Nigerians are keenly aware of the fact that 2015 is a critical year for our politics. The usual muted complaints have turned into bitter criticisms of All Progressives Congress’ missteps and its leaders who are seen as the engine behind the crises in the National Assembly’s power tussle for the Senate Presidency and the House Speakership and the appointment of other principal officers.
Indeed, anyone watching can see that our commitment to democracy is as strong as our patience is unusual. All our hopes are now pinned on Muhammadu Buhari. The battle lines are now deep inside the APC, and more than a few are willing to bet that there are factions aligned with Bola Tinubu that are hell bent on controlling the selection of leaders in the party and in the government.
Nigerians are wiser today and they wonder why those aspiring to lead us are so clueless. Why do they take our commitment to democracy as a weakness? Why do they think that for them, compromise is a failure rather than a win for all? Nigerians also know that it is the consequence of our bankrupt leadership and the endemic corruption that threw up leaders like Goodluck Jonathan upon the nation. But the former Vice- President, Atiku Abubakar, is working tirelessly to bring sanity and accommodation around the leadership crises in the NASS. He understands politics as interplay of give and take, where individuals will win sometimes and they will lose sometimes; but always ensuring that the majority of Nigerians are always the winners.
I must remind all that the Peoples Democratic Party has no right to speak ill of the APC over the NASS crises or any power tussle for that matter. Lest they forget, the PDP must be reminded of their own debacle in Patricia Ette and Dimeji Bankole. The PDP wanted to impose a speaker on the House and the House members roundly turned this down. Instead of pandering to the vested interest of the PDP, with all its grandstanding then, the House decided that, to resign to fate is to be crippled fast, hence they took their destinies in their hands and collectively voted en masse for Dimeji Bankole to lead them.
This of course did not go down well with the party, which saw this as an affront on its orders. The PDP would have preferred a puppet and stooge, to the urbane, cerebral and people-oriented Dimeji Bankole. It is in this regard that, Ahmadu Ali, who suffers from not only verbal diarrhea, but misplaced aggression, reacted in a barbaric manner and asked the Speaker to leave the venue of the NEC meeting of PDP.
Now, the APC is crossing the same bridge and there are those within the party that are bent on making the APC cater to their whims and caprices so that their surrogates are put in various positions in the party. This of course is to give them unfettered ability to arbitrarily control the levers of power, as well as those in power, as a way of covering their ugly past.
Lami Ladan, Gwarinpa Estate, Abuja
