Fresh indications to this effect emerged, last Thursday, when rather than show intents of reconciliation with a view to mending the widening cracks, they resorted to digging deeper into their positions and literally dar¬ing each other.
And this is without recourse to the belated assurances of acceptance of and co-opera¬tion with the new leadership of the National Assembly by the top party leadership last Friday.
The u-turn was indeed timely and dra¬matic as a little delay would have spiralled the crises out of control, given the dramatis personae involved and the direction it was headed.
Another source of discomfort came from President Muhammadu Buhari who was un¬comfortable with the developments, and was determined to halt it, before it wreaks more havoc on the party and his government. A third jolt that nipped the obstinacy of the party leadership in the bud was the compre¬hensive endorsement a crucial section of the international community showered on the new National Assembly leadership.
Although it took the All Progressives Congress (APC) three days to formally ac¬knowledge the election which produced Bu¬kola Saraki as Senate President on Tuesday, June 9, as valid, the party is still seething with rage.
It was gathered that the party appa¬ratchiks are angry with Saraki for allowing Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu to return to office, despite having a majority in the Red Chamber.
The party’s anger is three-fold: Emer¬gence of a member of the Peoples Demo¬cratic Party (PDP), Ike Ekweremadu, as a principal officer and secondly, with Ekwere¬madu as deputy, PDP would have a foothold and have unhindered access to party affairs. Thirdly, Ekweremadu just ended a four-year tenure as Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament and may likely return to office; an opportu¬nity craved by the APC.
With his return to office for a record third time, “the APC sees that opportunity slipping out of its fingers. George Akume would have been supported to emerge as Ekweremadu’s successor…” .
The APC is reportedly miffed that al¬though Saraki defied the party’s position of Saturday, June 6 on Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan after the mock poll returned him as the sole candidate for the office of Senate President and George Akume as his deputy, “he went into a private arrangement with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to canvass for votes. That private arrange¬ment meant conceding the deputy slot to the PDP.”
Besides, the APC is also angry that, rather than Saraki going into the arrangement with the PDP, “even if there was to be any agree¬ment, it should have been between the two parties.
No individual is authorized to enter into such agreement, particularly with regards to such high office.”
The source made reference to the coalition between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats in the 2011 polls in the United Kingdom. “David Cameron did not ini¬tiate the coalition as an indi¬vidual. The party did with the Liberal Democrats and that was why Cameron and Nick Clegg worked harmoniously together.”
If the UK envoy had not visited Saraki last Friday, the initial plan, it was learnt, was to suspend Saraki alongside the APC senators who participated in the Tuesday election, woo about 15 PDP senators with “welfare and promises of juicy committees,” return to the floor and conduct a fresh election for the office of Senate President and deputy.
The outcome would have been for the APC to fill the two positions.
Unlike the Senate, the party’s anger against the emergence of Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives somewhat dissipated because “he outsmarted the PDP in choosing his deputy. The same arrangement that played out in the Senate was to have played out in the House.
“The plan was jettisoned because the initial arrange¬ment was to nominate Hon. Leo Ogor as his deputy. With the nomination of Hon. Lasun Yusuf, Ogor pulled out…”
The party was somewhat pacified that the APC still has a grip of the lower chamber.
Regardless, fresh facts also indicated at the weekend that, but for the visit of the Brit¬ish High Commissioner, Dr. Andrew Pocock to Saraki last Friday, some leaders of the party, were considering “severe sanctions” against him and the senators who participated in the Tuesday election on the floor of the Senate.
Besides, such sanctions were also being considered against former vice president Atiku Abubakar, it was learnt. “The visit of Pocock, in company with the DFID, immediately al¬tered the equation and the party had no choice but to recognize Saraki’s Senate Presidency.”
Attention is gradually shift¬ing to tussles on how to fill the remaining four leadership positions traditionally reserved for the majority party in the Senate.
With the emergence of the Senate president and his deputy, four positions are still vacant: Senate majority leader, deputy, chief whip and deputy.
The APC, it was gathered at the weekend, is insisting that it fills the slot of Senate major¬ity leader “with the candidate coming from the camp of the Unity Forum loyal to Sena¬tor Lawan.” Top contenders in the race to produce the Senate Leader are from the North-west, North-east and South-west.
However, despite the façade of peace hanging over the party with the u-turn, all is still not well as fresh plots and counter plots are being hatched.
The party hierarchy had in the wake of the emergence of the new National Assembly leaderships threatened to in¬voke relevant sections of the party’s constitution to deal with the errant lawmakers and re¬store discipline and the sanctity of order in the party.
Instead of being calmed by the threat, which came through an official statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and other unofficial sources includ¬ing comments credited to one of the principal actors and ac¬claimed National Leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, they may have inad¬vertently poked a stick to the ravaging cancer, and letting off more storm.
It was learnt that although wise counsels prevailed in the immediate meting out of sanctions, and the change of mind, a counter plot by the threatened camp is fast brewing, and would ulti¬mately test the soul of the party.
The plot, which has been incubating since the victory of the party in the last March 28 presidential and National Assembly elections, is set to take a dangerous bend “if the successes recorded must be consolidated,” Sunday sun was told. The target of the plot which is designed to take the wind out of their sails are some key members of the National Executive Committee of the party which came into being at the party’s national convention in Lagos last year. A member of the House of Representa¬tives and core supporter of Speaker Yakubu Dogara, who preferred not to be named, con¬fided in Sunday Sun that the move was necessary “to con¬solidate on the recent gains and stabilize President Muhamma¬du Buhari’s government.”
