THE Presidential Primary election of the ruling All Progressives Congress may have come and gone but not without intrigues, horse trading, political racketing, scheming and permutations among the gladiators of the ruling party in a bid to outsmart each other.
The scheming which started as early as 2020 when the then National Chairman , Comrade Adams Oshiomole was removed from office and not that he was only removed from office but his team of National Working Committee were abruptly discarded and sent parking due to his perceived closeness and loyalty to the just elected Presidential candidate of the party Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
His then adversaries were of different categories, those who are interested in running for presidency and sees him as a threat to their ambition, those who are not necessary interested but are close to those interested and the last category are those who most of his fans and supporters sees as traitor, these are the people who have in one way or the other benefited from his political dexterity and were once his ally, these category of people knowing the kind of leader he is. A leader who will not take longer time to discover talents in the political arena and use them to achieve result for people to see and benefit and not for his personal interest alone.
All of a sudden we had his former allies who are serving Governors, serving ministers and political appointees at different level who believed that if eventually Asiwaju becomes the president, they may be heading for political retirement no matter their closeness to him and they have tasted power at the center hence the need to engage in unholy alliance with some of his adversaries to forge a common goal of stopping him at all cost.
Politics they say is a game of interest and that interest they also say is thicker than blood, this assertion can not be far from the truth if one will look back critically at the past event in the ruling party until the pronouncement of Asiwaju as the flag bearer of APC in midday of today the 8th of June, 2022.
It is a known fact that in 2022 electioneering process leading to 2023 general election, the All Progressives Congress paraded the highest number of presidential aspirants by any political party in the history of our nation Nigeria, 23 aspirants contested for the party ticket, majority of these aspirants were not serious and were also living in fool paradise as the shakers and movers of APC sold dummy to them due to the quiet nature of President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, while some ministers were liaising with some of the presidents aids for endorsement, a serving governor was liaising with the office of the first lady due to his closeness to her, the presidents aids were smart in their approach to the scheming by sharing all the aspirants and giving them hope and confidence of endorsement by the president.
The fake confidence that the president will anoint them and that singular word made so many of them not to consult key stakeholders and delegates widely thereby relying on the president declaration which never came, in the case of Hon Nwajuba who never showed up at the venue of the primary, a press statement released through his brother confirmed our claim, the senior Nwajuba adducing the reason he did not show up at the primary to the fact that party stakeholders reneged on their promise to zone the party presidential ticket to the south and later micro zone it to the south east and even at that the aspirants from the south east will not slug it out rather a consensus candidate will be handpicked from them.
This is the height of political naiveness that can be exhibited by a man of his calibre in any modern democracy and this kind of political permutation could only lead to a relatively unknown candidate emerging and flying the ticket of a political party that is a ruling party and this affects the credibility of the electoral system because pressure will now be on the ruling party to deliver the candidate at the general election and of course rigging and electoral manipulation will be the end result because in one way or the other they will want to win.
You may not like the president but in some cases he gives you some reasons to like him and that action was exhibited again within the last three days even when the National Chairman of APC exhibited autocratic tendencies by announcing the Senate President as the party consensus candidate to members of his party’s National Working Committee, the president was able to do the needful by disowning the National Chairman.
The APC northern governors forum are the heroesof the party and they may turn out to be that of Nigeria as a whole, their pronouncement and swift action was a saving grace in seeing that the party ticket be zoned to the south.
Our politicians must learn from modern democracies and try to do things right and also having in mind that the people in any society are the biggest stakeholders in a political project. The believe in a small segment of leaders that are often referred to as cabals for power is the beginning of failure even when successfully smuggled into any elected political office.
Comrade Olumuyiwa Onlede is the National Coordinator of Conference of Civil Society For Transparency and Accountability write from Abuja
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