Tambuwal and his Law-Breaker Supporters

By Femi Aribisala
The APC did not win any seat whatsoever in the House of Representatives in the 2011 elections.  Therefore, it cannot provide the Speaker of the House.

Have you ever heard the parable of a man who stole a goat and was arrested and prosecuted?  When brought before the judge, his line of defense was that others had stolen goats in the past but had not been prosecuted.  How does that absolve him of guilt?  The man is a thief, pure and simple.

When one talks of the treachery of Aminu Tambuwal’s defection from the PDP to the APC, his apologists trot out opposition-party legislators and governors that also defected to the PDP in the past.  So what?  All such defections are equally treacherous and morally indefensible.  What we have today is the glorification of treachery for political reasons.  The honorable thing for any defecting politician to do is to resign his or her seat in the legislature and then seek a fresh mandate under the new party through a by-election.

Dishonorable politics.

Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Mutawallen Sakwato

In 1983, Abubakar Rimi resigned as Governor of Kano when he defected from the Peoples’ Redemption Party (PRP) to the Nigeria Peoples’ Party (NPP).  He did this because he was an honorable man; a true progressive.  In 2014, Aminu Tanbuwal defected from the PDP to the APC but has refused to relinquish his seat in the National Assembly.  He did this because he is not an honorable man; neither is he a true progressive.  Tambuwal has been Speaker for four years, and yet he has not championed one single piece of progressive legislation in all that time.

With his defection, some busybody parliamentarians with 27.5 million naira to burn bought the APC nomination papers for Tambuwal so he can contest for the party’s presidential ticket.  Almost immediately, he was touted as a spoiler for Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential ambitions and was shamelessly courted by the Tinubu brigade in the APC.  Realising that his hopeless candidacy would only be used to foment problems within the APC, Tambuwal wisely resigned from the contest, forfeiting the millions paid.

As a face-saving device to camouflage his signaled readiness to ditch Buhari for Tambuwal, Bola Tinubu went public to congratulate Tambuwal for deciding not to contest for the APC presidential nomination.  He said: “This sacrifice you have made will not be in vain. It must be noted by all democrats across the country as an act of great patriotism.”

Trouble-maker Tambuwal

This is really neat.  Tinubu’s definition of patriotism applies to the APC and not to Nigeria.  Tinubu forgot to mention that while Tambuwal decided not to cause trouble in the APC; at the same time, he decided to be a trouble-maker at the national level.  Should this man who has the good sense to withdraw as APC presidential candidate “as a sacrifice for the cohesion and unity of the APC” not also have the good sense to resign from the National Assembly now that he has defected from the PDP for the sake of national peace and cohesion?  Apparently not!

According to the Godfather of the APC, a patriot can be a trouble-maker at the national level, as long as his trouble-making is in the interest of the APC.  That, in a nutshell, is the crux of the problem with the APC.  It is a party of trouble-makers.  The APC does not really believe it can win the 2015 elections.  Therefore, it is determined to cause as much mayhem as possible; even threatening to create a parallel government when and if it loses the election.

The Tambuwal saga is the latest example of APC mischief.  The party’s strategy is to achieve power immorally and illegally.  It is a party of treacherous defectors.  It even went to Obasanjo, a former PDP president, asking him to defect to the APC.  Instead of attracting its own membership, it gathers together a coterie of treacherous defectors.  All its presidential candidates have jumped from party to party.

It is now encouraging Tambuwal in his treachery of attempting to defect to the APC with the position of Speaker.  However, the APC remains a minority party in the National Assembly.  The position of Speaker belongs to the majority party.  The APC cannot receive by subterfuge what rightly belongs to the majority PDP.

Tambuwal knows he can no longer be Speaker.  He knows that APC cannot win a majority of the seats in the legislature in the coming elections.  He knows the “mago mago” he used to become the Speaker cannot be duplicated in the next House of Representatives.  Therefore, in defeat, he has picked up the nomination form to contest as Governor of Sokoto under the APC ticket.

