OPINION
By Femi Fani-Kayode
Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode |
I do not like to delve into matters touching and
concerning the APC because I am not a member.
However, what is happening in the ruling party
today transcends partisan politics and should be a concern to us all. At the very
least we can learn some very hard lessons from it.
The truth is that the behaviour of Chief John
Odige-Oyegun towards the man that single-handedly made him the National
Chairman of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is reprehensible.
And neither does this matter begin or end with
the way and manner in which the Ondo state governorship primaries were
conducted or its final outcome.
It goes much deeper than that and the Ondo
affair is only symptomatic of a much deeper malaise and wider conspiracy to humiliate
the National Leader of the APC by forces within his party that are even greater
than him.
Those forces represent the hidden hand. They are
a small cabal of power-brokers who constitute the leadership of the Buhari-led
CPC. These people believe that they were born to rule and that they own
Nigeria.
They simply used Tinubu’s old ACN as a compliant
and ready piggy-back to catapult their way back to power and once they achieved
that they never looked back.
Some of us warned Tinubu at the time about the dangers
of riding the tiger and allowing himself to be used by these very dark and
sinister forces but he would not listen.
No true student of history could have made such
a cataclysmic and monumental error given the terrible experiences of others
from the south-west, and indeed the entire south, who collaborated with such
ultra-conservative, sectarian and arcane forces with a clear and distinct
ethnic and religious agenda in the past.
Such forces can never be comfortable with a
well-connected, highly sophisticated, independent-minded, strong,
unpredictable, uncontrollable and experienced Yoruba leader and southern
gladiator with a June 12th pedigree, a NADECO background, a massive war-chest
and a widespread and formidable political base.
They may use him to achieve their objective but
they can never trust him or allow him to have control of the party machinery or
to wield any real power when it comes to running the affairs of the nation.
Most importantly once they have finished using
him it becomes their duty and cardinal objective not just to cut him down to
size but also to castrate and render him impotent and eventually destroy him.
That is their way. It is also a classic and
vintage Nicollo Machiavelli move. This great writer that has had more influence
on political thinking and strategies than perhaps any other author in human
history taught us a critical and crucial lesson in his famous 14th century
literary masterpiece and treatise on the power game titled “The Prince”. He
tells us that the first thing that a Prince must do once he has achieved power
is to destroy those that put him there.
And that is precisely what those that seek to do
Tinubu in are doing. Worst still they are using his own erstwhile discipiles as
a first line of attack against him.
It is not just Odige-Oyegun that has turned his
back on him but also his former political protegees and former ACN associates
like Tunde Fashola, Ibikunle Amosu, Kayode Fayemi, Biodun Ajimobi, Olorunimbe
Mamora, Niyi Adebayo, Rotimi Akeredolu and numerous others.
Pulling the strings from behind the scenes and
encouraging and funding the rebellion are hardline Buhari-supporters like my
good friend Governor Nasir El Rufai and a number of others.
Their objective is to establish a new political
order in the south west which is beholden to them alone, to replace Tinubu as
the National Leader of the party and to utterly demystify and crush him in
order to prepare the ground for the emergence of a new and more compliant
Yoruba running mate for either Buhari himself or El Rufai in 2019.
As a graphic illustration of this interesting
and unfolding agenda, the powers that be in the APC, led by Buhari himself,
fired six shots at Tinubu inmediately after they formed government.
The first was the Senate Presidency affair and
the Bukola Saraki matter which saw the defeat and humiliation of Tinubu’s
prefered candidate for Senate President.
The second shot was the Speaker of the House of
Representatives affair and the Yakubu Dogara matter which, again, saw the
defeat and humiliation of Tinibu’s prefered candidate for the position of
Speaker of the House.
The third was the vital issue of Ministerial
appointments in which not one single Ministerial nominee of Tinubu’s was
accepted and appointed as a Minister by Buhari.
Every single person that he nominated from the
south west and elsewhere as Minister was rejected and instead the slots were
filled by his political adversaries and/or their nominees.
Many erroneously believe that Mr. Lai Mohammed,
who is from Kwara state, was Tinubu’s choice and nominee for Minister of
Information but this was not the case.
The person that he nominated for Minister of
Information was not Lai Mohammed but Mr. Dele Alake, his former Commissioner of
Information in Lagos state.
Again he nominated Mr. Wale Edun, his former
Commissioner of Finance in Lagos state, for the position of Minister of Finance
but this was rejected and Governor Ibikunle Amosu’s candidate, Mrs. Kemi
Adeosun, got the job instead.
This went on across the board for every single
person that Tinubu nominated and presented for the position of Minister last
year and it was a terrible humiliation for him. It was a dirty slap in his
face.
The fourth shot was the James Faleke matter in
Kogi state where it was agreed by the real landlords of the APC in the core
north that Tinubu must not be allowed to gain a foothold in the north central
zone by getting his own Yoruba kinsman and candidate to be elected as governor
of that state.
Hence Faleke was ruthlessly dropped and shabbily
treated and another person was selected to be the gubernatorial candidate of
that state. It worked, Faleke went to court and sadly he lost. That was the end
of the story.
The fifth shot is the thorough and systematic,
though subtle and covert, humiliation and relegation of Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo, a close associate and political protegee of Tinubu and a spiritual
son of the reverred Pastor Enoch Adeboye of The Redeemed Christian Church of
God (RCCG), to not just a spare tyre as Vice President but also to a very flat
one.
Rather than being allowed to participate in the
crucial decision-making processes on vital and critical issues of state and
governance as any Vice President should, Osinbajo has been kept in the dark
about virtually everything and he has little or no power to effect anything.
