2023: Buhari’s endgame plan in danger

By Uche Chris

Fate is uncanny in its dealing with mankind. Oftentimes, man may have devised the best positively profitable end for himself only to see it unravel before his eyes. Religionists put it this way: Man proposes, God (fate) disposes. Whether in politics, business or social life, it happens so frequently as not to bear further proof.

And this seems to be the prospective fortune of Nigeria’s sitting president, Muhammadu Buhari whose tenure of office expires either in May or June, 2023. Virtually everything he had planned as exit strategy has come unstuck and the well-choreographed script spinning out of control, with his eight years in power looking like a pack of cards seemingly about to tumble.

Both in governance and party politics, the president’s back is against the wall and his supposed legacy in jeopardy. Insecurity reigns across the country with massacres taking place by the day in his own geopolitical zone, northwest, with little response from security agencies and only what now seems as his usually empty threat to the bandits.

Last week, the president in a television interview did not hide his immediate desire to retire, perhaps overwhelmed by the problems. For a man who fought hard to win the election after three previous attempts, it was an admission of failure. Generally, most people are reluctant to leave power, but the president appears already eager to quit.

There are some reasons for the president to be despondent. His performance has been abjectly poor on all fronts, including security, economy and social. All development indicators declined under the president leaving Nigerians in far worse position than they were in 2015, when he assumed power.

Inflation, which was single digit in 2015, has remained at high double digit throughout his terms; naira value had declined threefold since 2015; public debt has risen threefold; unemployment rate has doubled from 18 percent to 33 percent; GDP has plunged fivefold with two recessions; and insecurity has worsened across the country with the northwest becoming a killing field.

Sadly for Buhari and the party, the main condition that led to his victory, namely, the crisis in PDP, seems to have been resolved, with the party positioning for power after it successfully conducted its national convention in October 2021 against all odds. The onus is now on the ruling party and President Buhari to redeem the party from imminent collapse.

The worsening crisis in the All Progressives Congress, APC the party that brought President Buhari to power is a direct assault and indeed, revolt, against his succession plan. The president may be the most powerful political figure in the country, however, in the party he is a mere figure head, because the governors who control the states’ structures of the party, are the real power brokers and king makers.

In over 23 states, including Lagos and Kano, its major political strongholds, the party is in disarray with several factions and dozens of court cases. It is a bewildering fact to the president that he and the party have lost control; and he was frank enough to admit this in a recent television interview.

“APC must put its house in order quickly before 2023 election; otherwise it will lose power to the opposition party”, he said.

Frantic moves had followed the open admission by the president as Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau state was at the Villa shortly afterwards to consult with him and promised a further consultation with an enlarged team of governors last Sunday, which expectedly failed to hold, provoking speculations that the centre can no longer hold.

A serious hurdle for the party to scale is the national convention to elect new party executives and the mode of election. Although this may not have direct reference to the successor to Buhari, however, the zoning of party offices gives clear indication and direction to the likely zone that will produce the next presidential candidate of the party.

Initially, the Caretaker committee led by the governor of Yobe state, Mai Mala Bunu, was put in place specifically to conduct the national convention after six months, which was the constitutional tenure of the committee. But the committee kept elongating its tenure by adding new briefs to its duty, such as producing new membership register, and reconciling aggrieved members, which has remained a tall order

Convention date had been fixed and postponed severally. The last postponement was in November, which shifted the date from December to February, as if it will never come. Now, with the new date in sight, all hell seems to be let loose, as another postponement may sound the death kneel of the party. President Buhari’s dilemma now is the adoption and choice of consensus candidate.

The governors do not want to leave anything to chance. Bola Tinubu, who declared his intention to run for president, after meeting Buhari in Aso Rock on Monday, has enough war chest to sway some governors and their delegates at individual and personal level in any contest. So, the governors have decided to do away with election altogether to ensure that their preferred outcome is achieved, even against the president’s best wish.

