A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves
All the bookmakers expecting the implosion of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of 2023 may be disappointed after all. This will be because nothing like this will happen. Why? PMB here, likened to an emperor, is in charge and nobody dares to raise a finger. The risk of daring him is so high that none of the gladiators is man enough for that.
Muhammadu Buhari will be ex-President on May 29, 2023, but before then he would have shown Nigerians the difference between a democrat and a democrat-convert. Buhari acknowledged that he is only a convert to democrat. True democrats allow the majority of the people to have their way and the minority to have their say under the rule of law. converts allow the people, both majority and minority, to make the noise and he alone makes the choice and has the way.
But the emperor should not be blamed for any of his actions because he did not create himself, the people created him. Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw probably has Nigeria in mind: “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Put another way, garbage in, garbage out.
When the Emperor’s decisions favour you and disfavour others and you clap, learn to endure when the decision is on the flipside.
The influence and weight of leaders, particularly the President and governors, in a political party in Nigeria are gargantuan but it still does not confer total ownership of the party on them.
However, it is necessary to state that this distinctive attribute of political leadership is not peculiar to Africa, even in developed democracies flag bearers of parties have got ways of exerting influence on the decisions of the party except that it’s not as brazen and blatant as it is in democracies in Africa.
In third world democracies (including Nigeria’s), presidents and governors see themselves as mortals raised from gods, akin only to the Roman Emperor who claimed to have descended from Hercules, the Greek superhuman who was ranked among the gods.
Here in Nigeria, for instance, President Buhari is the APC leader by virtue of being its presidential flagbeaer twice (2015 and 2019), but he is more like the possessor of the party, their Hercules.
If you are a member or supporter of the APC, and you hold a contrary view to that of PMB, bade farewell to the proverbial knife and yam as far as the 2023 presidential race is concerned. If you are among the people who hold the view that President Buhari will soon become a lame duck or holdover President, you will be overwhelmed by the situation ahead of 2023.
Sorry also if your school of thought holds that the President will be content with completing his eight years and will not be interested in the politics of who succeeds him in 2023. You are also wrong if you have been made to believe that PMB is not in charge…that some cabals are screwing him using his body language to decide on 2023. How imposing he will be will shock you. A good number of politicians in APC and the opposition PDP will lose out in 2023 because of their wrong reading of the political persona of the sitting president.
The APC flag bearer in 2023 will be chosen almost single-handedly by President Buhari. Nothing on the ground suggests otherwise. When he settles for a candidate, the mission will be a done deal, virtually accomplished and ditto for the office of the National Chairman of APC. The President’s headache is the opposition PDP and who they will be fielding, not the noise from within over what the king does with his power. Wait for your turn, the President’s men will tell those who will not be happy with his decisions. Buhari’s politics is a command-like structure although he listens for listening sake but ensures that what he desires is what comes through.
The noise about the zoning of party and government offices has appeared to be uncoordinated because everyone seems to be engaged in self-clairvoyance to get the mind of the President. He has allowed the debate to go on because the space needed to be kept busy, not that it would seriously impact the outcome. The debate has successfully distracted the populace from the myriads of problems that the government has failed to address, the fuel scarcity, insecurity, and such other issues, everyone is consumed in the politics of 2023.
In Buhari’s politics, you can fight to the grave if you are waiting for him to intervene to stop the fight. The fight is already raging with him appearing to be enjoying it, behaving like an exciting boxing referee, waiting for a knockout or a disqualification. He expects you to read and interpret his body language and understand it. How you read him is at your peril.
Already, two hitherto political brothers, godfather and godson Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo are on each other’s jugular for 2023 with each claiming special affinity with the President. There is also from the other regions of the South, the equally “good” friends of the President, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi of the South-South, Senate Chief Whip Orji Uzor Kalu, Ministers Ogbonnaya Onu, Chris Ngige, Emeka Nwajiuba, ex-governor Rochas Okorocha, and Governor Dave Umahi of the South-East…all claiming to be enjoying a spontaneous or natural liking by the President. But soon the chicken will come home to roost and the President’s “real friend” will be known.
Already, the feelers coming out of the President’s camp, supported by his refusal to disclose his preferred aspirant now “to avoid the person being destroyed or even eliminated” sends a strong message that he may be looking outside the box where all these his “friends” cluster, possibly away from the noisy ones. The person to merit being this favoured character must have to swing the pendulum of debate on his side and get to the hearts of the President’s mind spinners.
In a democratic setting, this type of situation is odd and abnormal but we will live with it for a very long time and blame nobody but ourselves. When you supposedly elect somebody to serve you and the same you turn round to make him your master, not servant, to some even their god, why cry if he acts God. It would do APC governors and leaders great good if they had gone to the President to ask for his choice candidate “so we can prepare and market him.”
The President’s insistence that the amended Electoral Act must contain a consensus arrangement says it all…what will facilitate his pick for the flag bearers of the party. By that position on consensus and indirect mode of selecting flag bearers, the President was merely announcing and forewarning that he would not want to share his authority with anybody. President Buhari is not the first to do this and he is not going to be the last, at least not until real democracy goes down in our country.
When in 2007 then President Olusegun Obasanjo did a similar thing of single-handedly picking an ailing governor from Katsina State, there was nothing the party faithful could do because they created the monster then.
But what Obasanjo did then to avert sabotage from politicians was to lead the campaign for his choice candidate and flag-bearer who was too indisposed to be at every rally hence the famous phone calls from rally grounds, “Umoru [Umaru Yar’Adua], are you alive?” to prove that the candidate was in virtual attendance.
Even though Yar’Adua, before dying in office, showed uncommon maturity and clear sense of purpose, the error of picking an ailing candidate put this country in its political quagmire today. Yar’Adua died three years after in office, and the doctrine of necessity had to be used to avert further political turmoil.
It’s therefore gratifying that President Buhari is already thinking of life after Presidency meaning he would be glad to leave office but he should therefore strive to end strong as he predicted by letting his successor within his party be such that will be a square peg in a square hole and the person who will resonate with the people, especially the teeming youths. It’s also important that his choice stabilises the polity by correcting the current injustice of power-sharing in the geopolitics of the nation. Only that will help to erase all the enormous lapses of the PMB regime. Obasanjo was lucky to see Yar’Adua through the polls, but Buhari might not because the opposition this time is formidable and ready to dethrone APC.
Above all, the President should ensure the conduct of free, fair, and transparent elections that will give Nigerians the opportunity to be the final decider. For President Buhari to do otherwise will amount to squandering the great opportunity of statesmanship that almighty God the merciful bestowed on him.
God help us.
