PRESIDENCY’S POCKETS OF POWER AND THE INTERNECINE WAR IN APC – Magnus Onyibe

November 2, 2017 Greg Abolo

The Oasis Reporters

Thursday, November 2, 2017

There is a buzz about the internal strife that has recently been bedeviling Aso Rock villa like a ghost.

It is based on the belief that there are numerous pockets of power in the presidency, which like a constellation of stars revolving around the moon seeking to overshadow one another, have in the process created chaos, serious enough to trigger the leadership cataclysm currently besetting Nigeria.

By tugging at each other’s throats, the different power blocks in the seat of power are believed to be working at cross purposes and for selfish interests which do not augur well for effective governance hence the alarming incidents of corruption allegedly surrounding the presidency.

The recent incidents of corruption allegations against Abdulrasheed Maina, the pension czar or felon as the case may be and the accusation of the Attorney General, Abubakar Malami and Internal Affairs minister, Abdulrahman Danbazau as being complicit in the illegal reinstatement of Maina into the public service from which he was sacked and declared wanted by relevant anti corruption agencies, is the latest of the litany of corruption charges being levied against the presidency.

More specifically, the fact that the Directorate of State Services, DSS, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, National Intelligence Agency, NIA, which have direct reporting lines to President Muhamadu Buhari are investigating each other and presenting damning reports against one another to both Mr. President and the National Assembly, NASS, are very disturbing and ominous trend of events that affirm that there may be trouble in Aso Rock villa.

Amongst other concerns, the frosty relationship between the security agencies clearly reflect and reinforce the wise crack ” A house divided against itself cannot stand”.

The decay in Aso Rock is so much that even the situation in the State House clinic , which is supposed to be an elite medical facility, had no basic supplies like syringes,while new structures were being constructed, symbolizing the level of sleaze in the presidential villa.

The abysmal situation prompted the amiable and truth-be-told First Lady Aisha Buhari and her daughter, Zhara to bring to public attention the embarrassing state of State House clinic.

Another fall out of the Aso Rock Villa ‘internecine war’ is the much awaited confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as the substantive chairman of the EFCC which is still in abeyance, just as the ownership of N25b found in Foreshore Towers, Ikoyi, lagos( NIA ‘safe house’) is yet to be established and the fate of the suspended pair of Secretary to Federal Government , Babachir Lawal and Directot General of NIA, Dele Oke, remained in limbo until they were fired from office two days ago.

Worryingly, the foregoing are immutable evidence of a highly fractured national security architecture and perhaps a troubled presidency.

Unsurprisingly, the apparent fiasco in the seat of power is of dire concern to watchers of power and politics in Nigeria who owing to the sordid development are horrified and aghast.

And obviously, it is also a vulnerability which the opponents of the government in power are capitalizing on.

Conventionally, all state security agencies are supposed to be pulling resources (men and materials) together towards achieving a common objective of promoting national security, strengthening stability internally, while projecting strength externally.

But evidence in the public arena indicates that the nation’s security apparatchik may be working at cross purposes as it is evidently deeply fractured.

Until the public spat between the three crime prevention, enforcement and management agencies erupted, nobody really knew how disjointed command and control had become in the presidency which the average Nigerian regards as paradise where nothing goes wrong .

And as the popular saying goes ‘the fish starts rotting from the head’.
If Nigeria were a fish, Aso Rock would be the head.
Given all the sleaze and scandal about corruption swirling around the Aso Rock villa which are in the public arena, Nigeria’s seat of power may, as alleged, be rotten and stinking to high heavens.

To make matters worse, it is cold comfort that the schism in the presidency appears to be cascading down into the wider polity as reflected in the ‘civil war’ in the All Progressive Party, APC which is the ruling party.

A strong evidence of the unfurling ‘rumble in the jungle’ in the APC (remember the famous boxing duel between Mohamed Ali and George Foreman in 1974 in Zaire, Congo) is a very ominous post that l recently received through the social media.

And it goes thus: “The War Keeps spreading: Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, NBC Shuts down Radio Continental Owned By Bola Tinubu.”

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing Oando, an oil company owned and run by Wale Tinubu, a cousin of former Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State.

The War is Spreading from Saraki to Atiku to Tinubu…and the cookies are crumbling…”

Although it is considered a conspiracy theory as it is not factual, it struck a chord in me such that l could not resist sharing it on this platform for whatever it may be worth.

Now, it is the nature of politics that people would input sinister motives into actions that may be unconnected and without malice.

But given the prevailing volatile political atmosphere as 2019 general elections approaches , I did not have to scratch my head for long to figure out that the comment must be a political Jab at APC by probably its arch rival, the PDP.
After all, it is such cloak and dagger nature of politics that earns it the ugly appellation of being a dirty game.

In any case, the struggle for power between the 5 political parties that dissolved into APC reminds of late Bola lge’s ascetic comment about the five fingers of a leprous hand when parties were being formed under General Sanni Abacha’s watch in 1996.

After President Buhari was sworn into office on May 29th 2015, the next line of action which was the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly, NASS provided the opportunity to cascade political power down the ladder.

Being a party that is formed by five distinctive parties with diametrically opposing philosophies which were subsumed by the common goal of supplanting the PDP and particularly then President Goodluck Jonathan, it’s not surprising that APC has become a cauldron of sorts.

Against the grain of thought of the party leadership , Bukola Saraki became the Senate President in what can best be described as a coup d’etat of some sort in the Red chamber, just as against the run of play, Yakubu Dogara also assumed the speakership position in the Green chamber in a putsch similar to the one in the senate.

The drama that followed that disruption of the party proposed power matrix are stuff for nollywood movies and does not deserve being mentioned here.

But suffice it to say that trying to reverse the decision of the legislators who exercised their free will to choose their leaders is an equivalent of the grave mistake which the former ruling party, the PDP made when it recognized then plateau state Governor Jona Jang who garnered less votes than Rotimi Amaechi, then governor of Rivers state, when both contested for the chairmanship of the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF.

That glaring assault on the fundamental principle of democracy which is that majority carries the vote, remained a fault line until the eventual break-up and dethronement of the PDP as the ruling party.

As soon as Saraki outwitted the APC leadership by defeating the party’s anointed candidate as senate president, he became marked down for political assassination. But being a man with uncanny mettle, Saraki survived the multiple charges of corruption leveled against him.

As such, the noose that was intended to take him to political gallows, as a conviction would have compelled him to resign, failed to snap.

That the political actors who appeared to have looked on askance or even tacitly or openly supported the pummeling of Saraki by the powers that be, are today victims of similar political chicanery, is remarkably a veritable case study for students of politics.

It is indeed a perfect example of the chicken coming home to roost or what goes around, comes around.

And it calls to mind the very instructive lamentation of Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor (1892-1984) about the events that preceded the German holocaust. He wrote:

“First they came for the Communists.

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists.

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists.

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews.

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.