The declaration in Ibadan last week by South West regional leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] that the party’s 2019 presidential ticket “is open to all party members” may sound like a bland restatement of constitutional principle. In truth, it was a political shot across the bow for President Muhammadu Buhari as the jostling for 2019 begins to gather pace. A shot across the bow is a naval slang for firing cannon across the front of a ship in order to force it to stop or to alter its course. If the ship does not obey the warning, the next cannon could be aimed directly at its starboard.
If most people missed the import of the party chiefs’ warning, it was because they simultaneously fired a direct shot at the rival regional group Afenifere. Former APC national chairman Chief Adebisi Akande, who chaired the Ibadan meeting, told reporters after it ended that the APC leaders disowned the restructuring campaign and would instead insist on devolution of powers. That shot sought to disembowel Afenifere, which in recent times is clinging to relevance with the strident restructuring campaign. The South West APC chiefs felt they were being politically upstaged even though they hold all the important federal and state political offices in the region. If they accede to the restructuring campaign, they would have to play second fiddle to Afenifere and PDP, which initiated it.
On the other hand they are unhappy with President Buhari, who they feel has not rewarded them adequately for their contribution to his election victory. They feel this is the time to say so, in a thinly veiled manner. Regarding Buhari’s possible second term bid Akande said, “He has not told us he is running for 2019. Anybody in our party is free to become the president of Nigeria as long as he indicates interest. We have a process through which a candidate will be selected.” This is not the kind of fawning support that you expect to hear from members of a ruling party in Nigeria. They usually begin to campaign for a president’s [or a governor’s] unopposed second term bid even before he himself thinks about it.
Present at the Ibadan meeting were all the important Yoruba APC leaders except the two most important ones, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. According to Akande, Tinubu missed the meeting because he had “stomach ache.” This is hard to believe since the Government House, Agodi’s clinic must have a few Flagyl tablets and many VIP toilets. The wily Jagaban Borgu must be playing games here. He held himself in reserve while his political associates fired the shot across the president’s bow so that he can serve as the fire fighter.
On his part President Buhari spent quality time last week trying to reassure South East community leaders that his regime is not marginalising the region and that he has many projects lined up for it. He made the pitch without passion, since he regarded almost all Ohanaeze chieftains to be in cahoots with PDP. Which makes the South West APC chiefs’ gambit doubly important because they provided the tipping point for victory in the last election and their defection would reduce APC to a Northern regional party, a strategist’s nightmare. These days I often conclude by offering unsolicited advice. I think the president should appoint a Political Adviser.
Slip versus twist of tongue
People who had long ago concluded that President Buhari’s administration is partial in its appointments and other commitments towards his native Northern region thought they got the best evidence last week when President of the World Bank Group Jim Yong Kim was reported as having said in Washington, DC that the bank concentrated its attention on Northern Nigeria in line with President Buhari’s request.
Kim said, “In my very first meeting with President Buhari he said specifically that he would like us to shift our focus to the northern region of Nigeria and we’ve done that… Focusing on the northern part of Nigeria, we hope that as commodity prices stabilise and oil prices come back up, the economy will grow a bit more. But very, very much important is the need to focus on what the drivers of growth in the future will be.”
The condemnations were swift and they came in torrents. The Ijaw Youth Council [IYC] said it was “not surprised” by the “revelation” because Buhari “has succeeded in running a government of the North, by the North and for the North.” Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose said, “The President has never hidden the fact that he is a sectional leader and because of his nepotism, religious bigotry and favouritism, Nigeria is now more divided than ever before.” Afenifere’s spokesman Yinka Odumakin said “that statement goes to the foundation of the country; it throws a dagger to the heart of Nigerian unity.” Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s assistant Reno Omokri, a rabid Buhari critic, said, “For years I’ve been saying President @MBuhari is a sectional leader and I thank God the President of the @WorldBank has vindicated me.”
Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina’s response also came in swiftly, but the main message was buried in a heap of insults. Adesina said, “Those who specialize in a deliberate twisting of information have wailed and raged endlessly on the news item credited to the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, who disclosed in Washington DC that President Buhari had requested a concentration of the Bank’s intervention efforts in the northern part of Nigeria, particularly in the North-east. The ignorant and mischievous people, who twist everything for their vile purposes, are making it seem that it was a calculated attempt to give the North an unfair advantage over other parts of Nigeria…Those ululating over the disclosure by the President of the World Bank should be a bit reflective…”
The essential message, unduly buried in the rhetoric, was that “President Buhari, during a trip to Washington in 2015…sought the help of the World Bank in rebuilding the beleaguered North-east, which was then being wrested from the stranglehold of a pernicious insurgency.” Why not simply say that without the insults? In that wise Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, a witness to the Washington event and a key beneficiary of the World Bank effort, came to the rescue. He said in a statement in Maiduguri that President Buhari’s appeal to the World Bank was to address economic rebuilding and humanitarian crisis in the North-East. Shettima mentioned the date of the Kim/Buhari meeting, July 15 2015, and said five governors, three of them from the South, were seated at the table when Buhari asked World Bank to help rebuild the ravaged North East. The request was made in the open, not secretly, Shettima said.
Now, in Nigeria these days, there is a very big difference between the phrases “Northern Nigeria” and “North East.” Even though the latter is geographically and politically a part of the former, since 2011 “North East” has come to mean the parts of the country most ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. World Bank estimates the losses at $9 billion, $6 billion in Borno State alone. Almost no one therefore disputes that the region needs special help. I don’t expect Kim, an American of Korean descent, to know the difference between “Northern Nigeria” and “North East.” Unfortunately that slight slip, or was it twist of the tongue was enough to cause political storm in Nigeria.
