ANALYSIS: How President Buhari Decided APC's Future Without Tinubu

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

The decision of a faction of the National Working Committee, NWC, of the All Progressives Congress, APC, to disagree openly with President Muhammadu Buhari marks a new chapter in the development of our politics. We entered this endless curve on 29 May 2015.

It is unprecedented in our political history for a political party to make a show of disagreeing with the President when he is a member and supposedly the leader of the party. Who has been leading APC?

President Buhari has only a few hours to rescue what is left of the receding platform on which he won his elections. He is already deciding who the leaders of the party are in one sweep, and more importantly who would not be.

The semi-final battle for APC would be fought tonight when APC meets without Bola Ahmed Tinubu, its acclaimed National Leader, a position Buhari warned five years ago was non-existent. APC’s National Executive Committee, NEC, meets to seek direction for the imploding party. The NEC is the highest decision-making organ of the party.

An announcement by a presidential aide Bashir Ahmad on Wednesday that Tinubu would not be part of the meeting was unnecessary - Tinubu is not a member of the NEC. Why did Ahmad have to mention him? The message, however, reads like, Tinubu is not wanted here, in case he decides to attend.

An incident on Thursday 30 August 2018 could have informed the decision to serve Tinubu a notice. Governor Nasiru el Rufa’i, a known Tinubu opponent within the party, barred Tinubu from that day’s meeting of NEC when the crucial decision was made on the mode of primaries for the 2019 elections. The National Leader had to sit in one of the party offices for the duration of the meeting. The explanation then was that he was not a member of NEC. He is still not a member.

Boycotts of the meeting are being publicised by members of the NWC who say it is illegal. How can a meeting that the President would attend, with all his immunity, be illegal? The Progressives Governors Forum stands with the President.

Where was NWC when Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole ran the party as if it was his fiefdom? Did NWC members then forget that the party had a Constitution? Would the situation have been different if those who wanted the resources of Edo State had curtailed their greed?

The bigger question is where Buhari has been through the years. His long absences and fleeting attention to the party has brought him to this dilemma where he, a champion for rule of law, must break some laws to use the long knives APC requires now.

It is evident that the knives will make deep cuts. Would the President step back from backing the Victor Giadom faction of the party after attending the NEC meeting? Giadom summoned NEC and once the President is at this meeting, the multiple court cases around ownership of NWC - actually, ownership of APC - would dissolve into mere futile legal exercises.

APC has spent the years lying to itself about its coherence as a party. It is at the verge of reaping its lies. Untidy party primaries, allegations of abuses of its constitution, and the sudden discovery that party politics has its powers at the ward level brought the party to this lockdown.

In trying to ignore the shenanigans of its suspended National Chairman, Oshiomhole, APC has unravelled. The partial weight of its troubles is dragging it into muddier waters. The President wants to resolve that, he has to be decisive.

Whether the current troubles are about who becomes what in 2023 or not, as is widely speculated, for the records it must be noted that Oshiomhole’s poor perceptions of the importance of others is part of the matter. Ambitions, of all shades and sizes, have their place too.

Tinubu's famed political nine lives would not benefit from this meeting. Fervent believes in his ways and wiles predict that the meeting in Abuja is the semi-final, the final would be clear to all. There are few doubts about the uncertainties of politics, especially the glorified forms operated in Nigeria.

Anyone who should be at the meeting and does not attend knows what it means not to be on President Buhari's side at a time he is battling with opposition from the streets of his native Katsina, where bandits are becoming the dominant power.

If Buhari could arrest Katsina street protesters, whose offence is that they asked governments to protect them from rampaging bandits, he would not waste time in pulling in anyone who crosses the red line he drew in August 2017 when he returned from a medical trip. The President is not exactly in a pleasant mood.

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