The game plan, according to him, is to initiate certain mea¬sures and calls for the conven¬ing of a post-election national convention of the party on or before the end of September to among other things review the performance of the party in the election, examine and ratify its finances, and receive reports from the various organs of the party and take appropriate deci¬sions and or recommendations. The convoking of the national convention, it was learnt, is a subterranean move to effect a leadership change at the party level. Article 13(1) of the APC constitution says that, “The fi¬nal authority of the party shall rest with the National Con¬vention which shall have the powers to elect or remove the national officers of the party, receive reports from the Na-tional Executive Committee and from any other committee and, or organ of the party and take appropriate decisions on the reports and or recommen¬dations.”
The group, according to Sunday Sun’s findings, is hamstrung by section 13.3 of the party’s constitution which stipulates that “the National Executive Committee is to summon or convene the Na¬tional Convention and prepare its agenda.”
This provision has, how¬ever, not imposed restrictions on the move as they mull over loopholes to be exploited to stay afloat. Section 17(2) of the same constitution provides that “subject to ratification by the National Convention or congress, an officer shall be relieved of his post at any time if a vote of ‘no confidence is passed on him by two thirds of members of the relevant party organ.”
The source who highlighted this section emphasized that no effort would be spared to legal¬ly and constitutionally counter the moves to sanction them for the roles they played in throw¬ing up the new leadership in both arms of the National As¬sembly. On the proposed sanc¬tions on the legislators accused of anti-party activities, it was learnt that the processes were already in place and would have been given vent “within a week”, if not for the change of heart. In line with the relevant section of the constitution, a formal complaint has been re¬ceived on the incident of June 9 and a fact-finding committee would have been empanelled within seven days. The Sen¬ate president who was billed to meet with the leadership of the party at the national secre¬tariat of the party last Thursday pulled out at the last minute without offering reasons. It was, however, learnt that his decision was informed by re¬ports and suspicions of a well laid out ambush, which his supporters considered inclem¬ent and embarrassing. Added to this was the effusive and de¬fiant statements credited to Lai Mohammed, vowing that there would be no mercy for the ‘reb¬els’ and that due constitutional procedures would be employed in meting out sanctions.
The statement came on the heels of feelers that suggested that the party leaders were not predisposed to a peaceful reso¬lution of the logjam. But while the general belief has been that the trouble in the party emanat¬ed on the wings of the various blocs or parties that merged to form the APC, Sunday Sun sourced that the coloration in the unfolding cauldron is tend¬ing towards ethno-hegemony. Revelations on this became clearer in the week following massive celebrations in some political quarters of a brilliant ‘capture’ of the three arms of government by a particular eth¬nic group in a fell swoop in this dispensation. Recent events in the legislative arm of govern¬ment, which saw the ascen¬sion of two Fulani presiding over both the lower and upper chambers complemented their leadership of the executive and the judiciary. This realization is believed to have fuelled the resolve and determination of some leaders of the party to re¬verse the leadership of the Na-tional Assembly “at all costs.”
A former member of the House of Representatives, Uche Onyeagocha observed that the direction and nature of the growing rift has taken the shine off the excitement that greeted the change of government on March 28. He expressed the view that though he sensed that the rainbow co¬alition would eventually come to harm, if not handled with the sensitivity it deserves, he, like many others did not expect it would come too soon.
Onyeagocha, who was the senatorial candidate of the APC for Owerri in the last elections, blamed the impasse on the scrapping of the zoning princi¬ple midway. According to him, the jettisoning of zoning in the sharing of offices negates fair¬ness and equity in a complex federal set up.
He said: “The cause of the whole mess is because some people woke up and ruled that there will be no more zon¬ing. Then if you say there is no more zoning, how come nobody from the North-west which has the highest number of senators ran for the seat of Senate president? Again, this issue of ranking in the National Assembly, which prohibits new members from running for a principal office is wrong and illegal. It is also done in contempt of court, because in 2003, I went to court to chal¬lenge it and won, and the judg¬ment delivered by an Abuja High Court is subsisting.” He vowed to return to court and bring contempt proceedings against the Clerk of the Na¬tional Assembly. He expressed optimism that the crises will be resolved amicably.
He called for a more bal¬ancing of positions that will take care of all the geo-polit¬ical zones to stave off further troubles and instill confidence in the process of governance across all the entities in the nation. Similarly, a leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South-west, Chief Ebenezer Babatope expressed misgivings that some lead¬ers who are now crying foul went into the rainbow coali¬tion “blindfolded”, warning that the worst is yet to come. “They showed extreme naive¬ty. The arithmetic was not fully worked out before they put their all in the arrangement and flowed with the excitement. He averred that the Northern es¬tablishment would most likely resist the planned move to pun¬ish those implicated in what has generally been referred to as ‘coup’ in the National As¬sembly. Babatope, who was a former aviation minister, however, said he and his party were not interested in “Fulani hegemony. It is coincidental. Nobody planned it conscious¬ly, but since it has happened, it should be accepted in the interest of peace, progress, and unity of the country,” he said.
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