APC In House Crisis

APC and There In House Crisis

You have to give it to Obasanjo, he knows how to remain relevant in the scheme of things. He plays all sides of the political divide while marketing himself as the savior that Nigeria needs.
Nigerians must however remember that Obasanjo has been the helmsman in Nigeria for many years and in fact spearheaded, if not midwife, so many of the policies that helped place Nigeria in her current predicament. But when Obasanjo speaks about himself or national issues, one would think that he has been an innocent bystander for a long time. At times he sounds like that lone voice in the wilderness, warning Nigerians about an impending doom for which only he possesses the panacea.
Obasanjo gave Nigeria President Umar Yaradua, the ailing ex-president that later died in office. Yaradua’s time in power created an interregnum that almost torpedoed the Nigerian project as political gladiators jockeyed alongside Yaradua’s wife for power. Many believe that Obasanjo knew that the man was not going to survive the rigors of office but foisted him on Nigerians anyway. The jury is still out on why he did that but when he speaks on that issue, he sounds saintly and tries to absolve himself of any culpability. Yet, the pervasive uncertainty that marked Yaradua’s time in office, negatively affected all facets of Nigeria’s being.
Then Obasanjo, with help from other quarters, gave Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan that many, including Obasanjo, now see as having trust the nation into an economic morass. As the days go by, we are beginning to fully comprehend the depth of economic problem that we were trust into. When Obasanjo talks about Jonathan and derides him as having failed, one would think he never knew Jonathan talk less of foisting him on Nigeria through political machinations that saw the little known deputy governor become the vice president of Nigeria and later president.
Obasanjo promised Nigerians an improved electric output when he was taking office but after spending billions in the power sector, at the end of his term, power was worse than it was when he took office. He blamed it on saboteurs that, according to him, profited from importation of generators. He even seemed to have blamed President Jonathan for failing to resuscitate the power sector, a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Obasanjo started the fight against corruption and many embraced it but in the end, he seemingly used it as a tool to oppress his political enemies and the fight began to fizzle. Of course Jonathan, Obasanjo’s scion, took over and the fight against corruption was consigned to irrelevance. As a result, corruption became the second name of Jonathan’s administration and Nigerians are suffering the impact to this day.
While in office, Obasanjo, who says he loves Nigeria dearly and I take him at his word, indirectly sought to truncate the constitution by seeking a constitutional amendment to create an opportunity for him to run for a third term. Every indication was that he master-minded the move but he continued to deny this until the bitter end.
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Now, when Jonathan, Obasanjo’s scion, took over the reins of power, the relationship between the two noticeably began to sour. Apparently, Jonathan decided to be his own man and not an Obasanjo proxy. Unhappy about this, Obasanjo began to make statements about the president unbecoming of a statesman. He even wrote an open letter that seemed more like playing to the gallery than anything else since he could have advised Jonathan privately.
As the two men continued to fall out, Obasanjo openly tore up his PDP card without saying where he belonged politically. When this happened, many thought that he had finally come to his senses and would stay apolitical as an elder statesman. He did not do that but continued to play a game that would at best be described as duplicitous, ambivalent and straddling the fence. He would say he was supporting APC but then quickly recant and say he had not made up his mind. He would attend Jonathan’s daughter’s wedding and act as though he was supporting Jonathan and then go back to Otta and make an about face. Jonathan would go to visit him at Otta and he would run away only to later receive him. He was essentially playing both sides to afford himself the latitude to fall on the side of the winner when the elections were over. In the final analysis, when Buhari won, he quickly assembled a group and went to present what he said was a think tank finding on how to move Nigeria forward. As far as this writer is concerned, he simply wanted to curry favor with the new president otherwise, if his group had a think tank finding, how come he never presented that to Jonathan, the president he gave Nigerians?
Now that Buhari is solidly in power, he has been making all possible efforts to be on his good side. He visits Aso Rock more than any one and seems to be dishing out advise to Buhari. The latest in the chain of advice is to ask that Buhari not take Tinubu, the man that engineered his success, too seriously on the issue of Bukola Saraki as Senate president. Obasanjo says, “How can Tinubu be speaking on the interest of the party as if he owns the party? Are the winners (Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara) not APC members again? APC is not a personal property of anyone. The party belongs to everybody and belongs to no single person.”[Scan News, Friday, June 19, 2015, posted by Admin June 12, 2015]. But the last time this commentator checked, Obasanjo is not an APC member. What gives him the standing ground to give out advice on how APC should be run? What makes him think that his advice to Buhari should take precedence over that of the man that basically engineered Buhari’s success? It is even funny that Obasanjo, a man that basically ruled like a dictator, beating down any opposition or voice of dissent both within and outside his party, would be lecturing APC on party democracy. That was how he “lectured” Jonathan on how to handle Boko Haram with the carrot and stick method when he himself took a no-holds-barred approach to Odi and Zakibiam.
One does not know how discerning Buhari is but he should realize that Obasanjo is simply capitalizing on the current disarray in the ranks of APC. If he follows or has followed Obasanjo’s antecedents, he should know that Obasanjo will only stick by him as long as he listens to him and does what he says but as soon as he deviates, he will go the way that other past presidents that Obasanjo once supported. If Buhari were discerning, he will know that his best bet is to keep away from this man from the outset and be his own man. Buhari was once quoted as saying that because Obasanjo ruled Nigeria for 10 years, he should not be discounted. That may well be true but he should also ask himself what the greatest achievement of Obasanjo was apart from giving Nigerians cells phones which they were bound to get anyway. If Obasanjo had left very tangible and positive legacies for Nigerians, then it would make sense for him to be dishing out advice on the way forward for Nigeria. But with his dismal performance, he should be the last person Buhari wants to listen to unless he wants to go the way of Jonathan.
HERE I STAND