Frankly, Timi Frank

FOR reasons best known to the troubled ruling APC, it decided to cure the Timi Frank gaping sore when already gangrenous. Prescription for that belated cure points at a major surgery but those pushing to cut him and the political interests he represents off, would soon find out that final-stage cancer requires more than just excising the excess. The cancerous opening which Timi Frank grudge crusade symbolises in the party’s top echelon is a complicated one, which has progressed to the soul of the party. If the surgery primed to contain it is not handled with utmost care, the Union won’t survive it.

In a political party of ethos, Frank, APC’s interim spokesperson, should be in the lurch long before now. But is there any semblance of such in what is constantly playing out as partisan interests struggle to own what should be a commonwealth? If any other shenanigans aren’t in the public domain, the simple issue of transition when Alhaji Lai Mohammed moved on as Minister of Information is telling enough to know all could not have been well with a leadership who would prefer a vacuum to promoting a deputy to a vacancy up his level. Stopping Frank from succeeding Lai was a major misstep for those who currently own the party. If you so brazenly tell a man he isn’t wanted, you should not expect him not to whistle to outsiders.

But those who worked and still working against his ascendancy and by extension, the promotion of his patrons and their political interests, can feel justified with the way Timi Frank has almost turned his protestation to the hilarious Frank Donga show. One major weapon his traducers are said to be using effectively in keeping him marooned is his perceived lack of maturity in handling the delicate job of speaking for the ruling party and by extension, the government at the centre.

Such an argument can be won or lost, depending on the carriage of the subject matter. Since discretion should ordinarily be a major part of the job, it would be difficult for anyone to recommend Frank. But the job is largely tucked under a supervisory structure of the highest decision-making organ of the party, which would even make a more extreme form of Frank suitable for it. It means the problem with Frank isn’t about him and his tempestuous idiosyncrasy, but the political interests he perceivably serves.

In the heat of certain political claims in President Muhammadu Buhari’s contentious biography, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo helped the nation in working out the arithmetic of godfatherism, without offending contending forces. “Someone, somewhere must nominate you.”

Someone, or somemany (my neologism) got the youthful Frank the job on the National Working Committee of a party that came into being as government-in-waiting. His travails are primarily tied to the “somewhere” his nomination came from but he has run the errands so badly that his own may have to think twice before giving him another opportunity elsewhere.

The comportment of Frank at the party secretariat, as known to almost everyone and how he goes about airing his insatiable grievances with loaded gun, firing at targets, particularly the national chairman, former governor John Odigie-Oyegun, with reckless abandon, is bringing misery to the party no doubt, but nearly all the corollary damages are his. Who would ever trust a likely inheritor who keeps open the door for the enemy because he feels cheated? Not even those egging him on, would trust him again, because he has, without knowing, told even his backers how damaging he could be when offended. Are there politicians who don’t offend one another, even as allies?

Timi is very much likely to get the boot, though his exit won’t close the pits in the party. With his public campaign against Oyegun and his team, becoming more strident, it would be foolhardy for the chairman who is obviously in the good books of Buhari, the real leader of the party, to help keep someone worse than a mole in the national leadership where crucial decisions regarding 2019 would soon unfold.

Timi has not proved to be a system person. The head is the head, though such head can be challenged if shaking and shaken anyhow. Oyegun is a politician and regardless of his much-vaunted credibility, his head couldn’t have straightened all these years in the saddle as the chairman. There have been open accusations of the pecuniary overriding larger party interest against him. His denial doesn’t translate into acquittal. Frank has obviously not delivered well on his crusade but the troubling issues are too visible to be denied. APC can throw the baby away, but the bath-water is going to be useful in this circumstance. The cleansing can start with it if the leadership is discerning enough. It could also be the tributary of the river that would wash APC away in 2019.

 

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Hello Lanre, you are wonderful. I don’t miss your write-up. It is always intellectually sound. You can however in the interest of your teeming readers and fans, make it more lucid and less of big grammar so as not make yourself another Wole Soyinka who mostly writes to communicate to himself alone. Thanks. Segun 07082412844.

I read your piece “Mummy G.O’s and Aisha Buhari’s tears. It is absurd for our president to have qualified his wife with these words (she belongs to my kitchen and bedroom). With this, he is saying women are servants. Is it because of same position Islam and Hausa men have put them? Such statement constitutes an embarrassment to the women of the 21st century where his guest in Germany is a woman. His statement is unfit for a president. Wale Okekunjo, from Saki. 08028101629.