On Monday, the All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, won a spectacular victory in his seemingly unending scuffle with his enemies within the party. As if the country missed the news, he has openly exulted in that victory both as a reminder to everyone and more crucially to numb his opponents. Despite the rampage of coronavirus pandemic, which was beginning to agitate many in these parts, Mr Oshiomhole’s anticlimactic victory dominated the news. The victory is indisputable, but he will be grossly mistaken to think the war is over. The next election cycle is about three years away. Surely the APC chairman knows that his truculent enemies have taken an oath, in a manner of speaking, to dethrone him. They will stop at nothing both to dethrone him and to make him politically irrelevant for as long as they live.
But given his political and labour union antecedents, not to say by far the most potent of his talents — his abrasive and iconoclastic style — Mr Oshiomhole instinctively knows that his victory is temporary and even tentative, and his enemies more determined than ever to destroy him. He will be on his guard, as his enemies will be on their toes, poised to sink their daggers in his chest, and eager to wipe the smirk from his hated face. Mr Oshiomhole’s enemies are intransigent. They have merely retreated, anxious not to be completely exterminated. They will regroup and, with ferocity, recalibrate their guns, assured that they have time on their hands. They also know by instinct that the APC chairman is naturally feisty and prone to grandiloquence and mistakes. They will take their time and strike at the appropriate moment.
But meanwhile, Mr Oshiomhole can and should savour his victory. The victory came partly because his enemies did not really have a case, nor did they play by the rules and regulations of their party. The APC chairman was neither tactical in enforcing party rules nor diplomatic in dealing with and caging egotistic party leaders, some of them eternally smarting from the sucker punch he gave them in the run-up to the last general election. So, finding his attitude insufferable, they united against him, blocked their ears to reason, and maniacally rushed at him to finish him off. It boomeranged, not because they didn’t have personal reasons to fight him and hate him, but because the constitution of their party stipulates guidelines to mediate conflicts and ensure misunderstandings do not get out of hand. But, to the chairman’s enemies, those rules impede and undermine their objectives.
It may not be immediately clear why the Court of Appeal, which had initially declined to hear the appeal upon which outcome Mr Oshiomhole based all his hopes, eventually sat and bravely restored the APC chairman to his seat. Whether that act was contingent upon the realisation that the putsch had failed is hard to say. But all that was reported is that the president consented to the postponement of the NEC meeting, while the progressive governors had a fiery meeting in which one of the arrow-heads of the plot, Kebbi State’s Governor Atiku Bagudu, was skewered by his fellow governors, while Ekiti’s Kayode Fayemi and Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai, the other plotters, stayed away, probably warned ahead of time of the failure of their enterprise. Ondo’s Rotimi Akeredolu sat on the fence as usual, hating Mr Oshiomhole but unwilling to stake everything. It didn’t seem the Court of Appeal was independent in the ruling it gave, but it was still the only straw Mr Oshiomhole could clutch at to get the much needed reprieve he hankered after.
With the temporary collapse of the opposition against him, the APC chairman has begun to regain his composure. He probably now knows that appeasement does not pay. He had, in deference to his enemies within the party’s leadership, failed to inaugurate a few but key Southwest and Northeast replacement appointees to the NWC. Now he has quickly made amends and learnt from his mistakes. Will he, going forward, know when to stand for what is right and when to try and mollify the rage of his enemies? No one knows; for after all, those who criticise him for being abrasive and undiplomatic were the same enemies who rebuffed his placatory efforts and plotted so maliciously to skin him. Mr Oshiomhole is sometimes voluble, but at other times, he has learnt to hold his cards close to his chest, saying little, learning much, and dealing his enemies, at unsuspecting moments, mortal blows. That style worked brilliantly for him when he governed Edo; it should stand him in good stead even now.
Unlike many of his enemies, the APC chairman is mindful of his humble background and thus puts on no airs. Nor has he seemed by reason of the adversity that befell him in the past few weeks lost his bucolic sense of humour that has served him well for decades, endearing him to many far above the generosity of spirit his enemies are capable of. But whether despite these accoutrements he will not become confused as to when to stand and fight for principles is anybody’s guess. The party’s constitution is unambiguous in most of its provisions. It was precisely his attempt to implement them to the letter that incensed the high and mighty in his party, and turned them into his mortal enemies. Whether he agrees or not, his best bet is to stand with the party’s rules and guidelines, to dispense justice without fear or favour, and to continue to envision a future for the party, a party not beholden to person or interest other than party and national interests. This is a difficult proposition; but he has little choice than to stay focused.
In all this, however, there is a catch. No matter how brave and polite Mr Oshiomhole becomes, even if he were to typify the most ardent constitutionalist in his party and in Nigeria, he will still have to operate within a complex political, economic and cultural environment that is at present severely diseased and increasingly paralysing. He has his failings, as this column and many other analysts have suggested, and he needs a far better approach in handling the affairs of the party than he has done or is capable of doing. But on the subject of his last set of battles with his enemies, particularly those who ganged up against him in the past few weeks, the APC chairman is largely blameless. He lost courage to inaugurate fresh appointees into the NWC; this was, however, a weakness, not a subversion of the party’s constitution along the gross lines in which his enemies plotted futilely to unseat him without reference to party rules and guidelines. He spoke roughly to some of his colleagues and betters, especially when he was right and his enemies wrong; but this again is a failure of style rather than a perpetration of crime.
The judiciary played an ignoble role in the Oshiomhole overthrow saga. Judges did not of course inspire the carnage, but they virtually led the attack and provided the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings for the putsch. There is no jurisprudential basis for the courts to sideline Mr Oshiomhole or empower Mr Giadom to act as chairman. Even the Court of Appeal was widely believed to have vacillated before eventually doing justice. Would the leadership of the judiciary, particularly the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and the National Judicial Council, have the good sense and ethical fortitude to quietly call for explanations as to why judges performed so woefully and so cowardly in the Oshiomhole affair? Are they worried by how ominously politics and politicians are compromising the sanctity of the judiciary and eroding their independence, to the point that judges are lending dubious legitimacy to political coups? Do they perceive the low esteem in which the judiciary is held today? Castrated by the executive, subverted by politicians, and distracted by a most insidious form of politics in the appointment of judges, is the judiciary still worth its salt? If nothing is done to arrest the decline in the judiciary, the disease will get worse.
In the face of an executive branch that keeps vacillating at crucial moments, especially in the face of orchestrated attacks against the country’s ethical foundations, and with a judiciary hobbled by extraneous factors, a legislature so distracted that it can’t see the wood for the trees, and a civil populace groping around with a cracked moral compass, Mr Oshiomhole is likely to be turned into a survivalist than a principled and visionary party chairman anxious to safeguard the place of his party tomorrow and the day after. The APC chairman may have begun to understand his limitations, and may now be inclined to dine with the devil in order to continue in office. But that would be a pity. The PDP lost its way barely after putting one president in office. If APC is to be different, Mr Oshiomhole will have to be enabled to do much more than he has done. There is, however, nothing in the horizon to show that they would allow or enable him. (The Nation)