When such decions are to be debated, discussed
and made the Vice President is never invited into the room and neither is he
even aware that there is such a meeting going on.
Worse still he is constantly being directed to
represent the President at official functions all over the country as if he
were more his Personal Assistant, Special Advisor or Minister rather than the
Vice President of the country. Osinbajo’s crime is simply that he is loyal to
Tinubu and he has refused to dump or betray him.
The sixth and perhaps most devastating shot is
the fact that the party machinery has not only been taken away from Tinubu with
the effective highjacking of Odige-Oyegun but that it has also opted to do the
bidding of his mortal enemies and to fight him.
An eloquent testimony to this disturbing fact is
the outcome of the Ondo state gubernatorial primaries where Tinubu’s candidate
was edged out and cheated of the nomination by the party leadership.
This was the last straw that broke the camels
back and predictably Tinubu has reacted in a very loud, aggressive and profound
manner by publicly calling for the removal of the National Chairman of the
party.
Yet calling for the removal of Odigie-Oyegun is
not enough. The whole situation calls for critical thiking, sober reflection
and deep retrospection.
The point that needs to be clearly understood
when considering these six shots and the unfolding anti-Tinubu agenda within
the APC is the fact that, contrary to all pretensions, President Muhammadu
Buhari is part and parcel of it and he is in fact the moving spirit behind the
whole conspiracy.
Nasir El Rufai and a number of others are simply
the strategists and enforcers. Buhari, Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari are the
masterminds.
Given all this one thing is clear: these people
want Tinubu dead. If he does not realign quickly and fight hard to save his
dwindling political fortunes and empire his APC friends and allies will destroy
him in a slow, clinical, sadistic and systematic manner. And they will do it
with a big, beautiful and friendly smile on their faces.
The fact of the matter is that, right from the
outset, Tinubu failed to accept the fact that he was in bed with demons.
He refused to appreciate the fact that he was
sleeping with beasts that are hell bent on eating his flesh, driniking his
blood and ruthlessly implementing an ancient ethnic and religious agenda.
He gave them his all, caused them to win an
election and trusted them to honor their word and treat him with respect and
decorum.
He failed to appreciate the fact that you cannot
make a deal with snakes and expect them to honor their word.
He forgot that you cannot wine and dine with
cancerous lepers and hungry tigers without ending up being served as the final
dish in a long, blood-curdling and Byzantian satanic feast.
Yet if the truth is to be told, no matter what
mistakes he may have made, Tinubu does not deserve to be treated in this way.
Up until the Presidential elections were
conducted last year he led and held together the south-western wing of the APC
with an iron fist and he was the undisputed leader of the APC in that zone.
All four APC governors from the south west and
virtually every single party leader waited on his every word and he called all
the shots.
Sadly today, just over one year later, he is a
caricature of his former self. Today Tinubu can only boast of having the ear
and the full support of only two of those govermors, namely Rauf Aregbesola of
Osun state, who will NEVER betray him no matter what, and Akinwumi Ambode of
Lagos state who will also stand firmly behind him until the very end.
The truth is that Tinubu has lost much ground
and political mileage in recent times and, as more daggers are pulled out over
the next few months and years it is bound to get worse for him.
Yet that does not mean that he is finished. I
say this because he is a tried and tested fighter and a formidable adversary
who is quite capable of pulling the whole APC house down.
It would be a fatal error for any of his
adversaries, including President Buhari, Vice President Atiku Abubakar or
Senate President Bukola Saraki, to underestimate him or dismiss his ability to
fight back.
In July 2016, just after my release from
detention and during the course of an interview with Channels Television (which
can still be viewed on Youtube) Mr. Seun Okinbaloye asked me whether I could
ever contemplate going back to the APC and how I thought the ruling party would
fare into the future.
I told him that I would NEVER go back to the APC
under ANY circumstances. I also told him that in any case by 2019 there would
not be an APC, as it is presently constituted, left because the party would
have spilt up into three separate and distinct political entities.
I told him that the Tinubu group comprising of
men like Baba Bisi Akande, Rauf Aregbesola, Akinwummi Ambode and others would
establish one party, the Atiku Abubakar group comprising of men like Bukola
Saraki, Rabiu Kwakwanso and many of the former PDP leaders and governors that
had left for the APC when President Goodluck Jonathan was in power would
establish another and that the Buhari group comprising of men like Nasir El
Rufai, Bello Masari, Aminu Tambuwal, Rotimi Amaechi, Rochas Okorocha, Chris
Ngige, Ogbonaya Onu, Adams Oshiomole and virtually the entire structure of the
old CPC leadership in the core north would constitute yet another. I stand by
this prediction.
These three strong and equally forceful factions
can be likened to the proverbial three blind yet ravenous wolves.
They cannot stay in the same cage or remain on
the same platform for long without tearing each other to pieces.
Eventually they will all go their separate ways and, hopefully, contend with a newly-branded and reinvigotated PDP in the field of battle in 2019.
Eventually they will all go their separate ways and, hopefully, contend with a newly-branded and reinvigotated PDP in the field of battle in 2019.
What we are witnessing today in the ranks of the
APC is the beginning of that bitter separation and messy divorce and it is
going to get far worse.
It will be loud, bitter, acrimonious and rancorous
and many political empires, careers and aspirations will be destroyed as a
consequence of it.
My hope and prayer is that the PDP, which is
also going through its own rigorous process of redefinition and reinvigoration,
can get its act together before then, take advantage of the situation, pick up
the pieces and win the presidential election in 2019. I am sure that we will.
Meanwhile my advise to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is to
watch his back, consolidate his base, fight his enemies, reach out to new friends,
accept the fact that he is at war and sleep with one eye wide open. The truth
is that it will get far worse before it gets any better.
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