Between Awolowo’s 1951 and Towards Asiwaju’s 2015 Political Party Harlotry THE APC CONSPIRACY AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM Patriot Chike Ofili 1947… I won the Lagos municipal election… Towards the end of 1951 I stood for another election, this time to the Western House Assembly, as a representative of Lagos, and I topped the poll. The NCNC was under the impression that it had won the election with 43 members out of 80. As it turned out, 20 of the legislators who were known or regarded as NCNC members or supporters or sympathizers decided to align with another party [Awolowo led Action Group] Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, leader of the NCNC in his autobiography, My Odyssey, (1970: 303-4) The people of the Western region may be divided roughly into two groups: the Yoruba and the non-Yoruba… a large number of them were members and supporters of the NCNC at the time we took office. As a matter of fact, I held the view that if in 1951 the NCNC had been well-organised in the rural areas as we were, it would have stood a good chance of winning the elections… of the twenty members who were elected there in 1951 only four were members of the Action Group; and even these four were elected on their own personal merit rather than… the Action Group policy or leadership.’’ Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of Action Group in his autobiography, Awo, (1960:261) Aborters of Our Political Paths and Platforms to Greatness OF THE VIRAL POLITICAL GENES OF THE TWO-THIRD MAJORITY From the manifest territorial behaviours of Sir Ahmadu Bello and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the psychological twin destiny drivers that formed the two-third of geographical Nigeria were mental and physical territorialists that could not cross borders away from theirs; neither could they make their followers and those after them also to. The ethnic and regional routes taken in the formation of their political parties also attest to this. While Sardauna Bello and the vast North could be forgiven for being deliberately shielded away by the British from tasting political experience since they were more degraded by being ruled through proclamations without participation as the South was not until 1947 when the North and the South were brought together by the British in a political national wedlock. Even their leading political party, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was said to be largely formed for them by the British since the same British ensured that the few northern sons in Lagos with a good dose of Lagos politics from the Nigerian Youth Movement days, the Herbert Macaulay Lagos nationalism and the pan-Nigerian Azikiwe nationalist era of the NCNC influences on the likes of Mallam Sa’ad Zunguru who attempted to take same up north were stopped and persecuted through a combined collaboration of British and feudal joint task force to prevent the North from having a southern contamination. The same cannot be said of Awolowo who was part of the Nigerian Youth Movement as an active fringe player and not in its to leadership, who failed at his attempt to revive it at the departure of Azikiwe who had come from America to be the spirit of the movement, making it to win elections from the dominant and dominating influence of Herbert Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party NNDP) after what Zik felt he suffered at the hands of H.O Davies a pioneer member and a leader of NYM and Awolowo his boy at the time. Both were to fail in their attempt to resuscitate this youth party with a substantial national influence that was not nationwide just as Macaulay’s party was no more than a Lagos operation that was speaking for the country. When Davies an arch Lagosian came back from the UK in 1947 to apply the same 1937 magic of Azikiwe to the same party, Awolowo recounted that ‘’When Chief H.O Davies returned to the country in 1947, he made every effort to resuscitate the Youth Movement’’ (Awo, 1960:159). He too like Awolowo failed to achieve a rejuvenation of a national Party. In all of his differences with Zik, Davies a frontline Yoruba leader whom Awolowo credited with writing the constitution of the Nigerian Youth movement, joined the Azikiwe later when Zik in 1944 formed the National Council for Nigeria and Cameroon, NCNC to give cover to all the geographical space that constituted Nigeria then. Awolowo noted that Davies remained ‘’a faithful follower of the NCNC’’ (Awo, 1960:220) HOW AWOLOWO DE-NIGERIANISED THE YORUBA But Awolowo chose to be a challenger of his leaders and mentors by another method. Having failed to revive the National Youth Movement, and having betrayed the other national project that became a party, National Emergency Movement (NEC) where ’’I was one of the founders of the NEC in 1949, a member of its Central Executive and the Chairman of its Ibadan branch. The NEC embraced all the nationalists in Southern Nigeria. When it was founded Dr. Azikiwe was was away from the country. But the organization died soon after his return’’ (Awo, 1960:220) Yet the same Awolowo wrote, When the idea of starting a new party occurred to me in 1949’’ in the same year he was in NEC? Halfheartedly perhaps! This, more than the dread of the Zik national influence and skillful newspapering propaganda that Awolowo ascribed it all to could explain the failure of the new national project after the demise of NYM killed by Yoruba intra-ethnic politics which Zik came against with all he had. In Awolowo’s clandestine operation of holding that post and holding meetings at the same time to form what was to become Action Group; a party