I wrote all these more than three years ago. Events have since proved me right. I was, indeed, a Nostradamus, the man who saw tomorrow.

Mike Ozekhome

CURTAIN CALL

This week, we shall continue and conclude with our seminal discourse and analysis of the many factors that threw the APC into its present political turmoil, the careful management of which will ensure its continued survival, existence and relevance in the Nigerian political landscape.

On 12th July, 2015, I concluded my write-up on the above topic…

The political rumble in the legislative jungle of the 8th National Assembly (3)

The law of karma

There is the other factor that threw up Saraki and Dogara in the interestingly bipartisan National Assembly. The fatalistic natural apothegm that what goes around comes around – a simple restatement of the Law of Karma, or just deserts – appears to have reared its ugly head.

READ ALSO: Atiku, Tambuwal in secret meeting

In 2011, the PDP had thrown up Mrs. Adeola Akande to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. But majority of members, spearheaded mostly by the then ACN (now of APC), put spanners in the smooth moving wheels of PDP’s desire. They conspired and elected Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and Emeka Ihedioha as Speaker and Deputy Speaker, respectively. PDP grieved and bellyached, while ACN, APGA, CPC and ANPP guffawed, back-slapped and mocked PDP. The “Tambuwalisation” of the House of Representatives was to boomerang in double measure on the same ACN-APC, which now suddenly described such rebellious antics as not only inimical to party discipline and cohesion but also treacherous and perfidious. Really? Was the APC, a major beneficiary of the 2011 Tambuwalisation of the National Assembly, really serious about this political volte face?

The deadly spill-over effects

Let it be noted, for the record, that much of the present near mortal injuries bedeviling the APC party are self-inflicted. APC must be very careful not to self-destruct or self-immolate. The collateral damage will inexorably ricochet to Nigeria and her hapless citizens. They must realize that, at the Senate, it has a very uncomfortable slim majority of 10 senators (59) over PDP (49). This means that it must, whether it likes it or not, sleep on the same political bed with PDP to actualize its “change” mantra. What is more, neither Saraki nor Dogara can be wishfully removed by a wave of the hand, as they require a humongous two- third majority votes of members of each House to do so (Section 50 [2] [c] of the 1999 Constitution). Let me emphasize that the APC can never achieve this, as its legislators are equally divided along the two lines of “Like Minds” and “Unity Forum”. Aside this, they will require the unrealizable two-third majority votes (74 for Senate and 240 for the House of Representatives), to remove these principal officers. I do not see how PDP will gratuitously lend APC 15 Senators and over 100 honourable members to impeach Saraki and Dogara, whose umbilical cords still remain firmly and tightly tied to the PDP, the mother party, from which they had defected to the APC, barely two years ago. Surely, a fruit does not fall far away from the mother tree.

The APC is currently boiling over. Its admirers are getting worried and ashamed of its inability to put its house in order. But can APC, really, when in spite of its pretensions that PMB is the “unquestionable national leader” of the APC (Garba Shehu, SSA, media and publicity to PMB), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu looms large as the “national leader” of the party?

READ ALSO: June 12: APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu and Mohammed Fawehinmi reacts

It is clearly a case of two captains in a boat. It will rock and capsize. That the APC has lost its moral compass and regimentalising leadership influence on its representatives played out with more force on Thursday, 26th July, 2015, when both the Senate and the House engaged in a scandalous show of shame over leadership positions, not about re-engineering comatose Nigeria. In the House, the chambers was turned into an uproarious maelstrom, with screams, insults, abuses, expletives, curses, pushing, shoving, pugilism, and even an attempt to seize the carefully quarantined golden mace. A cordon had to be thrown around Speaker Yakubu Dogara, whose only “crime” is that he emerged popularly (as Speaker), from amongst his peers, in accordance with S.50 of the 1999 Constitution.

The entire brouhaha was again caused by the vain attempt of APC to externally impose leaders on both Houses in the name of party supremacy. In a letter written by its chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, on the 23rd of June, 2015, the APC (which for years had mocked the PDP for lacking internal democracy), directed Speaker Dogara to appoint Femi Gbajabiamila (SW), defeated earlier for speakership by Dogara, as House Leader; Alhassan Ado Doguwa (NW) as Deputy House Leader; Pally Iriase (SS), as Deputy Chief Whip; and Mohammed Monguno (NE), who had been defeated for the position of Deputy Speaker by Yusuf Suleiman Lasun of South West and of the Dogara persuasion, as Deputy Chief Whip. All hell was let loose when the “Pro-Party Supremacists” battled with the “Legislative Supremacists” for the heart and soul of the House.