This explains the controversy over the electoral amendment bill vetoed by President Buhari on December 19, 2021. Section 78 of the Bill and the clause on direct primary, which was not originally part of the bill, was promoted and inserted by the Speaker of the lower chamber to checkmate the dominance of governors in deciding the party candidates.

However, pressure from the governors, who saw through the gambit, forced the president, who had initially expressed support for it after visits by heads of the two chambers of the NASS, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, and Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, respectively, suddenly development cold feet and vetoed it.

He may have realized too late that he does not have the power to determine the party’s succession plan; which must be a sobering truth for him. To his chagrin, all the schemes and plots of the two major blocs in the party to achieve a certain predetermined outcome have been thwarted by the governors, leaving both the president and the cabal nonplussed.

There are three tendencies in the APC, namely, the Presidency and the cabal; the Tinubu bloc and the governors. The New PDP, which was instrumental in defeating former president Jonathan, has been sucked in by the presidency, and no longer has a separate identity. President Buhari’s first mistake was to allow the governors to impose one of them as the Care taker chairman after the ouster of elected chairman, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole.

Oshiomhole’s election as party chairman was perceived as a major power shift in the party in favour of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the national leader of the party, and a key merger partner of Buhari. He is an acolyte of Tinubu and his headship of the party raised alarm bell for most stakeholders in the party toward 2023.

Oshiohmole himself did not help matter as his bungling of the 2019 polls in several states particularly, Zamfara and Rivers, sealed his fate and handed the governors with the ammunition to oust him. But the coup would have failed without the president support. However, the surprise was that the president and his minders did not see this coming. Perhaps, the fear of Tinubu united his perceived common enemies.

As it stands, if any elections were to be conducted today, it is most likely that the ruling party will be defeated and this looks as the most obvious fate for the party going forward. This is the prospect the president warned against in the interview. APC may be a one president ruling party, which would defeat the very objective and purpose of the merger that brought it to power.

President Buhari may have become APC’s only unifying factor and trump card. But his own maladministration has compounded the crisis in the party by its woeful performance.

In his reaction, a senior journalist, columnist and author, Lanre Adewole, described the president as a sitting duck who has lost control of the narratives.

“It is almost a given that the current administration has lost control. Even senior members of Mr. Buhari’s party regularly allude to the obvious mismanagement of national wellbeing, though mostly in private conversations. Yoruba will say, ‘eyin ajanaku la nyo ida’ (swords are only swung in bravado in elephant’s absence).

“Everyone lines up in loyalty in public, except those ready to face the EFCC. But how long can force keep the falling and failing entity together.

“Today, APC is officially fragmented in 23 states with parallel excos from ward to state level and in a couple of cases like Lagos, ending with five excos.

“When Buhari used Villa as tiger’s visage to throw Oshiomhole and his NWC gang out, there was a promise to deal with party members seeking judicial redress. Incidentally, Aregbesola’s men in Osun and Lai’s men in Kwara are in court and nothing has happened to anyone.

“Party chieftains who have been schemed out of political relevance and influence in their states are ignoring the president’s admonition to explore and exhaust internal mechanism for conflict-resolution, of which the appeal process is part of.

“Even Ibikunle Amosun, the president’s well-known enforcer, is not heeding the falconer (Buhari) on this. He shunned the appeal panel and didn’t go to court. Ibrahim Shekarau shunned appeal too.

“What should agitate the mind of a real leader of a functioning party, which the president should be, by convention, is, what are my people up to”, declared Adewole.

Also speaking, Abia Onyike, social critic and spokesperson for Alaigbo Development Foundation, told this medium that the crisis in APC and their inability to organise a convention shows that the party is just a coalition of all kinds of tendencies that came together to hijack political power for the purposes of revenge, and not necessarily for national development. And now having thrown the country into a major calamity, pressure is being mounted on them to leave the scene.

“So, they are thrown into confusion. They can no longer reorganize themselves. Buhari who should be in charge. He has been quite aloof and doesn’t care what happens in the country and so it appears that his regime has been hijacked by his kitchen cabinet and he himself does not even care what happens even in the party… “