With the announcement of Hon Femi
Gbajabiamila as the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives on
Tuesday the 28th of March, 2015, Nigerians should now have reason to
hope that the needless crisis that has engulfed the legislative
department of the new Buhari government has been substantially resolved.
This development, coming a whopping 49
days after the current National Assembly was first constituted, was one
that severely tested the political and constitutional patient of
Nigerians while at the same time amply demonstrated the maturity of
President Muhammadu Buhari as against the overt exuberance of some
members of the ruling party who were more obsessed with the notion of
party supremacy that was coloured with episcopal finality while
forgetting that the linesof partisan politics are not always as straight
as we have them in geometry.
The
whole episode was at the expense of reality, common sense and
productive political calculations. The All Progressives Congress, the
new ruling party didn’t quite secure the right handle on the nuances of
parliamentary manoeuvrings within a multiparty set-up which eventually
created the scenario that we lamented about in our earlier discussion of
this imbroglio some weeks ago where we observed the sorry picture of a
group which, for fear of death, committed suicide. APC was consequently
presented with a very delicate situation in which its pursuit of “what
is right” or “normal” was going to be achieved at a very
disproportionate price that could eventually amount to a terrible
political loss.
It was such a time which in the words of
Thomas Paine, could be said to have “tried the souls of men”, on both
sides of the political aisle of which the greater impact was on the side
of the ruling party. For the opposition party, the PDP, it was a time
for some misguided and infantile gloating and negativism, something
quite similar to what the late Zik of Africa once categorised as the
“nattering nabobs of negativism” while paraphrasing William Saffire who
once penned that line for the Spiro Agnew’s ill-fated presidential
campaign of 1968 intended to denigrate the endless criticisms from his
opponents both within his own Republican party and the Democratic party.
The PDP shamelessly made a mountain out
of the crisis obviously because it calculated that it would be the
immediate beneficiary of such miscalculations. There was a frantic
‘divide and rule’ effort to use the internal disagreement within the APC
to contrive and fuel a feud that could immediately create a gap in the
alliance between Mr. President and Bola Tinubu. As they were engineering
the internal fight between the Gbajabiamila and the Lawan factions
within the APC House caucus, they couldn’t exercise sufficient tact to
hide their main objective by endlessly harping on the “sidelining” of
Tinubu by Buhari.
Even when the two leaders tried to
demonstrate as much as possible with their body language that they were
still collectively focused on the goal and alliance which they forged
together in order to bring about the fall of the PDP, countless
insinuations were still making the rounds that the “north was dealing
with Tinubu” and “cutting him to size.” How disingenuous? There is no
doubt that the June 9th development at the National Assembly did not go
the way Tinubu would have wanted but it didn’t amount to his “losing
out” as was being loudly banded by agents of disunity who were largely
fuelled by the irresponsible disposition of those who have not yet come
to terms with the fact that they are now effectively out of power.
Bola Tinubu, a political tactician and
strategist, no doubt, is smart enough to know that losing a battle does
not translate to losing the war. The political objective of liberating
the country from the clutches of the ruinous PDP is a far greater
objective than having his henchmen in official places and positions.
Hate him or like him, he remains the nation’s foremost human resources
manager. While his politics might be partisan as expected of a political
warrior, his sense of judgment when picking men and women for political
and official positions is unassailable. His records as governor of
Lagos are a testimony to that quality. In fact, pitching his tents with
the Buhari presidential campaign follows the same innate capacity to
pick his men who almost always succeed on their jobs.
That is why his choice of Hon Femi
Gbajabiamila for the Speakership of the House was circumstantially
faultless. In any case, we all saw the consistency, tenacity and
clinical efficiency exhibited by Gbaja while he served as the Minority
Leader in the last parliament. What is more, his credential as a
committed progressive is self-evident. That is not to say that Hon
Yakubu Dogara who eventually emerged as the Speaker in his stead is less
suitable for the job. For him to have secured the majority votes in
such a bi-partisan manner clearly shows that he is not only popular but
also a credible parliamentarian.
Nothing is more re-assuring than the
speech that Speaker Dogara himself gave while welcoming Gbajabiamila on
board as the new Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. I am
quoting him in extenso just to demonstrate the depth of his
understanding of the challenges facing the APC as the party that was
democratically given the mandate to salvage the country from the deep
mess that the PDP plunged her through primitive corruption and clueless
governance.
Hear him:“We can neither afford to abuse
the confidence reposed in us nor can we dare to expose ourselves to the
cruel judgment of history…Our great party, the All Progressives
Congress, along with Mr. President and other party leaders exhibited
uncommon democratic tradition by abstaining from direct interference in
the process…
I am persuaded that they do not regret
reposing such confidence in us. In this regard we owe them, ourselves,
and indeed all Nigerians a duty to prove that we can conclude this
process rancour-free and without denting our party’s democratic
credentials…. As representatives of the people therefore, we must be the
manifestation of their high expectations of good governance, probity,
transparency and accountability…”Well said!
Now is the time to put those sweet and
assuring declarations to action. Contrary to the misinformation about
the capacity of the Buhari government to deliver on its “change”
promise, there is already evidence everywhere that things are indeed
changing for the better. As we have always argued on this page, the New
Deal which we think is inevitable on the part of the Buhari
administration will not get sufficient traction if the there are no
complementing legislative authorisations to formalise and legitimise
them as an un-cooperating National Assembly is a veritable clog on the
“change” project which we laboured for.
The government is constitutionally
composed of three coordinate departments. The Executive, comprising the
Presidency is just one. Unless it gets the cooperation of the other two
branches, especially the Legislature, not much can be done. That is why
the APC government should proceed to creatively harness its numerical
and moral majority to achieve the set goals. It is gratifying that
broken political bridges are being mended, much against the expectation
of those sore sceptics who have since picked up their Vuvuzelas
maliciously mouthing a “Baba-go-slow” campaign.
We know the current problems of Nigeria.
They are basically the bad economy made worse by past corruption and
the Boko Haram insurgency. The APC should therefore sheathe their swords
and end the needless internal feud brought about by the National
Assembly leadership tussle which it initially didn’t handle well.
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