NASS: Between legacy and careerists

 

In “Between APC and SDP” (June 16), Ripples noted the tactical error of trying to keep at bay, the New-Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) bloc of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

That sparked the Bukola Saraki-led parliamentary coup of June 9.

But with the turn of events, and the nPDP elements now attempting to impose their own image on the National Assembly, has it transformed into a strategic blunder that could, in due course, nullify the Change Nigerians voted for on March 28?

That chilling question is imperative because two grim dramas are unfolding from the APC crisis: the fierce struggle for the party’s soul (the subject of “Between APC and SDP”); and the emergence, from inside the ruling party, of two different blocs: the Legacy bloc (most likely to drive Change) and the Careerists (most likely to, all-movement-no-motion wise, leave things as they are).

Gunning for the soul of APC, that boasts at best an ideological bric-a-brac, is neither unexpected nor illegitimate; and one dare says, the internal business of the varied tendencies in the party.

But whichever faction ascends is the business of the polity; for Nigeria would rise or sink by it.

If the pro-Change bloc wins, and radically pushes policies that would deliver a legacy of change for the better, Nigerians would have won with their March 28 heroics, that powered Muhammadu Buhari to the presidency.

But if the Careerists win — careerists that jostle for self-political offices, without a corresponding improvement in the collective welfare — it would be much of the old same.  The March 28 mandate would then have been in vain; and millions of longsuffering Nigerians would, yet again, have lost.

Given the vengeance and passion, with which Nigerians voted in March and April for change, that would be highly risky, if not outright fatal, for Nigeria — both for the entrenched establishment, and the  distraught rabble.

Because Nigeria perches at a delicate historical juncture, that is the correct prism to view the high-voltage drama from the APC front — and not necessarily from the relative loss or win of the individuals involved in the combat.

That, of course, throws the discourse right back to the dramatis personae.

By rebelling against his party, and having bulk PDP votes with a smattering of his own APC’s elect him as senate president, what was Saraki guilty of?

Realpolitik, his friends would coo: whatever lobby for influence that availed Ahmad Lawan his party’s backing also availed Saraki the push for support, inside and outside his own party.

Treachery and perfidy, his foes would roar: even the best of individual intents should be subjugated to the collective good; and party discipline.

That thrust-and-fence would perhaps do, particularly in a value-neuter milieu, where the vilest of conducts and the noblest of behaviours, on a single cause, are just two sides of a bloody controversy.  If in doubt, recall how the clear crime of annulling the free election of 12 June 1993 became the holy banner of anti-June 12 elements.

With the media itself ever ready and willing (for whatever motive) to spin even the most abhorrent of conducts, the society’s value-blindness and deafness become even more alarming.

Still, beyond contrived controversies, Saraki’s emergence as senate president; and his bloc’s spurning of rapprochement in the filling of other principal officers — winner-takes-all fashion — throw up troubling questions.

Needless to say, the attempt by Saraki’s confederates in the House of Representatives, which Speaker Yakubu Dogara leads, to replicate a similar ploy, led to the June 25 uproar in the lower house.

If APC’s nPDP bloc pressed their legitimate right to land vital positions in the new government (as reward for their electoral labour), why might they block the party’s bid for legitimate balancing, particularly after a sharp dispute, for the sake of peace founded on equity and fairness?

That has exposed them to a not altogether illegitimate web of conspiracy theories, which clearly conflicts with President Buhari’s clear mandate for change.

For starters, Saraki’s real blunder in the June 9 parliamentary coup was less in rebelling against his own party (as dire as that was for party discipline; in a new party elected on the mandate of urgent change in awful times); but more in selling out his party to PDP elements — PDP, with clear motives to block that change; and ensure APC’s utter failure.

A fall-out of that sell-out was the emergence, as senate deputy president, of PDP’s Ike Ekweremadu.  Though an embattled Saraki has denied Ekweremadu’s election was a logical quip-pro-quo (which sounds disingenuous, to say the truth), the charge of treachery and perfidy is not helped by the grim prospect that when Saraki is not around, Ekweremadu bosses proceedings.

Ekweremadu can be counted upon to stall the APC agenda.  Besides, by further defying their party and rejecting its preferred candidates for other APC National Assembly principal officers, outside senate president and deputy, the Saraki bloc would further split the party.

Saraki would, therefore, find it hard to throw off the charge of playing an alleged Judas out to halt the APC momentum of change; and haul Nigerians’ future right into the dark past of careerists and soulless power adventurists.

That, in Nigeria’s troubled political history, would dovetail into the decision of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua faction of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) to trade off the late MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate of 12 June 1993, for a sterile Interim National Government (ING) — with disastrous consequences, which the birthing of the current 4th Republic was programmed to correct.

Other conspiracy theorists have even claimed Senator Saraki is only the visible face of an alleged northern irredentist bloc, trying to push yet again an alleged “born-to-rule” project.

Ripples would find this claim rather implausible though, given the trouble June 12 (which tried to push this calamitous doctrine) caused the country; and the historic North-South West political entente that delivered the famous March 28 APC presidential win, to save the country from ruin.

But whatever the facts or fiction, Senator Saraki, by his somewhat legal but hardly legitimate emergence as senate president, finds himself at the cusp of a cruel historical pigeon-hole — the man that arrested change, when change was imperative for a sinking Nigeria!

That is why he must accommodate efforts at fair balancing by his party, in filling the remaining Senate principal offices.  On this score, the claim about stalling to avoid cohabiting with his “enemies” is balderdash.  Balancing senate principal offices is no ancestral feud.

But history and judgements are in the long, long run.  Right now, there is a government to run; and our people to bail out.

That is why President Buhari must step out and resolve this logjam — not necessarily for his feuding party, but for Nigerians who gave him a clear mandate for change.

After due diligence, the president should weigh in on the side of the forces of legacy, against the careerists. That is his covenant with Nigerians; and that is what he should do.

To do that, however, he might have to take the case directly to Nigerians, away from the feuding parliamentarians.

‘The president should weigh in on the side of the forces of legacy, against the careerists. That is his covenant with Nigerians’

Credit: Nation