that he formed decidedly and strictly from his ethnic stock using the available platform of the Yoruba descendants’ Society called Egbe Omo Oduduwa. It was his justification after failing in two national oriented project that ‘’After the Ikoli/Akisanya crisis of 1941[in the Nigerian Youth movement wherein Azikiwe backed Akisanya for being discriminated against by other Yoruba because he was of the Yoruba-Ijebu stock] I lost complete touch] with my few Ibo friends and colleagues: they regarded me with suspicion and I found it hard to trust them either. Furthermore, because I had dared to criticize Dr. Azikiwe publicly, I had incurred the ire of many an Easterner. At that time too I knew very little of the Northern Region and its politician… I thought it wise to confine the activities of the Action Group to the Western Region until success had been achieved at the ensuing regional elections’’ (Awo, 1960:248). Apart from keeping things among his stock by the subtraction of others who don’t belong in it or who belong but may pose a threat to his leadership, secrecy of operation was another of Awolowo’s political methodology. “Having eliminated all existing organizations,…I stressed that any new party under which I would be prepared to work and serve must place a premium on action rather than words... I thought three things were indispensable to the success of the new venture. The first was … action…. The second prerequisite was that there should be discipline, and consensus of minds on fundamental principles….The third was secrecy… from Dr. Azikiwe… in view of the existing political situation, it would have been crass folly for me to bring leaders of the other Regions into the fold of the Action Group at the early stages. Immediate success was essential to the survival of the new party’’ (Awo, 247-8). It was this same short cut that led to the clandestine ploy of having Yoruba members of the NCNC shifting allegiance to AG when they were known and thought to be NCNC members as Zik wrote: ‘’The NCNC was under the impression that it had won the election with 43 members out of 80. As it turned out, 20 of the legislators who were known or regarded as NCNC members or supporters or sympathizers decided to align with another party[Action Group]’’ (Zik, 1970:304). HOW AWOLOWO WAS CAUGHT IN HIS SHORT CUT BENEFIT This same short cut method to short term benefit was to become Awolowo’s beast of burden that dug his political career. ‘’ Several accusations have been leveled against the Action Group: that it is a Yoruba organization and an offshoot of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa; that it is a party with a western regional outlook and following; and that it is a party which does not believe in the unity of Nigeria. Many overseas journalists and visitors have been made innocent purveyors of these accusations’’ (Awo, 1960:247). But much worse than that was that it tragically shifted the political vision of the Yoruba that was already mired in intra ethnic and territorial Lagos limitedness to the new Azikiwe effort at broadening it for a national vision through the leadership of its very best in the NCNC, Awolowo reverted back into its self-introspection in pursuit of a personal assertiveness and ambition for a place among his own and in the nation. The Yoruba have never been able to play national politics since until the recent conspiracy called democracy that Bola Tinubu’s APC is galvanizing them towards today. The only beauty of it being that Awolowo proved the possibility of founding a brand new political party as an underdog, a light weight challenger that made some resounding success with a strong implication of de-Nigerianising the Yoruba as ‘’One North, One People’’ de-Nigerianised the vast half of the nation upward. Thus setting the foundation for a country without citizens, a nation without nationals, and a people without patriots to create common spaces. Nigerians thus become a ‘’beast of no nation’’ as Fela would later sing. Yet even beasts have their homes as foxes have holes and birds of the air have their nests, but the people of Nigeria have no place to jointly lay their heads. So they, Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello could not have handshakes across the country like the Cross country Transport Company. They showed capacity only for intra-ethnic and intra-regional service. The only one among them, the nation’s official Father of the nation, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who saw shared and mutual possibilities and worked hard for them, coming from America where territories of diverse peoples were wed into one, who thought Nigerians to even see themselves as Pan-Africanists, was crowded out by territorial spirits who could only be at home only on their own turf; in a two-to-one ouster; in a two-third majority upset. Caught in the middle, they made the American-made pan-Africanist among them who was more exposed, experienced, ahead of them, and the political inspiration of the other frontline drivers of destinies, they made him a constant settler of their differences till they virtually compromised him and his nobler vision; making him a compromiser from constantly finding a middle ground between a rock and a hard place of hard-headed territorialist politics. This marked the birth and spread of the dominant un-Nigerian political gene that has dominated and characterised our national life and politics. PRESIDENT JONATHAN THE NEW AZIKIWE CAUGHT IN THEIR MIDDLE In fact it could be said that President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, an Ijaw minority from the Niger Delta, just as the man after whom