Show of shame

Since this is the new reality confronting Tambuwal, the man should stop causing trouble and simply resign his seat in the House.  But rather than resign, and with his security detail removed, Tambuwal drove with a convoy of “thugs” to the National Assembly.  This led to a show of shame that was televised and broadcast to the whole world.  The fact that Tambuwal led this brazen display of lawlessness at the National Assembly shows that he is unworthy of being the number four citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Emmanuel Ojukwu, the Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Police, had this to say: “The speaker came with thugs, refused to be searched and six of the hoodlums attacked a police man, after which the police tear-gassed the Speaker and his riotous crowd so as to restore order.  Everybody has seen that somebody was even beating somebody; somebody was pushing a policeman from the car.  Somebody was removing road blocks mounted by police.”  Those “somebodies” are supposed to be Nigeria’s law-makers.

In effect, championed by Tambuwal, our law-makers became law-breakers.  Impeded by the police from entering the House, some climbed the gate.  The Speaker himself flouted the directives of the police.  He forced his way inside.  Later, in disgrace, he sent his media aide with the statement that: “The honorable speaker wishes to state that he is a law-abiding citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria who has no immunity against arrest and prosecution.”  This is what is called “campaigning after failure to be elected.”  The video of his lawlessness had already gone viral on the internet.

Time to resign

There is nothing left for Tambuwal to do now than to resign from the House of Representatives and save Nigeria from all this “wahala” he has created.  Defecting from one party to another is against the spirit and the letter of the Nigerian Constitution.  Section 68 (g) of the 1999 Constitution says: “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a member if being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected…”

Tambuwal’s name did not even appear on the ballot-paper when he was elected to the House of Representatives from his constituency in Sokoto.  It was the PDP that was on the ballot.  That is how Rotimi Amaechi became Governor of Rivers State.  He was not even the candidate who ran for the office.  However, the courts ruled that he should have been the PDP candidate.  Since the PDP won the election, Amaechi became the Governor of Rivers State even though he did not campaign in the election for the post.

The only proviso in the Constitution for Tambuwal to remain in the House is if his defection to the APC is as a result of a division in the PDP or the merger of the PDP with another political party, or the faction of another party.  This situation does not exist, except in the imagination of APC supporters.  The courts in Nigeria have ruled that the PDP is not divided and is not bedeviled by any factions.  Everyone in Nigeria knows this in any case.

Some people say it is not the business of the executive to determine if Tambuwal should remain as Speaker or not: it is a matter for the courts.  However, the courts don’t execute laws: the executive does.  The Constitution says if a man defects from his elected party to another party, he automatically loses his seat.  Tambuwal resigned; therefore he has lost his seat.  The executive has implemented that loss.

If Tambuwal has a problem with that, the onus is on him to go to court.  The onus is not on the executive.  Until the courts say otherwise, Tambuwal can no longer be a member of the House of Representatives; and someone who is not a member of the House cannot be the Speaker.  We borrowed our political system from the United States where it is well understood that the Speaker of the House cannot belong to the minority party.

Attempted coup

Tambuwal, the Speaker, is APC.  Emeka Ihedioha, the Deputy Speaker, is PDP.  This situation is unacceptable, especially given the fact that the mandate for leadership in the House was freely given by the electorate to the PDP and not the APC.  You cannot have a situation of minority rule, when in actual fact it is the majority that has the mandate.

Indeed, at the national level, the APC is unknown and has yet to be recognized by the Nigerian electorate.  The APC has never presented a candidate to the electorate at the national level.  Therefore, the APC cannot come out of nowhere to commandeer the major office of the Speaker.  These shenanigans have gone on for too long.  The APC did not win any seat whatsoever in the House of Representatives in the 2011 elections.  Therefore, it cannot provide the Speaker of the House.

Tambuwal should have known that by resigning from the PDP while hanging on to the position of Speaker he is bound to generate unnecessary political tension.  If he did not know this before, he knows this now.  Failure to resign from the House now only portrays him as a shameless troublesome opportunist.  Tambuwal needs to redeem his battered image soonest.  He should do the honorable thing and resign from the House without further delay.

