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Of all the existential crises that have tried the soul of Nigeria, this period will certainly go down as the most disturbing, frustrating and heartbreaking for most Nigerians since the present democratic dispensation. Never in my adult life have I seen such pain, such suffering and extreme poverty in the land. Insecurity has reached frightening level, prices of essential items have reached the rooftops, power outages and fuel scarcity seem to have become the ‘new normal’, thereby piling pressure on economic growth. And you ask: how much longer can Nigerians continue to bear this excruciating pains?. That was the question the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria(PFN) asked few days ago. As the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party noted, the ruling All Progressives Congress “is kneeling on the necks of Nigerians”. And no letup.
The pains Nigerians are going through today in the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari’s APC are lessons in power. Put simply: what leaders do while they are trying to get power is not what they do after they have it. Historian Robert A. Caro sums it up this way: “No one can lead who does not first acquire power, and no leader can be great who does not know how to use power”. However, the trouble, he argues, is that “the combination of the two skills is rare. The temperament and behaviour of the ambitious, cynical player adept at amassing power is often at odds with those of the daring and imaginative visionary able to achieve great things with that power “.
This is a fitting description of APC: no vision, no creativity, no focus, completely clueless where it wants to take Nigeria. That’s the root of the current crisis and confusion in the party. You see, APC does not know what to do with the power it desperately sought and got in 2015. As Caro explains, without a vision beyond their own advancement, politicians will become almost paralyzed once the goal had been achieved. That’s how APC has become the misfortune that Nigeria has to shape her visions and aspirations. The reality now is that the leadership of the party has discovered that it is easier to win elections than to govern. I doubt if the leadership of the party will admit that it was the height of poor judgment and craziness, when in its desperate effort to acquire power by whatever means, it described Jonathan presidency as “clueless”, wondering in the ‘wilderness of confusion’. That’s was Laid Mohammed at his ‘best’.
Now, the table is turning. Seven years in power, it’s clear between Jonathan and President Buhari who is clueless. Looking back now, it’s fair to say that in 2015, APC wouldn’t mind to be caught dead in a strip club if that is what it takes to win elections. It spared nothing to get to power. But the task of governing is a different kettle of fish. That’s what sins of hubris does to pretenders to the throne. Goodluck Jonathan may have the last laugh now as he watches the goings on in the party that chased him out of the Presidential Villa, and the subterranean attempts to lure him into the same party that called him and his dear wife, all invectives, unprintable names against a sitting President.Lai Mohammed and Co, were just short of calling Jonathan an open sore of Nigeria that must be cut off for the country to survive. And they had their way. But…
The lesson today for APC, amid the crisis of immediate sort confronting it, is what Jonathan said in his memoir: “My Transition Hours”. ‘You should never try to slander your political opponent by destroying your country’s economy… If you embark on digging a hole for your enemy, you better make it shallow, because you might end up in the hole yourself’. To me, this is prophesy fulfilled. Seven years in power, virtually every sector of our national life is bleeding, devastated. From ‘Change’ promised, Nigeria is in calamity. The economy is completely run aground, capital flight has intensified, companies are laying off staff, inflation is rising. Borrowing has become a habit. Tell me what has changed for the better in seven years of this administration? That is what happens when a political party and its leadership look upon the acquisition of power and positions as an end in itself.
It’s abnormal to have a Caretaker Committee or whatever stop- gap arrangement so-called, run the affairs of a governing party for two years when there are principal officers of the party. Whoever foisted Governor Mai Buni on the party has sown a whirlwind that will persist even after the National Convention fixed for this Saturday. A torrent of litigations is afoot in the weeks and months ahead. It would have been tolerable, perhaps just a passing commentary if the current crisis in the party was only a conflict in a broken family whose members would prefer to destroy their father’s inheritance rather than share it. It is deeper than that. What is happening is not just a fight between “Yahoo Yahoo Governors” of the party(according to Gov. Akeredolu of Ondo state) and the rest.
It’s a fight for the soul of APC. It’s between, what in politics is called the ‘Popular Track and Party Track’. The Popular Track is often visible, dramatic, a fun to follow. Issues and personalities dominate here. But they deliver few delegates at the Convention. The Party Track can be described as a low-profile road travelled by a breed who love the game of politics. According to Joseph E. Persico, Nelson Rockeller’s biographer, this breed of politicians live by “loyalty, favours done and repaid, disloyalty remembered and punished”. They also relish struggles for power, where factions rally round a figure for the joy of winning rather than around issues for the purpose of changing the party or the country for good. Weapons are deployed to fight those opposed to their own views. Watch out for these things I have mentioned to play out at the Convention(if it’s not disrupted).
But whatever is the outcome of the Convention, APC is not going to have a sea change, no breath of fresh air, no transformation, no silver lining. You know why? It’s because wisdom does not flow to the top dog. APC is in descent. It happened to PDP prior to 2015 elections. History is about to repeat itself even in a more defiant way. The handwriting is on the wall. When men rise to power by chance, not through careful and deliberate planning, they cannot be true democrats. They are likely to become mobsters, and even more thuggish and paranoid to retain power. Has anyone paused to ask why President Buhari had to change his mind after throwing Buni out of the bus in far away United Kingdom where he was on medical check up? He was overwhelmed, and as always, ambivalent and confused on the action to take. As political experts say, having a larger end has always been more important to political leaders than anything else.
Altogether, I can bet that the final cards in the APC crisis are very far from played, regardless of what happens at the Convention in Abuja. To borrow the words of David Brookes, a columnist with the The Newyork Times, this is what I foresee will happen on Saturday: while democracy tends to hide its strengths until the time it needs them, dictatorships on the other hand tend to advertise their strengths until they are exposed as actual weaknesses. The writer was referring to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, but it has relevance in our context. Many political careers and reputations may be ruined after the APC convention. Splinter groups will likely emerge. Anybody who has a sense of history should go back to what happened at the PDP National Convention in 2013 that led to many notable members of the party staging a walkout to form a “New PDP”. Dr. Bamanga Tukur who was then the Party Chairman, called the aggrieved members “imposters and dissidents”. He asked the court to “jail some of them”. The rest is history. Who says our politics is not a fun to follow. Without a doubt, APC has done terrible things to Nigeria, perhaps worse than PDP did.