his grandmother named him like many people inspired by Dr. Azikiwe’s nationalist example. They are fighting again as they did Zik, as the political gene of their political fathers compel them against this new Azikiwe. Here is a new man with a capacity to hold a common, middle ground in President Jonathan; a non-Igbo Azikiwe of the Ijaw stock; is fortunately getting the Igbo support. Only that this time, Dr. Jonathan has the bigger misfortune of a conspiring confederacy of former foes coming at him and Nigeria to take away the centre by violent political force. Though the Party leader of the North, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello and the Party leader of Western Nigeria were incompatible similars beyond their shared flowing gown called Agbada or Babaringa, they were sworn enemies in their extremity of style. While Awolowo had the fanaticism of Socialism, Sardauna had the jihadist extremism of Arab influenced Fulani Islam. Awolowo who could not brook the Sardauna and the politics of the North even with their well-known historical disadvantage that is not their making, held this view against all entreaties by other political players: ‘’The case of the NCNC and the plea of British officials were that we should take it easy with the NPC leaders. I thought this was a mistaken policy. Those who must aspire to political leadership must on no account be sheltered from hard knocks which a political career in a democracy inevitably entails’’ (Awo, 1960: 253). Today, their political kindred have taken over their bloods. Extremism of action remains a constant on both sides. There is however a new fusion taking place across religious lines between the Yoruba Muslim West and the northern Islamic belt to politically forge together and produce what we hope is not an attempt at political Islam in our body politics; a politico-religious conspiracy masking as democracy. This new and mutual cast of orientation with veiled Islamic foundations, fundamentally informs the present drive to destroy with all of its flaws, the PDP; the only well-integrated and integrating Nigerian political party with a national covering by inheritors of generations of territorial orientation. Even if it meant destroying this Nigeria’s little pride in fifteen years of democratic sustenance from 1999. All because the present driver of the nation is not of their own soil and crescent; to which a national conspiracy has been made to look like democracy in action. But what is indeed at play against 2015 is a vengeful territorial defence of lost powers mingled with a coalition of personal revenges that all overlook a common national interest that should put the nation first and foremost, and above all interests. Tambuwal a Tortoise at Work for His Sokoto Caliphate. The cross-carpeting and all the political harlotry taking place culminated in a grand scheme at the point where the Speaker of the lower House of Assembly, Mr. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, a PDP member who in 2011 deliberately upset his Party’s geo-political balancing act that gave the number 4 position to the Yoruba woman by upturning it in a clandestine operation to serve the northern interest. This is strategic to the North because it gives them the overwhelming votes in the Lower House where the membership is not on the basis of equality, but on grounds of local governments in the unequal states and local governments across the country created by the anomaly of northern military coup d’états before the return to democracy In 1999. Tambuwal like their military class has come to cause another upset in the name and interest of his North and masquerading it as a fight against PDP, an unfair and entrenched political party that is not under the absolute control of the North which they must all abandon to achieve an hijack by other means. Yet those who do not understand this grand plot are all playing into it for reasons other than the devised plot to keep giving the North the majority veto power in decision making at the National Assembly created by their military men in power before this democratic era. Even the Yoruba whom he denied their national place because the Muslim North would not brook the parliamentary leadership of a woman, are giving extra teeth in support of plotters that victimized them who have now unjustly turned against the gentle innocent President Goodluck Jonathan who had a place for them through his party. In the present reign of political madness where the desperate hunt for power blinds all reasoning capacity, the majority of the Yoruba political class have lost not only their sight, they have also lost hindsight and so are now completely incapable of a foresight that favours them. It was once at such times of their lives that their most notable stage and screen artist did a film for them entitled, ‘’Yoruba Ronu’’ - Yoruba think! Good reasoning has generally broken down in this huge heat of thoughtless politics without principle, pattern and patriotism. Plurality, divergence of people, parties and opinions, reaching out to others beyond those of your own group, is at the very foundation of the road to party politics that produces governance called democracy in a game of agreeable number. But tragically, self-centred and ‘’my-group’’ centred pursuit of national vision has since remained with us in all of its manifestations in the personal, ethnic, regional, and the religious. Today, whatever semblance of patriotism that remains in Nigeria, can only be found in the inherited orientation of Azikiwe’s far more sighted extended nationalist political party families: the NCNC, the NPP and his personal