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Tambuwal and his shameful law-breaker supporters

The impending betrayal of Muhammadu Buhari

By Femi Aribisala

WHEN Muhammadu Buhari ran for president in 2011, he made a solemn pledge to Nigerians: “This campaign is the third and last one for me. I will not offer myself again for election into the office of president.”  Buhari was persuaded to break this pledge because Bola Tinubu made him an offer he could not refuse.  He would merge his ACN party with Buhari’s CPC party.  Tinubu’s putative South-West strength would be combined with Buhari’s mythical North-West supremacy.  The result of this alchemy would be politically unstoppable: next stop Aso Rock!

However, this plan started to unravel soon after the marriage and the honeymoon.  Overwhelmingly, Nigerian public opinion rejected the idea of a Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket; effectively short-circuiting all delusions of a dream Buhari/Tinubu ticket.  With APC’s nerve-wracking loss in its presumed stronghold of Ekiti, and with it only able to eke out a victory in its Osun backyard, and with Mimiko’s defection in Ondo bringing that state back to the ambit of the PDP, Tinubu’s much-vaunted strength in the South-West became more fiction than fact.

Fourth coming of Buhari

If the door was slammed shut to a possible vice-presidency, Tinubu still has the plan B of nominating a disciple as Buhari’s vice-presidential running-mate.  Thus, when Buhari finally declared his candidature for president for a marathon fourth time at Eagle Square, Abuja, Tinubu’s ACN brigadiers were there in full regalia to give him conspicuous moral support.  The wily Asiwaju himself was absent, perhaps in order to seem an honest broker among the APC presidential gladiators.  Nevertheless, he was suitably represented by his Senator wife, Oluremi Tinubu.  Other ACN timber and caliber, including Babatunde Fashola of Lagos, were also in attendance.

However, rather than crate an unstoppable momentum, Buhari’s formal declaration only seemed to have concentrated minds about his chances.  The prognosis was inauspicious.  There would be no good luck in Buhari’s fourth outing.  The man is simply politically unelectable as Nigeria’s president.  Some of his turn-coat political allies always feared this.  For example, Nasir El-Rufai, who now virtually operates as Buhari’s “chief of staff,” observed just a few years back that Buhari remains “perpetually unelectable” as a result of his “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus.”

BUHARI DECLARES: General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) declaring his intention to seek the All Progressives Congress, APC, nomination to contest next year’s presidential election yesterday.

Buhari’s declared candidacy re-awakened old angst about his cynical political antecedents, and it made many reappraise his chances more realistically, now that his candidature was beyond conjecture.  The conclusion remains the same.  Buhari has die-hard Hausa-Fulani support in the North.  But he has even more dyed-in-the-wool opposition in most other parts of the federation.  His core Northern support is unlikely to translate yet again to victory at the centre, even with the promissory note of Tinubu’s fading ACN support in the South-West.

Back to the supermarket

Any right-thinking person knows that Buhari is not the type of man to allow Tinubu to become the king behind his presidential throne.  Therefore, it did not take long for the Tinubu mafia to start shopping for a new candidate with much less political baggage than Buhari.  Indeed, the writing is on the wall that they are now more than likely to ditch Buhari in order to pitch their tent with some other, more malleable, APC presidential hopeful.

One likely choice is embattled Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, who finally announced his divorce from the PDP this month, after committing adultery with the opposition for the better part of four years.  Tambuwal had his eyes on the position of Governor of Sokoto State.  But in a dramatic turnaround, he has now been persuaded to pick up the nomination form for the APC presidential contest.

Suddenly, the Tinubu brigadiers are now saying Buhari is too old to be president.  Indeed, if elected, he would be Nigeria’s oldest president at 73.  If he runs successfully for two terms, he would still be president at 81.  The question-mark of Buhari’s age was hardly a hidden secret until now.  It is just that, in the treacherous terrain of Nigerian politics, it provides a ready-made excuse for ditching him.

