By Chucks Nkwocha
It is now a very open secret that the center is no longer holding within the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the ‘war’ between President Muhammadu Buhari and the party’s presidential candidate, and self-acclaimed national leader, Bola Tinubu, began prior to the June 2022 national convention, has reached the tipping point. The gloves are completely off and the pugilists to already in the market square.
But to those who know, APC has never been a family. It has always been a gathering of desperate folks who are ever ready to decimate each other in the quest to grab power in a country where what matters most is being relevant to power in every leadership cycle. This has never been about what public interest is served. In fact, for students of power, there is actually no such thing as public interest. What exists is personal interest packaged and served as the interest of the public and both Buhari and Tinubu have demonstrated that very well.
In this intra-party war, Team Tinubu has come out openly to punch Team Buhari in the eyes. They poked two fingers into Buhari’s eye.
So far, it has left Team Buhari with a swollen black eye. But Team Buhari does not fight in public. It usually fights behind brown tall oak doors and acoustic walls. From within this wall, it fights dirty pulling the strings to asphyxiate its opponents like a python would do. It was from within those walls that Team Buhari plotted the total eclipse of Tinubu’s ambition prior to the June 2022 primary election. Tinubu’s survival was thanks to the support of Nasir El-Rufai who led a northern governor’s revolt to insist on power rotation to the south. That decision, built on the thinking that Buhari is a coward, squarely serves El-Rufai’s interest to be relevant in the 2023-2027 government cycle. He is now squarely in the picture to become Chief of Staff to a President Tinubu. Never mind El-Rufai’s postulations about being tired of public office and wanting to retire. The El-Rufai known to most Nigerians will not put his head on the guillotine for any reason if his personal interest is not at stake. That is why he had to quickly arrange a One-On-One with ChannelsTV to throw more petrol into the fire ignited by Tinubu against Team Buhari.
In that Ono-on-One, El-Rufai literally stated that Buhari has become a hindrance to Nigeria. El-Rufai cleverly distanced Team Tinubu from the failed APC government of Team Buhari indicating that Tinubu’s campaign strategy of not referencing any of Buhari’s super achievements was deliberate. This is being interpreted to mean that Team Tinubu is not proud to be associated with the achievements of the APC government since 2015 which include turning Nigeria into the poverty capital of the world, increased infant and maternal mortality rate, high-level insecurity, nurturing of terrorist groups, the building of railways and ensuring irregular train services, reconstruction of roads and bridges, the construction of a part of the 2nd Niger Bridge and its partial opening fir yuletide trips last year and so on.
El-Rufai also openly accused Buhari of being the reason terrorists are still potent through his subtle support by way of refusal to allow the security forces to actively engage them. Of course, these are not ‘achievements’ Team Tinubu wants to be associated with. However, Tinubu cannot wean itself off these ‘achievements’. The oil of Buhari’s very embarrassing failure, cannot not rob on Tinubu who had severally boasted of his role in picking Buhari from his retirement dungeon, where he was forgotten by modernity and laundered him with the best of Arabians perfume as the next best thing to leadership after Gen. Charles De Gaulle.
Distancing his faction of APC from Buhari’s APC, which is made up of mostly Buhari’s acolytes in the defunct CPC and part of ANPP, and of course, new followers who were recruited to benefit from the ongoing corruption bazaar of the APC government hurts Tinubu’s campaigns more. That is the reason he is crying more than any of the other candidates. Ask, if the naira swap policy affects the Tinubu campaign as it affects others. Petrol scarcity affects all equally. So, why is Tinubu crying more? The reason is he has come to the realisation that Buhari’s APC is not prepared to, and, will not, lift a finger for him.
And, justifiably so. The campaign trail has exposed Tinubu’s challenges. It has taken a toll on his health. He is clearly not fit for the rigours of the presidency. He has become increasingly incoherent, illogical and has publicly shown signs of the loss of memory and is probably now being pushed forward by energy boosters and steroids. Sources within the Team Buhari camp say this is why El-Rufai is vigorously pushing for Tinubu and waiting on time, like a hyena, to steal the spoils and become the de facto President if Tinubu, by any dint of mistake, gets the nod to become an “ineffectual” vegetative leader. Team Buhari is not prepared to risk a Tinubu presidency because of fears of his vindictiveness.
This is where Nigerians should support Buhari’s APC for not throwing state power behind Tinubu’s APC, as expected. Team Tinubu had expected a reciprocation of their support for Buhari in 2015 and 2019. But it does seem that members of Team Buhari have come to see the implications of having a president who is weakened by age and only propelled by steroids and energy boosters on the life of a nation. It is said that they do not want a repeat. If that is so, Nigerians should rise in support of Team Buhari and encourage it to keep state power and Aso Villa influence away from Team Tinubu. This way, Tinubu will be stripped of federal might and enter the election on equal footing against others. Sadly, Tinubu had always expected that Buhari will unleash state apparatus –Military, Police, INEC, Civil Defence etc- in his support. Unfortunately, the reverse is the reality. Just on February 1, the military began a mop-up of area boys and miscreants in Lagos. More than 300 of such, believed to have been recruited by Team Tinubu, through his ally, MC Oluomo of the Lagos Motor Park fame, have been routed and detained.
This is where the game changes for Atiku Abubakar. He is rightly positioned to beat Tinubu at the polls with massive popular support and Labour Party and New Nigeria People Party platforms collapsing for him. Labour Party hopes of massive support in north central have dimmed drastically. The same thing is happening in the northeast where youths argue that the antics of using religion to divide the north, will fail. The fight between Team Buhari and Team Tinubu will prove to become PDP’s easy road to the country’s leadership.
This is because Team Buhari will remain behind acoustic walls and tall oak doors to play on the keyboard while ensuring that bullion vans from Bourdillon streets run the streets empty on Election Day and become useless in the process of electing a president on the 25th of this month. If this is achieved, Team Buhari would have left a legacy of not deploying federal might to manipulate the electoral process for Tinubu’s quest to achieve his life ambition. Tinubu, will, like a drowning swimmer, try to clutch at anything in the quest to stay afloat. But, the rug is being pulled from his legs as his campaign crumbles like a pack of badly arranged cards while he clowns about Nigeria making substance-influenced speeches and preparing his way to becoming another “best president Nigeria never had”. Apologies Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.
Source: The Guardian
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