Buhari, NA and race against time

To the conscientious analyst, neither Tambuwal nor Ekweremadu holds any appeal.

Tambuwalisation,  which romped Aminu Tambuwal to the speakership, despite the ire of his ruling party, suited fine the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hegemony.

Yet, it has come back, in the new order, to plague the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); with the loss of the Senate deputy presidency to the opposition PDP.

Many would, of course, enter the softener: the Tambuwal-led House of Representatives proved much more people-centred; than the reactionary House expected under Mulikat Adeola-Akande, the PDP choice for Speaker.

Yes — and the polity would appear not ungrateful.  But even that noble accident hardly vitiates the vile principle of rebellion against party.

Now to Ekweremadu-isation, which has fired PDP’s Ike Ekweremadu to retain the senate deputy presidency, despite his PDP losing power.

Indeed, it’s a real laugh seeing Godswill Akpabio, former Akwa Ibom governor and now a senator, wax lyrical on cant.  He claimed Ekweremadu was a product of some gobbledygook bi-partisan entente, involving public-spirited APC and PDP senators.  Nice attempt at deodorisation of a clear and brazen parliamentary coup — with even Akpabio hardly convincing himself!

Of course, it was nothing of the sort.

Rather, it was two blocs of colluding legislators — a minority, from the APC side, for strictly personal gains, stabbing their own party in the back; and a majority, from the PDP, attempting an obstructionist vanguard, to stall a clear mandate for change, hoping therefrom, to reap some future group political salvation.

But as everything karma-like, and not unlike the eye-for-an-eye Mosaic law that soon leaves everybody blind, the Ekweremadu phase of this bad politics is even worse than the Tambuwal original.

For all his rebellion, Speaker Tambuwal conceded the House Leader to Ms Adeola-Akande, his party’s original Speaker-designate.  But Ekweremadu is living example that Bukola Saraki, senate president, will make no such concession!  If he did, the deal would be off.  If Ekweremadu is in peril, the deal would be in danger.  That puts Saraki too in peril!

Again, while the Tambuwal concession did not nullify the original rebellion, the Saraki intransigence portends a worse parliamentary plague next time.

So long for a political class that thrives on expediency, and hardly on principle!

But ethical or ruthless, life goes on.  President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) demanded and got a mandate for change.  So, he is condemned to delivering on that mandate.

The snag, though, is: even if his party has a healthy parliamentary majority, the Saraki-brewed Ekweremadu-isation tends to have vaporised all that.

Right now the National Assembly appears fractured into three camps: the majority APC, who appear loyal to their party and the PMB agenda; the minority PDP, poised to play the opposition, by hook or by crook; and the penumbra of two minorities: the bulk PDP and APC rebel elements that cooked Saraki’s senate presidency, which could band together to eclipse the PMB plan, particularly if the group perceives it a threat to its own agenda — and political survival.

Yet, fast-tracking such initiatives appears the badly needed redemption for a fast decaying polity.

But bad news for PMB: when the chips are down, these two minorities could forge an illicit majority, filibustering against, if not terminally blocking legislative support for popular initiatives.  That simply means PMB may face more difficulties than anticipated, to garner legislative support for his programmes.

That, indeed, would be very bad news for everyone.  This is because to put things right for Nigeria is a desperate race against time, where even a second’s delay could be serious, if not outright fatal.

From the 2015 election, the partisan winners were from the North (North East, North Central and North West) and South West, where APC swept the polls.  The losers were from the South East and South-South, where PDP won.

So, virtual partisan political warfare, at least in the next four years, would be between the North/South West (to further press their electoral hegemony) and the South-East/South-South (to defend their turf).

But overall, all of the geo-political zones were losers on the developmental turf, according to findings from a new poverty study on Nigeria from Oxford University (mentioned on this page last week), known as the Oxford poverty and human development initiative (OPHI), and formally cited as OPHI 2015, with the latest stats from as late as June 2015.

OPHI does not measure poverty as just “no money”; but more rigorously as conditions precedent: either to reinforce poverty; or break that yoke to deliver development.

So, by its 10-point indicators, broken down into three major planks, a state might be flush with cash, yet work to deepen poverty by its low infrastructure (social and physical); or be low on cash, but high on infrastructure, to dislodge poverty.

Trite: presidential mandates are national.  But if all politics is local, PMB has extra motivation to push pro-people, anti-poverty initiatives, needing urgent legislative support.

From the OPHI data, the 10 poorest states, with corresponding destitution, are from the president’s home region: Yobe, Zamfara, Jigawa, Bauchi, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Taraba, Gombe and Kano — in that order.

On this list is Katsina, PMB’s home state, Kano, the North’s commercial dynamo and Sokoto, the North West’s spiritual headquarters.  So, if he desires his presidency to be impactful, PMB must, against poverty, race against time.

The top 10 states least affected by poverty and destitution are a mishmash: Lagos, Osun, Anambra, Ekiti, Edo, Imo, Abia, Rivers, Kwara and Akwa Ibom — in that order.

Still, that four states, Lagos, Osun, Ekiti and Edo, dominate the top five tends to underscore the development bent of the states ruled, or once ruled, by the defunct ACN.  It also appears in the presidential camp, in the intra-APC parliamentary showdown.  More: the group should be zealous PMB partners, in a fierce anti-poverty war  — lest their areas slip back into the poverty mash, in this period of national economic angst.

South East did far better than the South-South on the OPHI scale, despite SS’s relative bigger share of the central cake. On the other hand, Kwara, at spot 9, sits at the apex of all the northern states.

Given the balance of the power in the National Assembly, and balance of fortune on the OPHI scale, could Saraki’s rebel APC legislators then team up with PDP-dominated SE and SS to block PMB and legislatively frustrate his initiatives?

Sans bad politics, there is no sense in that, since no state or geo-political zone is immune from poverty.  But bad politics makes it a possibility, especially if collective good threatens to turn individual ruin.

That is why, to succeed, PMB must marshal a strong coalition in parliament — with enough grassroots developmental carrots as drivers, to build a bi-partisan progressive vanguard.

But if this commonsense viewpoint falters?  Then, he must build a media-people coalition outside parliament to enforce parliamentary common sense that, in Jeremy Bentham-speak, pushes the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

That is the only way the change mandate of March 28 won’t end yet another grand betrayal.

‘If he desires his presidency to be impactful, PMB must, against poverty, race against time’

Credit: Nation