Fashola, who was there to support Buhari at his Eagle Square declaration, now says what Nigeria needs are young leaders and not geriatrics: “When 40-year olds are now leading nations and our 40-year olds can’t even get to the Senate, they can’t even become governors. Are we really preparing this generation for the future?  Those are the issues really. We cannot point to success in other countries and refuse to do what those people are doing to get things right.”  This is a coded way of saying Buhari is now way too old for Aso Rock.

Machiavellian politics

Politics is a treacherous business.  Buhari should know this by now.  He himself was treacherous in being part of a gang of military officers that seized power illegally from a democratically-elected government through the barrel of a gun.  He was then, in turn, treacherously overthrown by his own mates.  Buhari should know he is dealing with politicians seasoned in betrayal.  Indeed, duplicity is the stuff politics and politicians are made of.  In politics, everybody stabs everybody in the back.  Therefore, everybody should expect to be stabbed in the back.

Asked if he would back Buhari if Buhari wins the nomination for the APC ticket, Atiku told everyone he would easily stab Buhari in the back; without seeming to realise it.  He said: “I think I have proved that I am a pragmatic politician. Recall that in 2010 when I failed to get the PDP ticket against President Jonathan, I and others went to try to bring about an electoral alliance between the CPC and ACN.”  Atiku’s “pragmatism” is the stuff of treachery.  He failed in the PDP so he promptly switched to create an alliance between two other opposition parties.  The bell tolls for the APC.

Nuhu Ribadu, as EFCC chairman, named Bola Tinubu as public enemy number one.  But then he turned around to become the anointed presidential candidate of Tinubu’s ACN party.  This did not prevent Tinubu from stabbing him in the back.  Tinubu entered into a last minute deal with Buhari of the CPC.  Then again, he entered into another suspected backroom deal with Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP.   But there was payback time for Ribadu.  Ribadu was part of the APC merger.  But then he chose his time to ditch Tinubu and the APC for the PDP.

Some of us have long maintained that Buhari is a political neophyte.  We have had cause to warn him that nobody wins the nomination of a political party like the APC, by saying he will fight corruption if elected.  Buhari’s anti-corruption hyperbole is part of what is responsible for the buyers-remorse his presidential bid is already experiencing.

Pocket infrastructure

Without the backing of the Tinubu brigade, Buhari does not have a prayer in getting the APC ticket.  His lack of political know-how is going to be a major handicap.  He is up against people like Atiku Abubakar; seasoned wheeler-dealer politicians who know how to arm-twist convention delegates.  Buhari, on the other hand, has never had to fight to get a party’s nomination.  Instead, parties have been formed around his presidential ambitions.

Atiku, in particular, has haggled and wrangled through many nomination conventions since the early 1990s.  Moreover, he has a war-chest of naira bank-notes with which to grease the process.  But Buhari, the man who claims he had to take a bank loan in order to buy the APC presidential nomination papers, is going to have a difficult time convincing APC delegates to pitch their tent with him without providing pocket infrastructure.  Buhari’s approach is not the realistic way to run for president in today’s Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The imminent ditching of Buhari by Tinubu means the forthcoming APC convention to choose the party’s presidential candidate is going to be a bloodbath.  It is really going to be ugly.  There will be dead bodies strewn all over the convention floor.  Dogs and baboons will surely be soaked in blood.  With its do-or-die politicians fighting to finish on the eve of the February elections, the APC will soon provide a textbook case of how not to campaign against an established party like the PDP in Nigeria.

Buhari’s talakawa supporters, who caused mayhem when he lost the last presidential election, will not take kindly to his likely defeat at the APC primaries.  If Buhari is rejected, he would be humiliated.  It would have been better for him not to have run.  Don’t buy all the pious talk that the losers will support the winner; it is not going to happen.  Even if Buhari were to decide to be diplomatic about his defeat, his incendiary supporters don’t have the word diplomacy in their vocabulary.

Catch-22

The APC is caught in a Catch-22.  If it fields Buhari, it will fail at the polls under the weight of his previous political bag and baggage.  If it rejects Buhari, all reliance on his mystical 12 million votes will go up in smoke.  Tambuwal, Kwankwaso or Atiku cannot replicate those votes.  They have neither Buhari’s hype nor his charisma.  With Buhari out of the reckoning, many of his disgruntled supporters would rather riot than vote.  The APC itself would implode under the weight of its own internal contradictions.  This is the anti-climax to all the hue and cry about the 2015 election that is now in the cards.

