just tagged along as “JJCs” after the Asiwaju assured them of being carried along. Nevertheless, they sneaked by and today tagged themselves “aggrieved” – they will aggrieved forever.
But from that moment when Buhari nominated Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as his running mate, they hatched the plan to protest every party decision that did not align with theirs, when none from them was yet admitted by the APC, and they demonized Asiwaju Bola Tinubu before President Buhari. They despised the Muslim/Muslim ticket that favored the Asiwaju as Vice President, to shore up Bukola Saraki’s ambition, as a Muslim to become senate president, because 3 Muslim men at the very top of leadership district e district ewould be unspeakable. They finally set up the plan to bring the Asiwaju down and to collapse the Buhari administration for their own political ascension through demonic manipulations.
They attempted Mr President’s life and got him hospitalized, only to gain his distractions from work: some even pronounced him dead. The nPDP joined the APC, not to spite the PDP, but to spoil the APC, by delimiting the stronghold of Mr President when his administration commenced for their political ascendancy. If tenure elongation had sailed through in the APC and the Asiwaju was chased out of the APC, none of these mobile politicians would defect from the APC. It is all about their personal and permanent interests. This is not good for Nigerians. The hypocrisy must stop.
It is true that the Asiwaju was all over the place in the APC before the presidential ascendance of Muhammadu Buhari, but who can understand the political machine built from, and through another man’s dreams, vision and mobilizations more than the man who conceived, designed, construct and built the political machine by himself – how do we know thieves? It is by their fruits. Who among all the nPDP members who brags as a staunch politician has raised and nurtured a partisan political platform before?
As mobile politicians, these men enjoy horse-trading at the approach to, and of elections, locating themselves always at shifting mobile addresses, so that nobody traps them down. Thank God they are now in a cage, looking for ways to survive politically. They have all returned the way they came. Mr President must not rest on his oars, he should procede to sack all members of his cabinet and government who are members of the nPDP, starting from Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, and encompassing every portfolio holder who joined the APC from the PDP from 2014.
Allowing them remain in the system will oil them to work for the enemies of government and pool resources enough to undermine the administration. The majority enjoyed by the opposition in the national assembly is nothing to attempt the impeachment of Mr President. Let them all realize that no part of the constitution provides for the impeachment of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and his powers to suspend his presidency and all democratic institutions is not prohibited anywhere in our laws. He cannot overthrow himself, at least our law permits that understanding.
It is therefore necessary for our lawmakers to follow their ambitions with decorum, we are all Nigerians and we all have personal interest with no room for making it permanent, so we will not allow those who seek their permanent interest to frustrate our personal interests. No one is afraid of war. But the war to take back the APC back by the founding fathers has been won by the present defections in the APC. It is a sign of the unburdened victory to come in 2019 and that is what matters to the APC now, not those uneanted , swept out rubbishes. It should he clear now what the “Asiwaju Reconciliation Committee” was all about – the reconciliation of Buhari and Tinubu.
It was just the two of them at tge beginning. Period!
Ini Akpan Morgan writes from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State
