14th May 2023
Senator Abdullahi Adamu is the National Chairman of APC and has every power to speak on behalf of APC. Sometime last year, at the heat of negotiations and trade offs for the emergence of APC presidential candidate, Adamu rose up and proclaimed Senator Ahmad Lawan as the consensus presidential candidate of APC. He also added that the Villa was aware of it. The reaction was instant and electric. This was clearly an obstacle to the aspirant whose life ambition is to become the President of Nigeria and who may be having the last opportunity to have a shot at the seat. Obviously, there was an injustice in Adamu’s declaration, because the person on the presidential seat now for eight years is a northern Muslim. By the concept of power shift and rotation of the post of the President, between North and South, Adamu, a Northern Muslim, committed a fundamental error of proclivity to premodial sentiments by declaring that a fellow Northern Muslim in Lawan should succeed a Buhari. He was accused of not consulting all the stakeholders before coming up with his utopic consensus candidate in Lawan. Consequently, Lawan was fought and defeated, even by his fellow Northern Muslim politicians. He came a distant fourth. The politicians that fought him flaunted the concept of equity, justice and fairness as their motive for settling for a Southern candidate.
It’s often stated that whenever an abnormality lasts more than a year, it becomes a culture. The individuals that constitute the decision makers in APC have been elements that have no respect for Federal Character or zoning in their political career. They are Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of APC, and Senator Adamu, APC National Chairman. Adamu’s case has already been stated above. Bola Tinubu’s party, ACN, supported Tambuwal against Tinubu’s own relation, Mulikat Akande, to emerge Speaker of the House of Representatives, in disregard of the zoning formula of Tambuwal’s party, the PDP. This is in addition to his settling for a same-faith ticket for the Presidency and his supporting the zoning of both the Vice-President and Speaker to South-West in 2019. He is alleged to have captured Lagos State through unrestricted imposition of candidates over the years.
These men above are power grabbers and we do not see power grabbers agreeing to any peaceful settlement of an issue that concerns power. You don’t negotiate with power grabbers on the issue of sharing power, you defeat them. They can do anything to capture the state. When they cry equity, justice and fairness, it is because it favours them, not because they believe in it. When equity and justice do not favour them in their quest to capture the state, they jettison it and start mouthing competence and capacity. You have already heard one presidential candidate saying that he will establish a government of national competence, whatever that means. This is a signpost to total rejection of the principle of Federal Character because there are competent persons in every geo-political zone.
One can say that APC’s formula of imposition produced the worst national assembly session in the history of Nigeria called the 9th session of the National Assembly. In 2015, Nigerians and national legislators resisted the imposition of a Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives and produced their own leadership that eventually protected Nigerians from the incompetence of the APC. The Saraki/Dogara leadership, with their own baggage, still managed to check and balance the executive and saved us from excessive illegal borrowing and outright putting of a stamp of approval to criminality. The executive was after the legislature and the legislature was after the executive, and at the end of the day, we had a balanced government of checks and balance. By 2019, the APC Leadership succeeded in imposing Lawan and Gbajabiamila on the National Assembly. They publicly declared that they will never oppose the executive on any issue whatsoever. Indeed they wore the badge of rubber stamp as an honour.
At the end of Buhari’s tenure, the APC government will bequeath about N77t naira in debt to the incoming administration. The most obnoxious being the approval of about N22t ways and means money borrowed through the Central Bank, without the prior approval of the National Assembly, and which exceeded the statutory legal borrowing ceiling of the Apex Bank, and which the Senate President openly admitted was illegal, yet approved it. It is the greatest demonstration of hypocrisy and double standards by Lawan’s Senate to rightly reject the approval of the 2023 budget of the NDDC because they spent about N1.3t naira in 2021-2022, without the approval of the National Assembly, but wrongly approved the President’s own. It is only in a Lawan led National Assembly that an executive, that has only 18 days left in office, can seek for approval to borrow $800m dollars, in addition to the N77t already accumulated, to share to its cronnies and hangers on, without appropriate accountability for the ones already shared, shamelessly borrowing for consumption, not for production.
