Sometimes you just know it when something is not right. The uneasy feel,
instinctive and intrinsic feelings are all tell-tale signs of an obvious
anomaly and are sometimes needed to be relied on as clear pointers to
outliers.
The recent election in the national assembly is one of such times. When
news broke that Dr Bukola Saraki had been elected senate president; my
initial thought was that of surprise but content. I was content because
just like the presidential statement, released shortly after the
inauguration of the 8th senate stated, it had been my view that a
constitutional process had taken place, an election had been conducted and
an outcome decided. I had thought that Dr Bukola Saraki had won a straight
forward election. It was not to be. As soon as more details emerged, my
content soon turned to surprise, unease and to be honest disappointment.
Dr Bukola Saraki had indeed won the election, but he had traded with the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to emerge with a victory that made my
stomach turn.
I was surprised because I had taken it for granted that Dr Bukola Saraki,
a thorough bred politician and professional would in the end tow the party
line, the line of the majority in the party that brought him to power and
which he helped bring to power. I had thought that just as any politician
would probably have done, all he would do was to grand stand till the last
minute and wait for the party to flinch and in the face of an unflinching
party, drop his ambition and tow the party line. My disappointment also
stemmed from the fact that most of the APC senators were not in the senate
chambers when the elections took place. There just seemed a lot of
desperation in Dr Saraki’s play. Dr Saraki had secured his mandate through
an unholy alliance with the once formidable PDP, an alliance that took
most patriotic watchers by surprise and which I observed with intense
astonishment and profound disbelief. That Senators Ike Ekweremadu and
David Mark, two of the most prominent faces of what PDP meant to the
Nigerian people, were promoted on the same ticket as that of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) was an act as egregious as it was damning.
It was a stark reminder of the malady that has plagued Nigeria for many
decades, a chronic malaise that has ensured that the country is looked at
by friends, neighbours and the world at large as a glaring and blatant
example and model of what it is to underachieve. How can it be that a
politician, any politician worth his salt would collude so sinisterly with
the same party he had campaigned strenuously to the electorate against; an
election where lives were lost, properties burnt and billions of naira
spent? How can it be that any one, politician or not would find it
acceptable to work in ways that portray unprofessionalism, indiscipline
and disruptiveness? There are people who want politics to be portrayed
like this. They would be the first to say: ‘oh this is Nigerian politics
for you’… ‘In politics all is fair’… ‘No permanent friends or enemies’…
‘Politics is all about intrigues’… and other stomach churning narratives.
For the avoidance of doubt, politics and politicians do not have to be
this way. Anyone can be traitorous, treacherous and perfidious. However,
it takes men and women of character to do right not just in politics but
in any profession. There can and there should be honour in politics and
amongst politicians. When looked at in the appropriate perspective and in
its intended form, politics should be seen as one of the noblest of
professions.
Without mincing words, what transpired at the inauguration of the 8th
senate was a crude slap in the face of those Nigerians that worked
incredibly hard to change the face of politics in Nigeria by pushing the
PDP out of power. People forget how powerful the PDP was, transcending our
lives in ways that no political party has ever done since independence. It
was a devastating setback to Nigerian democracy.
With the election of Buhari and the ascension to power of APC with
formidable characters like Chief Oyegun, Bisi Akande, Bola Tinubu,
Kwakwanso, El-Rufai, Adams Oshiomole, Raji Fashola, Rauf Aregbesola,
Ibikunle Amosun, Ogbonaya Onu, and others, most Nigerians – and with good
reason – had begun to look patiently into the future; a future where a
political party with an overriding moral conscience might slowly but
steadily reverse the assured descent of the country into alarming anarchy,
cataclysmic ruin and ominous deterioration. Make no mistake, the party
APC must as an extreme priority and supreme obligation react in the
strongest way possible to this clear attempt to undermine it. If the APC
does not respond to this absurdly ridiculous and unashamedly wayward
behaviour, then it may just be the beginning of the end. Maybe not quite
the end but the end will surely come; it may be in two years, four years
or even ten but these events or the lack of a harmonised, cogent and
convincing response to it will lead to its implosion and ultimate demise.
