Sometimes you just know it when something is not right. The uneasy feel,
\ninstinctive and intrinsic feelings are all tell-tale signs of an obvious
\nanomaly and are sometimes needed to be relied on as clear pointers to
\noutliers.
\nThe recent election in the national assembly is one of such times. When
\nnews broke that Dr Bukola Saraki had been elected senate president; my
\ninitial thought was that of surprise but content. I was content because
\njust like the presidential statement, released shortly after the
\ninauguration of the 8th senate stated, it had been my view that a
\nconstitutional process had taken place, an election had been conducted and
\nan outcome decided. I had thought that Dr Bukola Saraki had won a straight
\nforward election. It was not to be. As soon as more details emerged, my
\ncontent soon turned to surprise, unease and to be honest disappointment.
\nDr Bukola Saraki had indeed won the election, but he had traded with the
\nPeople’s Democratic Party (PDP) to emerge with a victory that made my
\nstomach turn.
\nI was surprised because I had taken it for granted that Dr Bukola Saraki,
\na thorough bred politician and professional would in the end tow the party
\nline, the line of the majority in the party that brought him to power and
\nwhich he helped bring to power. I had thought that just as any politician
\nwould probably have done, all he would do was to grand stand till the last
\nminute and wait for the party to flinch and in the face of an unflinching
\nparty, drop his ambition and tow the party line. My disappointment also
\nstemmed from the fact that most of the APC senators were not in the senate
\nchambers when the elections took place. There just seemed a lot of
\ndesperation in Dr Saraki\u2019s play. Dr Saraki had secured his mandate through
\nan unholy alliance with the once formidable PDP, an alliance that took
\nmost patriotic watchers by surprise and which I observed with intense
\nastonishment and profound disbelief. That Senators Ike Ekweremadu and
\nDavid Mark, two of the most prominent faces of what PDP meant to the
\nNigerian people, were promoted on the same ticket as that of the All
\nProgressives Congress (APC) was an act as egregious as it was damning.
\nIt was a stark reminder of the malady that has plagued Nigeria for many
\ndecades, a chronic malaise that has ensured that the country is looked at
\nby friends, neighbours and the world at large as a glaring and blatant
\nexample and model of what it is to underachieve. How can it be that a
\npolitician, any politician worth his salt would collude so sinisterly with
\nthe same party he had campaigned strenuously to the electorate against; an
\nelection where lives were lost, properties burnt and billions of naira
\nspent? How can it be that any one, politician or not would find it
\nacceptable to work in ways that portray unprofessionalism, indiscipline
\nand disruptiveness? There are people who want politics to be portrayed
\nlike this. They would be the first to say: \u2018oh this is Nigerian politics
\nfor you\u2019\u2026 \u2018In politics all is fair\u2019\u2026 \u2018No permanent friends or enemies\u2019\u2026
\n\u2018Politics is all about intrigues\u2019\u2026 and other stomach churning narratives.
\nFor the avoidance of doubt, politics and politicians do not have to be
\nthis way. Anyone can be traitorous, treacherous and perfidious. However,
\nit takes men and women of character to do right not just in politics but
\nin any profession. There can and there should be honour in politics and
\namongst politicians. When looked at in the appropriate perspective and in
\nits intended form, politics should be seen as one of the noblest of
\nprofessions.
\nWithout mincing words, what transpired at the inauguration of the 8th
\nsenate was a crude slap in the face of those Nigerians that worked
\nincredibly hard to change the face of politics in Nigeria by pushing the
\nPDP out of power. People forget how powerful the PDP was, transcending our
\nlives in ways that no political party has ever done since independence. It
\nwas a devastating setback to Nigerian democracy.
\nWith the election of Buhari and the ascension to power of APC with
\nformidable characters like Chief Oyegun, Bisi Akande, Bola Tinubu,
\nKwakwanso, El-Rufai, Adams Oshiomole, Raji Fashola, Rauf Aregbesola,
\nIbikunle Amosun, Ogbonaya Onu, and others, most Nigerians – and with good
\nreason – had begun to look patiently into the future; a future where a
\npolitical party with an overriding moral conscience might slowly but
\nsteadily reverse the assured descent of the country into alarming anarchy,
\ncataclysmic ruin and ominous deterioration.\u00a0 Make no mistake, the party
\nAPC must as an extreme priority and supreme obligation react in the
\nstrongest way possible to this clear attempt to undermine it. If the APC
\ndoes not respond to this absurdly ridiculous and unashamedly wayward
\nbehaviour, then it may just be the beginning of the end. Maybe not quite
\nthe end but the end will surely come; it may be in two years, four years
\nor even ten but these events or the lack of a harmonised, cogent and
\nconvincing response to it will lead to its implosion and ultimate demise.