It’s to avoid this imposition that leads to the total emasculation of the Legislature, making it a ministry under the executive, that Nigerians and the national assembly members-elect must rise up and fight for a free, independent Legislature that will checkmate the excesses of the executive. Let us state this clearly, what the APC, or do we say the presidential candidate of APC, reeled out about their opinion on who takes over the leadership of the National Assembly is not zoning by any means. Zoning is the sharing of the available posts to the six recognised geo-political zones whenever the number of available posts are up to six. This is the position of the Federal Character Commission Act. For instance, the federal principal political elective posts are six in number. They are the posts of the President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Deputy Senate President and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. The contemplation of the Federal Character Commission Act is that these six principal offices should be shared equitably to the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.
In 1999, efforts were made, despite the fact that they were all elective positions, to share these six posts among the six geo-political zones. For instance, President Olusegun Obasanjo was from the South West, Vice President Atiku Abubakar from the North East, Senate President Evan Enwerem from the South East, Speaker Salisu Buhari from the North West, Deputy Senate President Haruna Abubakar from the North Central and Deputy Speaker Chibudum Nwuche from the South South. APC purported zoning arrangement in 2023, which saw one Geo-Political Zone receiving two of these posts, when one zone got nothing, cannot be called zoning, but a shameless unequitable imposition, orchestrated to secure future patronage from the same favoured Geo-Political Zone to ensure consolidation of the acquisition of power and money. It is even more terrible when one realises that the neglected zone gave the candidate more states than the favoured zone.
The charade, masquerading as zoning, is also flawed by the attachment of names to the posts unequitably shared among five Geo-Political Zones instead of six. We must note that APC has never zoned these offices to the six Geo-Political Zones from its inception. It has become a culture with them to maltreat some Zones. In 2015, South-West had the Vice-President and the Deputy Speaker. In 2019, South-West maintained the Vice-President and the Speaker. It’s not strange that it is proposing again a Zone taking up two posts when one has none. Zoning means ceding a post to a Geo-Political Zone and allowing the leaders of the Zone to produce their own candidate by consensus or their candidates to be elected on the floor of the National Assembly by the Lawmakers. Attaching names to the post is a naked imposition of candidates on the party and on Nigerians. It’s also a vote of no confidence on the members that they are brainless and clueless and are incapable of choosing their leaders. They don’t know what is good for them and as little children, must be given its leaders.
We do not have any sympathy whatsoever for what is happening to South-East and North-Central APC Politicians in this purported zoning formula of APC. During the primary election of the presidential candidate of the APC, he never visited South-East for one day to consult or campaign. He said it was a waste of resources and time, yet some unguided politicians from the South-East voted for him in the primary election and an aspirant from the South-East even stepped down for him during the context. During the campaign proper, he came to the South-East and told them that in his regime, they will get only a soaked slice of bread, yet some unguided citizens from there voted for him. When he was composing his transition committee, he omitted the South-East completely that made even his Igbokwe to scream, “it is not possible”, yet some political “efulefus” are still perching around him.
The North-Central had the brightest opportunity to produce the Vice-President in Nigeria, if the APC presidential candidate had chosen a Christian Northerner as Vice-President to balance his ticket but he denigrated them as incompetent and not worthy of the position, yet some persons from North-Central supported him. You cannot sow yam and reap cocoyam no matter the resemblance.
To stop this country towards the journey to state capture and economic collapse, the Legislature must rise up and regain its freedom and independence. They must consult among themselves to produce competent persons from among them, while ensuring the adherence to the principles of equity, justice and fairness in the distribution of the offices.
Let us assure them that divided they will fail. They must unite and make the necessary sacrifice to ensure that the journey to a new Nigeria is assured. The unity and stability of Nigeria can only be guaranteed through equity, justice and fairness and the People’s representatives must take the lead in this regard. They have brains among them and they must use their brains.