What needs to be done? Those who have chosen to go into this dubious
alliance that has tainted the party, perhaps irreparably, should first be
given a chance to submit themselves before a high level disciplinary
committee set up by the highest organs of the party to defend themselves.
Those that have gone against the party’s collective decisions must be made
to pay. They must be made to pay with the same positions they usurped.
Anything less than this will only nurture a rebellious ethos and
philosophy as well as a culture of non-compliance within the party which
will fester and spread with negatively portentous consequences. I had
written an article a long time ago about the principle of collective
responsibility and binding decisions. APC as a party will only be able to
move to the next level when individuals are de-emphasized and the party is
institutionalised and potent enough to make and enforce collective
decisions.
For those who love the party, now is the time to act. Strong leadership is
also needed at this point. President Buhari needs to understand that the
position he holds necessitates that he wields his influence. I’m sure we
would have all wished that the president’s intervention would not be
necessary but it is. It would be most ideal for the president not to get
involved, like in more developed democracies. The glaring reality is that
we are not there yet but the president can gradually set us on the path to
practising our politics like in the more developed countries. For now, the
system is still too weak and our politics too vulnerable for the best
candidates to emerge without a little push. President Buhari of all people
should understand this. He was considered the best candidate for the APC
ticket not because he was the most eloquent of persons or the most
cerebral or modern but because his qualities of honesty and sincerity of
purpose and strong will were the most important qualities needed at this
time in Nigeria. Had Buhari been left to the elements of politics and
politicians in Nigeria or had the field been made level, he would never
have emerged the APC candidate. Just like the brilliant Fashola would
never have emerged Governor of Lagos, a professor of law would never have
emerged vice president; people like Fayemi, Amosun etc. would not have
emerged. They all emerged through what I will call an ‘affective influence
to promote the natural order’ with the natural order should being that the
rest of us should be governed by the best of us. It was a failure of this
affective influence that produced a crank as governor of one of the most
cerebral states in Nigeria. This affective influence to promote the
natural order made patriotic characters feel the need and galvanised
Nigerians to see the need to vote for and bring back a retired army
officer who had been very easily, I must say and unceremoniously pushed
aside by his colleagues. In a clime where the electorate sell their votes,
card readers are openly sabotaged, where ballot boxes are snatched, where
INEC officials are compromised, where there are more law enforcement
officers that would accept a bribe than not, where judges are negotiated
and where the leadership of the foremost law-making body in the country
can be hijacked and traded, there is the need affective influence. Indeed
there is the need to nurture, praise and acknowledge those who apply this
affective influence for the good of what should be the natural order.
APC ran on the platform of change. For the Nigerian, APC propagated the
sort of mantra that they could relate and buy into. The senate election
which saw Saraki team up with PDP was a vexing departure from that mantra.
It has left many hollow after a hopeful period. However, it must be said
that these are still early days. APC sure deserves a chance to sort its
teething problems. With President Buhari maintaining a calm disposition
and a natural aversion to shadiness, he will begin to give the real
politicians in the APC fold the much needed backing to enforce the party’s
lofty ideals on its members and the country.
For the PDP, it needs to search its souls and purge itself of the sorts of
scheming, conniving, egotistical and self-absorbed manners that saw it
lose favour in the eyes of Nigerians while reinventing itself to carry out
the colossal task of representing a strong and virile opposition to the
APC. PDP must be ready to earn its stripes as an opposition party. They
must shelve the easy-way-out ideology (which teaming up with Saraki
suggested) and be ready to put APC on its toes while working hard to win
back the trust of Nigerians. But they must be ready to build slowly,
painstakingly and conscientiously.
Sometimes one might just think that it is better to give up; that a case
is a basket case and not worth wasting one’s time about. The Nigeria case
is like that sometimes; a country that we all love very much. The recent
happenings in the 8th senate bring to mind an old maxim: The more things
change the more they remain the same. The leadership of the APC have a
herculean task to make a lie of this aphorism.
This article was written by Dr Wole Ameyan, MIPH. woleameyanjr@yahoo.com