At the Senate, more maturity prevailed, with the political sagacity of Bukola Saraki, who exhibited imperious Machiavellian traits to hold firmly to legislative supremacy. He navigated ingeniously, like Mungo Park, Lander Brothers, Clapperton and Vasco Dagama, through sharks-infested ocean of turbulence and chaos, to manage the volcanic eruption.

The APC letter announcing its own set of imposed candidates – Lawan (NE), George Akume (NC), Olusola Adeyeye (SW) and Abu Ibrahim (NW) – as Senate Leader, Deputy Senate Leader, Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip, respectively, was kept by Saraki under lock and key. Those expecting him to enthrone his bitterest enemies into preeminent positions, which they could use later to torpedo him, do not understand much about the acquisition and use of power. Do you arm your enemy? I laugh at their political naivety and puerility.

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What did the “Like Minds” do? They dance, free from the asphyxiating and overbearing party supremacist grip, by following Senate Rules, which allow zonal caucuses of the states to throw up their own leaders. This done, the following leaders emerged: Ali Ndume (North East) who had been defeated by 57-20 votes by Ike Ekweremadu to emerge Senate Deputy President (Senate Leader); Bala Ibn Na’Allah (North West) (Deputy Majority Leader); and Senator Francis Alimikhena (Edo, and South South, indeed the only APC Senator from South South and South East), as Deputy Chief Whip. The post of Chief Whip earlier marked for Sola Adeyeye (South West), was kept in abeyance, as his name was not put forward by the pro-party protagonists.

READ ALSO: Oshiomhole and Ngige: Not about contestation or supremacy battle

Thus, for the second time in as many weeks, the APC suffered a second internal rebellion by its own Legislators, a pointer to the inchoateness (like clay waiting to be molded into any shape), of the fledgling party. Will APC survive these internal schisms and crisis? Only time and the conduct of the party will tell.

Conclusion

The APC party had probably not reckoned with the fact that PMB was dead serious when he reeled out the quotable quote of “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody”, an apt cliché that made him to distance himself from the murky politics of who assumed leadership of both Houses. There is, therefore, no need for the present recriminations, or lachrymal effusion, embarked upon by APC leadership like spoilt and over-pampered little brats.

Final take

My final take on this is that the election of Saraki and Dogara and other principal officers by the Senate and House was constitutional, legal, moral, democratic and indeed serves as an invigorating elixir to deepen, strengthen and widen the democratic space. It also oils the moving wheels of our nascent democratic experimentation.

And

It appears that the APC party promoters had merely come together to uproot a

common enemy (PDP) from power, without actually preparing for power itself. It is akin to boardroom gurus with the same mission to remove some board members and, having succeeded, turn the heat on each other as regards sharing of positions. Sure, my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and my enemy’s friend is my enemy. Sikena. Opoo!

Hello…

Are these political gladiators, party and legislative supremacists, politricians and the hoi polloi of the Nigerian Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” reading, digesting and imbibing this last tranche of the political rumble in the legislative jungle of the 8th National Assembly, anchored in the Sunday sermon on the Mount of the Nigerian Project by Chief Mike A. A. Ozekhome, SAN, OFR?”

I wrote all these more than three years ago. Events have since proved me right. I was, indeed, a Nostradamus, the man who saw tomorrow.

The shrieks of our founding fathers on this un-working Nigerian project: the satires of the sacked DSS boss, Daura

The chickens have finally come home to roost. How fast the cookies crumble! The hitherto veiled crude assault on Nigeria’s democracy and democratic ethos has finally been lifted by a desperate, clueless, rudderless and non-performing APC government that has been nothing short of a “one-chance” vehicle of fake and failed promises of “change”. Yes, “change” there has been, but one of negative, retrogressive and anti-people “change” that has not only impoverished and degraded Nigerians, but has actually endangered and imperiled our hard tatty democracy, and enthroned incredible mediocrity, nepotism, cronyism, clannishness and corruption in government and governance .

Nigerians had woken up on 7th August, 2018, to behold the ugly spectra of a menacing armada of a siege laid on the NASS by mask-wearing DSS operatives. It was an undoubted failed attempt to overthrow the third arm of the legitimate government of Nigeria. Both in law and fact, de facto and de jure, it is a case of pure treason or treasonable felony that is punishable with either death or life imprisonment.

The crude invasion and condoning off of the NASS, wherein Senators, members of the House of Representatives, Clerks and staff of the NASS, were violently prevented by hooded operatives, was hatched by top APC echelon and the presidency to illegally and unconstitutionally overthrow the leadership of the Senate, the red chamber of the bicameral legislature, yet harm by force of arms, through the vile use of weaponry. Thank God for social media.

(To be concluded next week)

Thought for the week

“Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. If Nigeria succeeds at democratic governance, it will be an anchor for all of West Africa. Africa needs a strong Nigeria.” (Ed Royce).