After the instability and varied gales of insecurity that plagued the country and dominated most political discourse in 2020, this year seems to offer a new leaf to all and sundry. IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI examines the likely issues that will shape politics in the country this year.
It is three days into the New Year, but the political storms that lingered all through the preceding year are still raging. The varied gale of insecurity, ranging from terrorism, kidnapping and banditry, tore at the nation and almost sank it in 2020. According to a former Provost Marshall of the Nigerian Army, Brigadier General Idada Ikponmwen, the different shades of insecurity that plagued the country last year were indicative that legitimate authority collapsed in the country despite being under the watch of a former military head of state, President Muhammadu Buhari.
Meanwhile, the gleams of instability that rocked the country during the COVID-19 year also swayed its ruling political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as they both battled severe internal crisis and friction stemming from colliding ambitions of their party chieftains and power blocs. But while the year 2021 seems to offer the two parties and their political gladiators a new leaf and opportunity to amend their cracking walls ahead of 2023, below are some of the key issues that will likely permeate politics this year.
Skin-deep bruises in internal democracy
The two main political parties are, no doubt, aching in all joints with internal dissension. For the ruling party, APC, theirs appears to take a new dimension after its National Executive Council (NEC) initially dissolved the then Adams Oshiomhole National Working Committee. Since then, the party seemed to have been rocked with more crises, ranging from court litigations to party members’ disagreements, chief among which was the court suit filed by two members of its defunct NWC, Hillard Eta and Victor Giadom, laying claim to the hot seat of its national chairman.
In a bid to weather the storm, President Buhari and the members of the party’s NEC rose to the occasion by asking all party chieftains to withdraw all pending suits in court. Though others seem to have obeyed this directive, Eta, a former National Vice Chairman (South-South) of the party, refused to follow suit. In November 26, 2020, he filed a lawsuit at the Federal High Court in Abuja asking the court to dissolve the current Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee of the party because its leader, Mai Mala Buni, could not legally hold the position and that of governor at the same time.
In the lawsuit, Eta challenged the dissolution of the Oshiomhole-led NWC and prayed the court to declare him as the acting chairman of the ruling party by virtue of the violations of the APC constitution. In the aftermath of the Eta court suit, the NEC of the ruling party at its emergency meeting held in Aso Rock, Abuja, on Tuesday, December 8, dissolved all its party structures at units, ward, local government, state and zonal levels. In their place, a caretaker committee was emplaced.
The NEC also extended the tenure of the caretaker committee by six months. But this decision further polarised the party as a group, Concerned APC Members, accused the the caretaker team of plotting tenure elongation, alleging that the 1.5 billion naira earmarked for the proposed registration of APC stalwarts did not pass through procurement process. It then called for the halt of the exercise.
Addressing newsmen at a press briefing after the NEC emergency meeting, a member of the group, Ogenyi Okpokwu, was quoted as saying: “We were shocked when we read it in the newspapers this Thursday that the caretaker committee is embarking on new membership registration. This is outright fraud! How can a party that has existed for over seven years commence a new registration instead of updating the existing register? It is now clear that the intention is to divert 1.5 billion naira the committee has budgeted for the same exercise without procurement process.”
It stressed that, “All elected members under our party submitted party membership cards to INEC during nomination of candidates because our country’s constitution forbids independent candidacy, so why the rush to discard party registration as we battle economic difficulty and with little money in our party’s accounts? Note that all primaries in 2019 and recent ones in Edo and Ondo were done with party registers and membership cards.”
But in a swift response, another section of the party rubbished the tenure elongation claim, noting that the proposed membership registration among others resolutions of the caretaker committee, was expedient to the proposed national convention of the party billed to take place this year.
According to political observers, the series of backlash that greeted most of the decisions made at the APC NEC emergency December meeting were symptomatic of the party’s leaking roofs. All these are expected to be part of the issues that will dominate politics in the country.
For the PDP, there are also some elements of dissonance especially among its top chieftains and sitting governors. Recall that the PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, while doing a self-appraisal of his three years at the helm of affairs on Thursday, December 10, said that, despite his administration meeting the PDP at a psychologically traumatised point where it was struggling with internal democracy after 16 years in power, his leadership succeeded in taking the party to an enviable height where it has attracted influx of new members and reconciled its warring chieftains.
But it appears all that wasn’t entirely true as his apparent row with the Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, which many alleged to have masterminded his emergence as the party chairman, recently took a turn for the worse. In what could be seen as his utter disinclination for the leadership of Secondus, Wike alleged that the current leadership is worsening the cracks in the party by creating frictions among state governors and not doing enough to feast on what he described as the “inefficiency of the APC administration”.
“The PDP ought to have harvested from the inefficiency of the APC, from the maladministration of the APC. Ordinarily, that is what the opposition party ought to do. If you ask me, are Nigerians waiting for a change? Yes. If you ask me as a member of PDP, am I ready to support PDP to take over? Yes! But, if you ask me currently as it is, is the leadership of the party willing for us to harvest this opportunity for a change? I will say No!” Wike had said in a statement.