The ditching of Buhari would open a clear pathway for Atiku; the politician’s politician and Aminu Tambuwal, the dark horse.  Atiku’s dismal performance in previous polls is eloquent testimony that his presidential hopes are a pie in the sky.  Tambuwal in the APC ticket would be even worse than the last showing of Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN, who was even better-known nationally than Tambuwal.

All these shenanigans means the 2015 election will likely be, to all intents and purposes, a contest between two PDP politicians.  The APC that boasts to be an alternative to the PDP is likely to end up with a former PDP member as its presidential candidate.  That is change we can certainly do without.

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The Impending Betrayal of Muhammadu Buhari

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Stephen Keshi: The wrong coach for the World Cup

on June 17, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 1:54 am   /   Comments

This World Cup is done and dusted as far as Nigeria is concerned. We would be extremely lucky to get past the first round. There is no doubt in my mind that, barring an act of God, Nigeria’s chances are next to nothing. The only team we have a chance against is Iran and, even there, we are more likely to draw than to win.

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Lamido Sanusi: The wrong emir of Kano

on June 10, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 12:54 am   /   Comments

OF all the cities in Northern Nigeria, Kano is perhaps the most important. Although it used to be subject to the Sokoto Caliphate, in many respects it has since become a far more important city in Nigeria than Sokoto. Kano was the administrative capital of the entire Northern Nigeria under British colonial rule.

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We are all Boko Haram

on June 03, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 12:22 am   /   Comments

I WAS fifteen years old when the civil war broke out in Nigeria. Although we were living in Ibadan in the South-west at the time, my sympathies were totally and unequivocally with the Igbos. When a people have been so brutally butchered by their countrymen as happened to the Igbos, I felt they had no choice but to insist on leaving the country.

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The Boko Haram are not Northern Nigerians

on May 27, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 12:40 am   /   Comments

IN the late 1980s, I was appointed Special Adviser to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, then Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs. At the time, I was a Research Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). The Director-General of the Institute, Professor Gabriel Olusanya, advised me not to take the job.

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Aliko Dangote: The quintessential Nigerian entrepreneur

on May 20, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 1:51 am   /   Comments

Alot is reported about Nigeria in the news every day. However, much of this is bad. Nigerians are people the world seems to love to hate. When you read about Nigeria, corruption is often the preferred topic. Then there are the kidnappings and the Boko Haram terrorism.

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A season of conspiracies against Goodluck Jonathan

on May 13, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 12:09 am   /   Comments

THE Yorubas have a proverb. They say: “A witch cried out yesterday and a child died today. Who does not know that it was the witch who killed the child?” Some people have gone to great lengths to declare that if President Jonathan dares to run for re-election, they would make Nigeria ungovernable.

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Decision-time for the South-West

on May 06, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 12:38 am   /   Comments

PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo is a relation of mine. My late mother, who was from Abeokuta, was Obasanjo’s aunt. I think that makes Obasanjo my uncle.

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Murtala Nyako should be removed as Governor of Adamawa State

on April 29, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 1:20 am   /   Comments

VIce-Admiral Murtala Nyako is the Governor of Adamawa State. He was once Governor of Niger State. He was formerly Chief of Naval Staff of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

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The 2015 presidential election will not be televised

on April 22, 2014   /   in Femi Aribisala 1:05 am   /   Comments

THE Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria entitles the president to run for a term of four years renewable for another four.

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Consensus candidacy: APC presidential aspirants hold meetings in Abuja

Nigerian Army retires 15 Generals

Jonathan, PDP leaders, senators meet

I‘ll not contest 2015 election – Jonathan

I faced death threats in 

Nigeria – S/African ref

Jonathan knows about Boko Haram financier in CBN – Soyinka

I fear Boko Haram’ll overrun Adamawa – Gov Ngilari

It’s a shame Keshi agreed to come back – Ex-international