inspiration. Which perhaps accounted for why he was justifiably valued higher than his counterparts with the N500 note? But unfortunately, the currencies in circulation are the lower N200 and N100 naira political notes. It is clearly a case of the manifest genes of the blood of their political fathers at play in their children and children’s children. Just as they all also played out their political gene at the President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2014 centenary national dialogue to discuss Nigeria after a prolonged agitation for it. These Zikist blocs, like their political father, are again in the minority, caught in the middle of today’s congealed rock and the hard place in the new merger of former political foes making conspiracy look like democracy. Yet, they love the nation less with their territorial type of national orientation. But they insist on power recovery or hijack ahead of and above love of country. With other tag-along like Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Southern Nigeria’s Niger Delta of River state, who quit the governing PDP for the new conspiracy, APC; and Chief Audu Ogbe, a former PDP national Chairman from the minority Middle belt region of central Nigeria. He is the new Director General of the campaign of the APC leading presidential aspirant, Ex- military Head of State, General Muhamadu Buhari’s whom Governor Amaechi of Rivers state wishes to be Vice-President to. All in utter disregard of the ethnic and regional ambition of his Ikwerre people and the much deprived Niger Delta presidency. But they have no idea where this grand conspiracy is taking them. If they could only pause to ask: Would this same psychological twin conspiratorial political blocs ever make such gargantuan sacrifice for them were the pebbled shoe in the other leg? If the major ACN/CPC wing of the APC driving this national conspiracy meant well, why not take the political battle to the Niger Delta of the present president and the ruling party in picking their presidential candidates for a power change as was done in 1999 in Yoruba land where the presidential contest was between Obasanjo’s PDP and Olu Falae’s coalition APP? Why not get their popular Edo state governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomole of the same Niger Delta South-South of Nigeria to contest against President Jonathan? Alternatively, if it is a North-South rivalry, why not pick a Christian presidential aspirant from the Middle-belt North of Nigeria to which Chief Audu Ogbe would have most eminently qualified for? Or even do the unthinkable by luring the sitting Senate President, General David Mark of the same northern region to represent the northern interest? In any case, theirs is not a national sacrifice. It is pure pursuit of personal gains mixed with personal vendetta from political losses. These Christian blind bats and footnote politicians are involved in a grand plot to which they are mere strategic pawns in achieving the aims of a political religion by nature; the Islamically defining character of APC with its Muslim dominated topmost hierarchy. Including even their national women leader; and their complete decimating exclusion of the Igbo, an entire regional bloc in that hierarchy; stopping short only at making their Niger Delta neighbours their national Chairman in Chief John Oyegun. As if in compensatory after-thought, they gave the Igbo the worthless title of Chairman of the APC Governors Forum granted Governor Rochas Okorocha of NdiIgbos’s Imo State to rest his decamping restless feet which they are all guilty of. APC - A PARTY BIRTHED IN BETRAYAL The APC is a post-2011 marriage from the ashes of betrayal born in July 2013. It was conceived by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in betrayal of his presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN and consumed upon General Muhammadu Buhari a formidable CPC presidential opponent in favour of President Goodluck Jonathan of PDP in what has turned out a deal gone bad. So Tinubu is at once saying to Jonathan: I will get back at you. Whilst at the same time saying to Buhari, forgive me and let us forge a new alliance on the ashes of our differences under a political Islamic knot against that infidel I gave you up for. But we must keep this secret to ourselves only. The new party, APC, is fast emerging as a joint venture of two political Muslim men – General Muhammadu Buhari and Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu; two strange bedfellows whose romance is fast developing into a tolerable rhythm. Even after an earlier betrayal by Tinubu who weakened and whittled Buhari’s political weight across Nigeria via some political subterfuge of presenting Buhari’s younger version from the same stock, cut from the same cloth of integrity, a northern Fulani Muslim, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu at his ACN party’s 2011 presidential election. Tinubu in a double edge betrayal, turned against his party and its candidate by negotiating him away on the dying days to the election to President Jonathan’s ruling PDP. This led to Lagos voting in Jonathan but retaining Governor Fashola of ACN; a betrayal Governor Rauf Aregbesola of the same ACN did not brook; making him the only ACN governor who delivered his Osun state to his party. Mallam Ribadu in a much delayed get-back has now finally quit APC for PDP in the gubernatorial hope of ruling his Adamawa state through a political invitation that got lost in another political intrigue that has left the straight one in the cold. It would seem that the next scheduled victim is the Speaker of the lower House of