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By Zika Bobby
Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bauchi, Alhassan Farouk has said that the ongoing plot by the national leadership to retain power in the north come 2023 could implode the party.
Farouk, in a statement said “unless drastic interventions are made, next year’s general election may prove the final straw for Nigeria’s 62-year experiment as a highly combustible union of disparate ethnic groups each with an unyielding aspiration to determine its own destiny and a shared suspicion of a nursed domination agenda ”
He said President Muhammadu Buhari who is from the North West, has received widespread criticism from several segments of the society for what has been termed a lopsided appointment policy in Nigeria’s security architecture and several MDAs where the North has been unduly favoured.
“With the recent spate of insecurity, banditry, herders-farmers violence, IPOB disruptions, and separatists group agitations in the South-West, it is apparent that the nation has never been more divided. The fallout of the recent melee in Sokoto following the killing of Deborah Samuel where several Igbo traders and other Southerners were harassed as young residents demanded the release of those who perpetrated the killing of the young student is a clear instance of the delicate religious and ethnic balancing act that needs to be upheld in Nigeria. With a fractious polity where ethnic and religious strife has seen sectional violence come to the fore in the North Central, South-East, South-West, the South is eager to stake a claim to the presidency to sooth frayed nerves across the country. Nigeria’s fragile unity is indeed at stake,” he said.
He said the dramatic but dangerous tussle is best observed in the APC. “Formed in 2014 as an alliance between the north and south to oust the PDP which had held power for 16 years prior, President Buhari emerged as its candidate and the representative of the north, with a promise to surrender power to the south in a high-stake power sharing formula designed to promote inclusion and a sense of belonging, an antidote to the inflammable marriage between the ethnic groups.
Political activities this year, including the primaries of the political parties, were meant to set the stage for the change of guard. However, in the APC, several key northern figures, emboldened by their control of the party, particularly with the recent emergence of a former northern governor, Senator Adamu Abdullahi, as the chairman of the party, are exploring strategies to keep power and leave the southern region out in the cold,” he said.
Farouk said the apparent mismanagement of the party processes, due largely to the greed and megalomania of vested interest in the North who do not care about the region but their personal aggrandizeme and are terrified by the prospect of life without the cover of federal power and immunity, may drive Nigeria to the brink and cause an implosion that could break the country and set on-course a new scramble by the global powers of Europe, America, and China – a project some may well say is underway, especially in the case of China, with booby trap loans and investments.
