Two weeks back when I heard from a very dependable source that those seeking the back of APC national chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, wanted the national secretary, Otunba Iyiola Omisore, thrown into the bargain, for ethnic, religious and caucus balancing, I reached out to a strongman of the party, who should know. He told me all was well and all attention, was on winning the presidency next year. Though I believed him, he didn’t sound too convincing. But I let it slide as Americans will say, when certain that hell being smothered, is about bursting at the seams. The party top dog was however certain about a thing; the camp of the presidential candidate, which didn’t and still doesn’t want Adamu, the acknowledged mago (Spanish word for wizard) of Nasarawa, too intimate, with the campaign project, would not be sandbagging unwanted party leaders, until the election is won and lost. The very senior party leader got the call wrong.
Even a political starter should know that since Tinubu and Adamu are practically one of same, with brittle ego and conquistador disposition to power, they won’t last together, regardless of their pretension to post-presidential primary Bro Code. Electrical experts will classify the circumstances forcing them to work together, as connecting negative-negative.
I sought more explanation on online search engine. The verdict was; “When two negatively charged objects are brought near each other, a repulsive force is produced. When two positively charged objects are brought near each other, a similar repulsive force is produced. When a negatively charged object is brought near a positively charged object, an attractive force is produced.”
That means even the best of their personalities, which would qualify for positive-positive, won’t still work and the party, when it is ready to face the reality confronting it, beyond the jejune disavowal of Adamu’s (draft?) letter to Asiwaju, should brace itself for more sparks, especially when the rough relational between the duo before the consensus fiasco, is added to the equation. If Adamu had his way, Tinubu would have been toast since the infamous Abeokuta Outburst/Declaration which brought coinages like emilokan, Buhari o’lule, e gbe kini yi wa and eleyi of Ogun State, into Nigeria’s campaign playbook.
Somehow, Buhari preserved Tinubu’s aspiration, disregarding his kitchen cabinet’s pressure to end the former governor’s presidential run on the platform of the ruling party, once and for all. Only the President, who had the leverage and would have succeeded if he ventured, considering earlier wins in party supremacy battles against Tinubu, can explain why he didn’t stop the unwanted candidate when he was just a frontline aspirant. I suspect, he has some soft spot for Asiwaju, despite his rumoured revulsion for his politics and unexplainable but undeniable wealth and didn’t want to hurt him beyond redemption by cutting his aspiration short on the surest platform to Villa. Or maybe the President thought that as president, he could stop Asiwaju at any point in the contest. How wrong he was!
With Vee Pee Osinbajo largely seen as Asiwaju’s real contest in the primary and the President already knowing he had no use for the two Yoruba leading aspirants, he possibly thought they would cancel each other’s out and his preferred Yobe boy, would sail to victory. Again, he thought wrong. Maybe, if he had even settled for his “son” from Rivers, and genuinely backed him all the way, there probably won’t be this head-scratching moment for him, as the power behind Adamu’s throne.
But wait, is Adamu sincerely expecting Tinubu, to put him and his “NWC”, in charge of a campaign they never wished would be? While it is expected that the emergence of a winner should close up all the fissures, no doubt, the doubts will linger. Have the players not come to accept politics as a dirty game, where betrayal is common place and almost an acknowledgement of being sagacious! Did the money-distributing national chair of PDP not exuberantly hail Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal as the hero of the opposition’s presidential primary because he, again, betrayed a Southerner in Nyesom Wike of Rivers, who resolutely stood by him (Tambuwal) against Atiku in the race for PDP ticket in the 2019 contest?
Tambuwal is fast becoming a study in political perfidy, especially in dealings with Southern politicians who showed up for him in hours of need, at one point or the other. When Tinubu political family expected him to come through for Femi Gbajabiamila in the speakership race against Yakubu Dogara in 2015, after practically ensuring his own speakership in 2011, he, being a Northern Muslim, dumped religion for region and supported a minority Northern Christian against an equally-minority Southern Muslim. Dumping Wike for Atiku is also all about the North for him. The clamour for youthful dynamism and vibrancy in Aso Rock, became a casualty. Hopefully, the ex-Speaker and about-to-be ex-Governor, won’t be needing Southern support anytime soon.
Treachery can be difficult to forget. It is going to be difficult for Tinubu and his loyalists from the South, to surrender critical campaign assignments to Adamu and his anti-Southern President co-voyagers in the NWC. But Asiwaju would be making a grave error, losing his loyalists in the NWC, to the emerging class-action, being spearheaded by the chairman. They were in the trenches with him, when the battle was tough and rough. Leaving them out now, simply because they are part of the Adamu NWC, is tantamount to political suicide.
That harakiri is gradually emerging, with credible reports that when it is time to drain Adamu, there would be collateral damage, in form of those who assisted him, to foil the Buhari/Adamu/Lawan North’s elongation coup. Well, many may argue that it is some kind of exigency that comes with the territory. But it won’t bode well for the candidate.
Already, there is a growing concern he doesn’t count genuine observations/complaints from people around him, for much, until they sting him. People in his inner circle claimed that his erstwhile lieutenant, Rauf Aregbesola, privately pleaded with him, for close to two years, to intervene in the crisis of confidence between him and the now-defeated governor, Gboyega Oyetola, but Tinubu won’t budge. When Aregbesola eventually went public, he had his former leader’s attention. Similar situations reportedly played out in his relationship with MuizBanire and others, who he is now doing everything to woo back into the Lagos ruling establishment, possibly to further enhance the planned harvest of four million votes, from the state alone. Even the perceived fire-brand; Fouad Oki, who became the face of anti-Tinubu in Lagos, has now been harvested into the fold.
So much for not acting at the right time and allowing sores to fester. Yoruba will describe it as an ailing man who is forced to do more than required to be healed, because he won’t do the needful when necessary.
Adamu’s “draft” letter (APC isn’t even serious trying to explain the protest document as a draft), is a pointer to the future of the party, in which Tinubu is expected to play a significant role, shaping it, whether he wins or not. While mischief may not be divorced from the class-action from the NWC, the fact that other critical stakeholders like the party’s governors, are also complaining, says a lot about how the new leader of the party, would likely steer the ship in the next four years and more worrisome is his very much-likely presidency, resembling the party he is currently tendering.
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