Nigerian Political Parties Without Leaders

 “A group without a leader is a mob.” – Anonymous (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ P.82).

“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.” – Dr John Arbuthnot, 1667-1735, VBQ p 191.

Ask anybody who is the lead­er of the Peoples Demo­cratic Party, PDP, or the La­bour Party, and you would receive different answers. These are the two leading opposition parties. Yet, they are effectively leaderless. Everybody in the world knows who is the leader of the Conservative Par­ty in Britain. She is our own Nigeri­an-born Kemi Badenoch. We might not like what she says, but, world­wide, she is more highly esteemed that any politician in Nigeria today, mainly because she will never de­camp to the ruling party for personal gain. The abnormality represented by Wike can never happen in the UK or India or Canada. There are some Made-In-Nigeria political atrocities which, being endemic, have guaran­teed that good governance, which is indispensable to development, will continue to elude us.

Just in case the reader goes away with the impression that the ruling party had been exonerated, permit me to ask: who is the leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC? I know who is the President – Bola Tinubu. Ordinarily, he should be regarded as the leader. But some of the most disgruntled political ele­ments, especially in the North, are APC members. So badly is the party divided, the Chairman, Ganduje, has been afraid to call a meeting of the National Executive Council. That is bad enough. The most alarming as­pect of the APC problem lies in the lack of total support for Tinubu and even open hostility, by people holding APC party cards.

IMPORTANT BILLS

“There is nothing worse than for a leader to look behind him and find nobody is following. – US President Lyndon Johnson.

Tinubu is not without followers; far from it. However, there are sever­al types of followers. What happened to Jonathan should teach him a les­son – going forward. Most Nigerian politicians are political mercenaries; they go where food is ready and leave when there is threat to the food sup­ply. Right now, Northern political leaders are confronted with an APC in which their financial interests are seriously threatened. In less than two years of the Tinubu government, the adverse changes in their individual and collective circumstances have resulted in a groundswell of demand for the return of the Presidency to the North – at all costs. More than ever, they are prepared to forgive even those who governed very badly.

El-Rufai, the immediate past Governor of Kaduna State offers a good example of the current mind of the North. Extremely clever, not intelligent, he knows that blaming the rulers excites the populace more easily than appeals for hope when a country experiences economic hardship. It is all well and good to point to the benefits in the long run if tough measures are taken now. But the stomach is a rascal. People don’t eat in the long run; they must have food today. And, if that is not possible, somebody must pay for it. The strongest campaigners against the Tinubu government are APC members. Before going into the de­tails of how they intend to sabotage the leadership of the APC, it is nec­essary to point out that they have already scored a major victory.

TAX BILL GUTTED

“Building half a bridge is the most worthless investment a government can make.” – An international bridge builder with over 300 bridges to his credit.

Granted, Tinubu and the framers of the Tax Reform Bill committed a blunder by not consulting widely enough and building a winning co­alition before presenting the bill to the National Assembly, NASS. Still, the fact that the first groups to openly reject them were those dominated by APC, spoke volumes about how much control the President had over his own party. The Nigerian Gover­nors’ Forum, at first, not only turned it down, the most vocal opponent of the bill was Professor Zulum of Bor­no State. Vice President Shettima, who is from that state, must have been deeply embarrassed. That ges­ture demonstrated beyond reason­able doubt that the party could not guarantee the support of its own governors.

Similarly, at the NASS, the fierc­est war against the bill was waged by APC Senators, led by Ndume. That provided the Northern elite the opportunity to rally the people around them. Incidentally, anybody following the affair closely would have noticed that most members of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, as well as various youth organisations, who were up in arms, had not even read the bill before taking positions. Once the bill was pronounced an­ti-North by the early responders, the majority simply fell in line. It was the classic case of giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. The very few Northern FG supporters kept their distance; they remained in Abuja out of fear of reprisals by lynch mobs.

The Daily Trust, the most reliable political weather vane, to which I subscribe, published every day, stinging rebukes of the bill as a plot by Lagos State to colonise the North. It was as bad as that. Tension was lowered when amendments were made to the bill which partly molli­fied the governors. Despite that, trust had been eroded. Northerners, who provided the winning margin now feel like the man who escaped being beheaded by a beneficiary but lost his cap. The broad attitude now is: never again. Millions of those who voted in 2023 have turned their backs on the apparent leader of their party. The obvious question is: why have they not departed? The short answer is: money and time.

THE ENEMIES WITHIN

“Better a declared enemy than a doubtful ally.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821.

Tinubu should thank God for Atiku and Obi. They are declared political opponents but might not be harmful on account of the mobs which have seized control of the PDP and Labour Party. The fellows who should be giving him sleepless nights are APC members who are no longer loyal to him, but who rec­ognise that he is still in control of the kitchen. They intend to stay; contin­ue to collect their shares of the na­tional cake and stab him in the back at the right time. El-Rufai is naïve and too emotional for his own good. Yet, he is better than the pretenders who are working quietly to sabotage the APC and Tinubu. Some of them are in Aso Rock.

Obviously, even the APC is in muted disarray. Unlike the other poor parties, money has made it possible to sound-proof the edifice called APC; neighbours don’t hear the noise – which is very much there. Thus, if you ask APC members privately: who is your leader? You might be shocked to receive the sort of reply one “party stalwart” gave me in Lagos last week. “We no longer have a leader. That old man should go home. See the mess he has created in Lagos State.” Tinubu might not real­ise it, but he needs rock solid support from the South West, especially La­gos. He also must work on the rest of the South. Most people in the North have already made up their minds; this government is not for them.

There is danger ahead.

MEN, MONEY AND MADNESS

“Power and money, do, of course, drive people crazy. So, why shouldn’t people also gain power and wealth through being crazy?” Saul Bellow, 1915-2005. VBQ p 195.

America, once called God’s Own Country, but not any longer, has two crazy men running the government. They have power and money and don’t care what anybody says. Amer­icans used to pretend that nobody is above the law. But they shamelessly elected the most lawless person ever to run for President. Just two weeks ago, Donald Trump defied a court order and nobody in Congress said a word. If Tinubu had done that, an American media would have called him all sorts of names and our Na­tional Assembly, NASS bush men. That is understandable. Tinubu is not crazy, and people in our NASS are not under a spell. They have faults, but not those needing to be remedied by bringing strait jackets.

Mark my words, Americans will wake up before the end of Trump’s term to discover that even a giant alone can be extremely vulnerable.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EL-RUFAI

“A leopard never changes its spots.”

El-Rufai will never change. Read my book, PDP: CORRUPTION IN­CORPORATED, Chapter 8, and dis­cover how NITEL was demolished under his tender loving care – ably supported by President Obasanjo – his godfather.