\nWhat needs to be done? Those who have chosen to go into this dubious
\nalliance that has tainted the party, perhaps irreparably, should first be
\ngiven a chance to submit themselves before a high level disciplinary
\ncommittee set up by the highest organs of the party to defend themselves.
\nThose that have gone against the party\u2019s collective decisions must be made
\nto pay. They must be made to pay with the same positions they usurped.
\nAnything less than this will only nurture a rebellious ethos and
\nphilosophy as well as a culture of non-compliance within the party which
\nwill fester and spread with negatively portentous consequences. I had
\nwritten an article a long time ago about the principle of collective
\nresponsibility and binding decisions.\u00a0 APC as a party will only be able to
\nmove to the next level when individuals are de-emphasized and the party is
\ninstitutionalised and potent enough to make and enforce collective
\ndecisions.
\nFor those who love the party, now is the time to act. Strong leadership is
\nalso needed at this point. President Buhari needs to understand that the
\nposition he holds necessitates that he wields his influence. I\u2019m sure we
\nwould have all wished that the president\u2019s intervention would not be
\nnecessary but it is. It would be most ideal for the president not to get
\ninvolved, like in more developed democracies. The glaring reality is that
\nwe are not there yet but the president can gradually set us on the path to
\npractising our politics like in the more developed countries. For now, the
\nsystem is still too weak and our politics too vulnerable for the best
\ncandidates to emerge without a little push. President Buhari of all people
\nshould understand this. He was considered the best candidate for the APC
\nticket not because he was the most eloquent of persons or the most
\ncerebral or modern but because his qualities of honesty and sincerity of
\npurpose and strong will were the most important qualities needed at this
\ntime in Nigeria. Had Buhari been left to the elements of politics and
\npoliticians in Nigeria or had the field been made level, he would never
\nhave emerged the APC candidate. Just like the brilliant Fashola would
\nnever have emerged Governor of Lagos, a professor of law would never have
\nemerged vice president; people like Fayemi, Amosun etc. would not have
\nemerged. They all emerged through what I will call an \u2018affective influence
\nto promote the natural order\u2019 with the natural order should being that the
\nrest of us should be governed by the best of us. It was a failure of this
\naffective influence that produced a crank as governor of one of the most
\ncerebral states in Nigeria. This affective influence to promote the
\nnatural order made patriotic characters feel the need and galvanised
\nNigerians to see the need to vote for and bring back a retired army
\nofficer who had been very easily, I must say and unceremoniously pushed
\naside by his colleagues. In a clime where the electorate sell their votes,
\ncard readers are openly sabotaged, where ballot boxes are snatched, where
\nINEC officials are compromised, where there are more law enforcement
\nofficers that would accept a bribe than not, where judges are negotiated
\nand where the leadership of the foremost law-making body in the country
\ncan be hijacked and traded, there is the need affective influence. Indeed
\nthere is the need to nurture, praise and acknowledge those who apply this
\naffective influence for the good of what should be the natural order.
\nAPC ran on the platform of change. For the Nigerian, APC propagated the
\nsort of mantra that they could relate and buy into. The senate election
\nwhich saw Saraki team up with PDP was a vexing departure from that mantra.
\nIt has left many hollow after a hopeful period. However, it must be said
\nthat these are still early days. APC sure deserves a chance to sort its
\nteething problems. With President Buhari maintaining a calm disposition
\nand a natural aversion to shadiness, he will begin to give the real
\npoliticians in the APC fold the much needed backing to enforce the party\u2019s
\nlofty ideals on its members and the country.
\nFor the PDP, it needs to search its souls and purge itself of the sorts of
\nscheming, conniving, egotistical and self-absorbed manners that saw it
\nlose favour in the eyes of Nigerians while reinventing itself to carry out
\nthe colossal task of representing a strong and virile opposition to the
\nAPC. PDP must be ready to earn its stripes as an opposition party. They
\nmust shelve the easy-way-out ideology (which teaming up with Saraki
\nsuggested) and be ready to put APC on its toes while working hard to win
\nback the trust of Nigerians. But they must be ready to build slowly,
\npainstakingly and conscientiously.
\nSometimes one might just think that it is better to give up; that a case
\nis a basket case and not worth wasting one\u2019s time about. The Nigeria case
\nis like that sometimes; a country that we all love very much. The recent
\nhappenings in the 8th senate bring to mind an old maxim: The more things
\nchange the more they remain the same. The leadership of the APC have a
\nherculean task to make a lie of this aphorism.<\/p>\n