The party later set up a National Reconciliation and Strategic Committee headed by former Senate president and governor of Kwara State, Senator Bukola Saraki, with the mandate to reconcile its aggrieved members and help to reposition it in a bid to recapture power in 2023.
The Saraki-led committee was also commissioned to align personal ambitions with the party’s interest of becoming the delight of all Nigerians before the next general election. The varying moves by this committee henceforth will be part of the issues that will pervade politics this year. And how well the committee will go in achieving its seemingly testing task will largely determine the fate of the party in 2023.
The quest for power
In addition to the internal wrangling bedevilling the two leading parties in the country, another burning topic that will saturate political discourse this year is the planning method and/or strategy of each party towards 2023 elections. This year, the APC will, no doubt, intensify its quest to retain power, while the main opposition party will move to recapture power after what appears to be two consecutive defeats.
As part of its rebuilding process, the ruling party, despite spirited resistance from close quarters, will be embarking on its membership registration, update and revalidation exercise across the country’s 119,973 polling units and 57, 000 voting points this month after dissolving its entire party structure within the country last December. The exercise is expected to provide a wet ground for the national convention of the party. And its outcome will also shape politics in the country this year.
Like its counterpart, the PDP too will be embarking on an electronic registration of its members across the country. While rendering his third-year stewardship last December, Secondus said: “Our e-membership registration is to begin in 2021 unfailingly, having secured the approval of its take-off from the NEC of our party. We also intend to finalise the peace and reconciliation process within the party with a view to entering the general election as one united and focused political family. The 2019 general election’s appraisal committee is also expected to finalise its report and some decisions are to be taken and implemented from it. In the next one year, we also intend to continue the reorganisation of our administrative structure to bring us to the realistic opposition status through digitalization and upgrading of our offices.”
Renewed calls for zoning of 2023 presidency, colliding ambitions
The outcomes of the two registrations and revalidation exercises will to a great extent determine the face of politics in the country this year. But the calls for the 2023 presidency to be zoned to a specific section of the country will become louder even if the two leading parties and some of their top chieftains have spiritedly denied this in several press briefings held last year. According to feelers, both parties are resolved to provide a level playing field for every eligible party member to contest for whatever position they deem fit.
“We can’t be talking of zoning when we have not appraised how we fared in the last election. Moreover, the state of the nation today is such that politics or anything concerning 2023 of three years away should take the back stage. Nigeria is in a comatose state today where APC brought it, that should be our concern now,” the PDP chairman had said at the party’s December meeting in reaction to the zoning agitations.
For the ruling party, there are insinuations in some quarters, especially within the APC, that the ruling party will take a decision in June on which part of the country will produce its presidential candidate for 2023. Some are of the opinion that if the North gets the slot of the national chairman of the party during its upcoming national convention, the South will produce the presidential candidate and vice versa. Whichever way the pendulum swings, the question of where the next president of the country will come from will definitely inundate most political debates this year and greatly shape politics in the country.
The 9th NASS’s enchanting affair with the executive
In an ideal democratic dispensation, the legislature, aside being saddled with the sole responsibility of making laws, is expected to monitor and check the activities of the executive arm of the government. The legislators are expected to move against the excesses of the executives within the confines of the constitution. But since the leadership of Senator Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila came on board, the National Assembly under their watch has befriended the President Buhari-led executive arm much to the discomfort of many Nigerians.
As a way of officially announcing the seemingly love affair between the 9th Assembly and the executive, the Senate President, Lawan, recently said: “I want to assure you that any request that comes from Mr. President is a request that will make Nigeria a better place in terms of appointments or legislation. When such a request comes, the Senate will act expeditiously to ensure that we play our part in the confirmation or passing of legislation appropriately”.
To political observers, Lawan’s statement, in no small measure, depicts the 9th assembly as mere rubberstamp through which the whims of the executive will be tolerated and approved whether or not they align with the interests of Nigerians or not.
Even recently, when the House of Representatives, in its efforts to find lasting answers to the country’s festering security crisis, invited President Buhari to its plenary, which the president did not honour, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, (SAN), said NASS lacked the powers to summon the president over the operations of the Armed Forces. While the issues of insecurity is still dogging the country and will likely dominate most political reports this year, the intimacy between NASS and Buhari’s executive will still dominate discourse this new year.
YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
Why Sanusi Was My Choice As Emir Of Kano ― Kwankwaso
Former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has defended his choice of former Governor of Central Bank, Muhammad Sanusi II, as the Emir of Kano.Incumbent Kano State governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, at a…
Apple Goes Into Car Production
Tech giant, Apple, makers of iPhone, MacBook, and other high-end gadgets has decided to expand its business by going into the production of self-driving cars with high-performance batteries by 2024…
Kano Youth, 23 Years, Marries 46-Year-Old American Mother
A Kano youth, Suleiman Isah Isah, 23 years, of Panshekara in Kano metropolis has married his heartthrob, Janine Sanchezt, a 46-year-old American mother…
After Two Years, Daddy Freeze Apologises To Bishop Oyedepo
Daddy Freeze whose real name is Ifedayo Olarinde has apologised to Bishop Oyedepo who is the presiding bishop and founder of Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel…
and then