By Emeka Alex Duru
If Nigerians are agreed, as many are wont to, that former President, made sense in advising President Muhammadu Buhari to shelve his second term ambition, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), may run into huge crisis. And the signs are there.
Since Obasanjo released the blistering 13-page statement that literally took the President and his administration to the cleaners, APC has been unusually cold.
For a party that is known more for outlandish actions and outings, watching the federal government that it leads, reacting to Obasanjo’s observation in a manner devoid of its trademark bulldog tactics, speaks volume on how far APC may have been humbled.
Even without its handlers openly admitting it, there is no doubting the fact that APC is immensely embattled, already.
It is not as if the party had particularly come across to Nigerians as one that would lead them to the proverbial Promised Land. In fact, even as its supporters had pranced about in excitement at APC formation in February 2013, critics had on account of the uncertain antecedents of some of its facilitators, described it as mere congregation of power mongers in dire need of a stronger platform to actualise their agenda.
This was a fact known to many, anyway. But because of what was seen as the person and character traits of the APC flag bearer in 2015, Muhammadu Buhari, in the face of serial disappointment by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nigerians gave it a chance. But three years into the administration, the bubble has burst.
The performance profile of the leadership of the party at all levels, is piteous. At the federal and state levels, leaders of APC have simply given out themselves as lacking what it takes to manage the affairs of the country.
Not even Buhari, who is seen in some quarters as the redeeming face of the party, is spared in this classification, properly speaking.
In fact, while he is yet to offer himself for a reelection, charges of nepotism, poor management of the economy and engaging in actions capable of further exposing the country’s fault lines, remain strong issues he needs to deal with.
Though he still has his crowd of followers who see him as being above board on matters of corruption, it is certain that the President has lost much ground on matters of reputation and public reckoning that he had previously enjoyed.
It is thus, not surprising, that since Obasanjo in his letter, asked him not to go for reelection on account of age and poor performance, APC chieftains have been seriously destabilized.
Many of the party’s elected officials, for instance, know that left on their own and job performance profile, they may not return to their positions. For them, the President is therefore the umbrella they need to hide their gross ineptitude to return to power.
It is on this note that the recent visit by Governors Nasir el-Rufai (Kaduna) Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano), Yahaya Bello and Jubilla Bindow (Adamawa), to the President and their demand on him to go for a second term, can be adequately appreciated.
Faced with rising unpopularity at home on account of unexciting performance record and quite unsure of being reelected, they urgently need the President to survive.
The failure in living up to the expectations of the people, also manifests at the national leadership of the party. The National Working Committee (NWC), headed by Odigie Oyegun, is anything but conscious of what it should do to make the party responsive to its responsibility to the people. The result is that even on issues as mere enforcement of discipline, it looks up to Buhari for direction.
Incidentally, while leaning on the President for any of its actions, it does not occur to the NWC that it is playing into the hands of the president and by extension, ceding its powers to him.
That, actually accounts for Buhari’s headmaster – pupil attitude in relating with the leadership of the party, and his messianic carriage in dealing with even office holders on APC ticket.
Perhaps, no other time would this undemocratic tendency work against APC as now that the letter by Obasanjo has aroused debate on the eligibility of the President to go for another term, next year.
Buhari, may still mean well for the country. But one thing that should bother even his most ardent supporters, is his falling health. Aside his popularity that has dwindled considerably in some parts of the country, his health challenges are issues that cannot be hidden any longer. That is where the major problem of APC lies.
Ordinarily, for a party that is in control of 23 out of the country’s 36 States and Abuja, finding a replacement for Buhari in 2019, should not be a big deal. But as it is, it is really an issue that may expose the party’s underbelly and its internal contradictions.
Even as a ruling party, APC, curiously, has no properly constituted Board of Trustees (BoT), an organ that is supposed to offer it the moral compass in the conduct of its affairs. Its National Executive Committee (NEC), is in similar manner, virtually non-existent, meeting merely on adhoc basis.
These are the two organs that in hectic times as these, should be bold in pointing to the president and the party leadership the right way to go. They are also expected to provide the party with robust and strategic guidance in its leadership recruitment processes, if the need arises, ultimately. But they are not doing so because they are not there.
This is why the APC may slip into further crisis if it becomes too obvious that it needs an alternative to Buhari.
Elsewhere, the situation had not been so. When, for instance, it dawned on the African National Congress (ANC), the South African leading party, that Thabo Mbeki’s presidency portended grave danger to its future electoral prospects in the country, it threw up Jacob Zuma as a replacement. With Zuma serially entangled in webs of controversies, the party has made quick move in electing Cyril Ramaphosa as the next president, in a highly competitive but democratic intra-party process.
Authorities in Zimbabwe Africa National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), also did not wait for the image of the country and party to be further reduced in essence and substance before easing out the former President, Robert Mugabe, last year. He was replaced by his estranged Deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In both the South Africa and Zimbabwe scenarios, party supremacy was clearly at play. But can APC do so here? Taken from another angle, can the party really do without Buhari?