This
past Sunday, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s media office released a press
statement wherein the curiously acclaimed national leader of the ruling
All Progressives Congress, APC, wrote what has been severally described
in many quarters, and rightly so, as a stinking communiqué
following the unrestrained and highly venomous language used in the
said communiqué wherein the Jagaban demanded the resignation of the
chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun.
The cause of these latest acerbic
vituperations by Tinubu is attributed to what he described as “Oyegun’s
comportment regarding the Ondo State primary” which he said “will become
the textbook definition of political treachery and malfeasance of the
basest order”
The story alleges that Mr. Tinubu had a
preferred candidate in the Ondo primary election that he had wanted to
emerge as APC’s candidate for the November gubernatorial election in
Ondo State. Prior to the primary, it was also said that the eventual
winner of the primary, Rotimi Akeredolu SAN, had dared the feared
godfather by asking him to keep off from the exercise in the state. This
led to an exchange of hot letters between the two. At this point, it
became obvious that the battle line had been drawn between the two party
chieftains.
The primary was conducted and Akeredolu
was returned winner. However, days later, some of the aspirants
petitioned the party hierarchy alleging irregularities but the NWC as
led by the chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun eventually confirmed Akeredolu’s
victory and subsequently sent his name to INEC as the candidate of the
APC in the forthcoming Ondo election.
Of course, such step did not meet
Tinubu’s calculations who had expected that the NWC would understand his
position and act likewise by cancelling the primary and conduct a fresh
one that might likely be worked to favour Abraham, who was said to have
had Tinubu’s backing.
This is the simple reason the Asiwaju
wrote such a scurrilous letter to the chairman of his party as if he was
addressing one school boy notorious for truancy.
Truth be told, Tinubu invested
enormously and arguably more than any other individual or groups of
persons in building APC and working for its victory at the polls in the
last general elections. No one can take that away from him. However, he
must also know that his hurriedness to reap the fruit of his labour is
making him to fast lose name, fame, friends and associates faster than
he made them.
The condescending manner with which he addresses his party chieftains whenever his biddings are not done is not statesmanlike.
Sometime in October 2015, while issuing a
press release to deny a report that said he was collaborating with the
Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to undermine the president, Tinubu had
said that “It was a crass act of disloyalty showing that Saraki may have
joined the APC on paper but has remained true to the malpractices and
wrong aims of the reactionary PDP in his soul.
“If this nation is to have more than a
fleeting chance of escaping the quagmire into which years of PDP misrule
have taken us, we cannot allow these regressive elements to deploy
their cunning tricks to divide and pit progressives against
progressives”.
To use such heavy words on Saraki simply
because he contested and won the seat of the senate president against
Tinubu’s wish is the height of political recalcitrance. As at the time
of writing his letter, Saraki was already Nigeria’s number three
citizen. To address him in such a manner casts Tinubu in very bad light.
The former governor of Lagos State seems
to always blame everybody but himself for every time his wish does not
hold sway in the country. He had blamed the PDP for the woes of his
party; he had blamed Saraki for becoming senate president against his
wish, and now he blames Oyegun purportedly because his candidate did not
win the Ondo primary!
However, it must be gratifying to PDP
members to see that everything Jagaban has blamed them for has returned
to haunt him. When Nigerians want to look for the most divisive and
autocratic elements in Nigeria today, they all belong to the APC, from
the president himself to its national leader, they reek generously of
anti-democratic tendencies.
Tinubu must know that he cannot continue
to parade himself like an overrated colossus that he is or else his
political end would soon come. What he is accusing others of doing today
is what he has also been accused of doing yesterday.
Prior to his forced exit from the party
in August of 2014, Tom Ikimi had described Tinubu as a man of “reckless
self-aggrandisement” who forced a weak leadership on the party with the
purpose of controlling it. It is that same leadership that Tinubu has so
denigrated, degraded and treated with infamy and disdain in a most
impudent manner simply because it has chosen to have an identity of its
own without overbearing appendages.
To describe Oyegun in the words which
Tinubu did in his missive is most uncharitable. Describing your party
chairman and leaders as “gangsters adorned in the tunic of party
authority” and a “mercenary”, terms only fit for the gutters simply
because of political differences, is a sign of creeping frustrations.
In a clime where discipline and moral
uprightness are the watchword as Tinubu wants us to believe APC is,
there is no way he would escape punishment for dragging the image of the
party in the mud in such a despicable manner.
In another light, Tinubu may be pardoned
for all his acts of disrespect to constituted authority since it is a
well known fact that he has been sidelined by the presidency and even a
lot of his ‘boys’ have since shifted allegiance to Buhari since after
the elections, For a man who committed so much to the party but had none
of his nominees accepted for any ministerial position or other key
government agencies, the level of frustration is getting quite high. He
alluded this much in his latest communiqué where it was said that he
“…even kept his peace for some time despite many things that happened
within the party that were not quite right. He exercised this
forbearance because the party is young”. Really? Eeyaahh!
Surprisingly, at his age, Tinubu
exhibited the kind of exuberance associated with some boisterous
teenagers who would act before thinking. If not, how come Tinubu chose
the media as his first line of reporting an internal issue of his party?
Are there no provisions and lines of authority for party members to
table their grievances? What is it with the media that at the slightest
disagreement, the man runs to the press instead of first exhausting the
crisis-resolution mechanisms of his party? Could this be a sign that
Tinubu has lost confidence and trust in his party leadership including
the president that he chooses to shed tears and wash his party’s dirty
linen in the public?
Let me conclude this piece by giving
Tinubu a word of sincere advice, that is if he would listen. Instead of
him to destroy with his own hands the party he helped build and nurture
to prominence and power by throwing tantrums and creating scenes of
political obscenity, it would do him a lot of good if he leaves
honourably than remain longer before he is kicked out in self-inflicted
opprobrium. The stakes are stacking higher, the momentum is getting
thicker by the day and the storms are rising higher against him.
He should stop overrating his importance
or influence; he cannot be richer than Nigeria which his party
controls. The moment a party produces a president, every other interest
and power is assumed to be subsumed into his especially when the
president is of our type. Tinubu’s needless hate for the last
administration made him to miss the answer after a brilliant
mathematical working. He could not see that the man he helped to foist
on us as president does not share power with anyone no matter how
monumentally beneficial his benefactors have been to him in his journey
to the throne.
If Oyegun whom he helped to install
thinking he was weak could muster the political muscle to call his
bluff, then nothing is left of the Jagaban any more.
It seems it is payback time, and in his
rage Tinubu seems poised to destroy with his own hands the house which
he built. When a godfather cries in the public, it is an ominous sign.
The implosion is imminent.
May APC survive to see what Nigeria will be in future without them… I hope you understand that prayer?
Jude Ndukwe is a
political analyst who lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria. He is a member
of The Trent’s Elite Columnists. His column is published every Friday.
He tweets from @stjudendukwe.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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