As Nigerias freefall into chaos has continued unimpeded under the derelict watch of the ruling All Progressives Congress, many chieftains of the party, perhaps tormented by the stark failures they have midwifed, which have become the stuff of Nigerias nightmare, have taken it upon themselves to offer unsolicited advice to the Giant of Africa and the gritty citizens who make it tick.
If the party had shown its mercantile hand by pegging the costs of nomination forms for its primaries at a hundred million naira, its decision to go for Muslim presidential candidate and a Muslim running mate in a country run ragged by Islamist terrorism has confirmed that it has a mischievous side.
Filthy framers of the Nigerian reality
Yet, when Nigerians have sat by the fireside of regret to recount like horror tales the legion of locusts that have fallen upon their country, influential people from the APC have sought to offer their thoughts and even their suggestions on how the graves they gleefully contributed in digging for the Giant of Africa will be covered. It can only be mendacity.
When in the heat of the primaries of the APC, the National Chiarman of the Party, Abdullahi Adamu announced that the Senate President Ahmed Lawan had emerged as the consensus candidate of the party for the position of president, crisis flared up within the party.
The primaries still went on and Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerged as the party`s presidential candidate for the 2023 elections much to the chagrin of many Nigerians and even many within the APC who have however shown that they are experts in concealing their distaste for one of their own.
Abdullahi Adamu`s red face.
The fallout of the announcement of Ahmed Lawan as the consensus candidate and his subsequent rejection by many within the party left Abdullahi Adamu, the former Nasarawa State Governor and national chairman of the APC with eggs on his face.
The premature announcement of a consensus candidate fetched him widespread backlash from within his own party gave him away as someone who had no respect for the political sensibilities of people from within his own party, especially the southerners who were angling for a power shift to the south from the north. At best, it was a disgruntled national chairman that watched as Bola Ahmed Tinubu who he clearly did not favour clinched the ticket in early June.
What has now become clear by Mr. Adamus recent utterances is that he has nursed some level of bitterness since his camp lost the ticket to Mr. Tinubus camp. This much was revealed when he seemed to find some gratification and even justification in the fact that Mr. Tinubu has gone for Mr. Kashim Shettima, another Muslim, as his running mate to foist a Muslim-Muslim ticket on Nigeria.
According to Mr. Tinubu, “Nobody is willing to promote a Christian or a Muslim ticket necessarily but we have to face the reality of our politics in this country and that is exactly what we are doing. Christians have nothing to fear. Shettima is another Nigerian like me and you.
“We don’t have to be all Muslims or all Christians. It is the will of God that this time around he (Shettima) is going to be the vice-president of this great country if we win the election. And we do hope and pray and we are working to win the election.”
Cold comfort really in a country where it increasingly appears that those who sow and spread terror have a serious obsession with Christians, especially those of Southern Kaduna.
It does not require clairvoyance to see through Mr. Adamu`s clever talk and predict his reaction were a Christian-Christian ticket to be the object of so much angst.
Christians may have nothing to fear really, but Nigeria has everything to fear from a menacing Muslim-Muslim ticket
Akeredolu`s flippancy
For Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, it has been a wild swing between convenience and complicity. Amidst the clamour that the good people of the Southeast had never produced president of the country, Akeredolu had staunchly insisted that the ticket should go to the South.
As the race heated up, his true intentions began to emerge when he insisted that in the South, it was the turn of the Southwest, even though the Southeast had never produced the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Now, having got his wish in the choice of Mr. Bola Tinubu, by his utterances, Mr. Akeredolu cares little about the religious complexion of the ticket.
But he should care. He should care that among other things, Christians in the country are about to be shortchanged and the justification is little more than a joke.
Mr. Akeredolu, under whose watch in Ondo State, terrorists linked to ISWAP massacred about 40 Christians in a catholic church in Owo on June 5, should care about how a Muslim -Muslim ticket would embolden those who are determined to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.
Akeredolu who recently revealed that he considered himself an alternate president of the country when he was President of the Nigeria Bar Association between 2008 and 2010 should learn to put equity in Nigeria above his personal interests.
He must now find some consistency in his publicly stated positions. Together with Mr. Adamu and all those who occupy sensitive public offices in Nigeria, he must learn to put Nigeria before party and personal interests.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