assembly, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal whose latest gamble that is full of the trickery of a tortoise; with all the manifest character of a new General Ibrahim Babangida. He is presently getting caught in his own bag of tricks from his senders; till he would also be left in the cold. General Buhari constant as the northern star however came into a union with Tinubu and APC with an appearance of forgiveness, and with his one and only Nassarawa CPC state. This is accompanied by his mass followership whirlwind of the Muslim north and men and women of principle across Nigeria desirous of a principled leader in a rudderless national politics of the belly which he represents and embodies. But his supporters are rocked by the disturbing discomfort of Buhari’s northern Muslim Fulani way with power, their politics of inconsideration and underdevelopment of Nigeria over the years. Their present desperations are supported by a generally perceived conspiratorial silence on the Boko Haram islamist scourge in Borno and across the North and the North east of Adamawa and Yobe states in particular by him have helped in no small measure to deplete much of the Buhari fans in Southern Nigeria. The islamist insurgents and the Fulani cattle herders’ Christian killings have helped to politically awaken Nigerian Christians in the way they never were. But he still holds the hope for a possible anti-corruption crusade he once proved to be as a military Head of State in an unprincipled and corruption pampering government of President Jonathan that appears a safer pair of gentler hands for all. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, national leader of the ACN came into the APC bargain with Four governors from Yoruba land, West of Nigeria coupled with his prominence as a compassionate former Governor of Lagos state with a financial acumen who survived the withholding of Lagos’s Federal allocation by a vengeful President Olusegun Obasanjo’s PDP government. He also has a reputable capacity to play dirty and hooliganistic politics. The other northern politicians and political party that constitute the other northern leg of the APC merger are the depleting ranks of the APP governors and party already reduced to a carcass that the merger saved from being certified dead. Their Igbo Chairman, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu lays claim to initiating the merger across party lines. But the other five decamped northern governors of PDP constitute the more formidable balance to the conspiratorial threat of the Buhari-Tinubu bloc that has crafted for itself the media image of being the public face of the merger. But together with the CPC and APP, they constitute a formidable northern bloc against their southern party men. The Rochas Okorocha led APGA half that joined the merger is hardly ever mentioned or referenced; drawing a clear line on his status in the merger. The Christian Igbo chairman of APP, Chief Onu has been petering into insignificance as also is Chief Rochas Okorocha. Both men are presently swimming against the tide of mainstream politics of the PDP in Igboland, and a much accommodated regional politics of APGA. The three leading Igbo politicians in the APC, Senator Chris Ngige of the much older ACN wing of the APC, Chief Ogbonaya Onu, regional leader of the APC in the Igbo East of Nigeria from APP and ANPP, and Chief Rochas Okorocha, the APC governor from APGA are presently nothing but fishes out of water. They are in a political party whose top echelon gives them no place or consideration even as a regional political bloc in Nigeria. They are not only ethnically marginalised, they are also religiously ostracised as minorities in a Muslim-dominated party leadership. Making them doubly disadvantaged. They would have to be highly principled party men to remain in this quandary. The rumour that Rochas is about to jump ship again; this time to the ruling PDP is totally in sync with his nature and his self-centred drive and place for a national platform that will further his political ambition. Not all of his understanding of the Hausa language and Islam of the Muslim north of his long sojourned experiences will secure him a place among them. A previous experience under the APP presidential primary where he contested against Buhari and his northern types will continue to guide Rochas Okorocha if he does not suffer speedy amnesia arising from a self-blinding political ambition. As governor, he has done marvelously well for Imo state with his rescue promise and mission team. But really and truly, he did not do it for them. He did it for himself. He did it for his presidential ambition. Imo state is just another platform, an experimental guinea pig for his presidential pursuit; a showroom of what he could do with Nigeria if allowed. Everything ultimately boils down to self without any element of self-sacrifice, the bane and blemish of the Nigerian political class. This two-third majority conspiracy against the rest of the nation, is essentially a marriage of two very self-centred couple whose end is easily predictable; because there would never be self-sacrifice which is not the in the character of the two. See you next week for the concluding part: PLANTING PARTIES OF HOPE Patriot CHIKE OFILI, Lead Consultant, Reputations Consulting, a cause-championing brand communications consultancy, author of Our Unspoken Ties, The Weight of Waiting has been Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors, Lagos. Email: chikeoili08023409781@yahoo
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 19:07:55 +0000
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