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The Opportunism of Honourable Aminu Waziri Tambuwal

The Opportunism of Honourable Aminu Waziri Tambuwal New York[RR] Abuja–We toiled and burnt the middle candle to negotiate the merger of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); Congress for Progressive Change (CPC); All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and factions of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) from January to June, […]

Tambuwal

The Opportunism of Honourable Aminu Waziri Tambuwal

New York[RR] Abuja–We toiled and burnt the middle candle to negotiate the merger of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); Congress for Progressive Change (CPC); All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and factions of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) from January to June, 2013 into one political party-All Progressives Congress. I remember how I and Barrister Ocholi James (SAN) were given the responsibility of editing the final draft Constitution of the APC sometimes in June, 2013. We spent three sleepless nights in the Nassarawa State Governor’s Lodge, Asokoro working to beat the deadline for submission of the constitution to the Independent National Electoral Commission so that APC can be registered.

I pay tribute to all the members of the Merger Committees of the defunct ACN, CPC, APGA, DPP and ANPP who toiled tirelessly to lay the foundation for the merger of these defunct parties in order for APC to emerge like a colossus in the Nigerian political firmament.

We were united in spirit and bonded by the desire to see the birth of a pan national progressive social movement that would be the centre of the gravitation of social forces in 2015 that will finally waged an epic battle once and for all against the retrogressive elites and forces that have held this country down for nearly half a century.

It is curiously that today some power elites and oligarchs are scheming to hand over the platform of the APC to their surrogates as the platform to contest the next presidential election even though they know in the inner recesses of their hearts that these surrogates would not win election for the party.

These oligarchs are simply afraid that somebody that the masses of Nigeria desire and have empathy with stand the chance of winning the nomination of the APC and eventually going ahead to win the 2015 presidential election.

The APC presidential ticket cannot be thrown to those who idly stood by when the PDP was using all manner of shenanigan and chicanery to make itself the only political party in Nigeria.

The doors of the APC should be permanently shut to opportunists that now want to reap from where they did not sow.

Yesterday I read the profound and breathtaking essay by Dele Momodu titled “A note of Caution for APC” in Saturday Edition of This Day Newspaper of 15th November, 2014 in which he stridently warned the political oligarchies in and outside the APC, wheeling and dealing to hand over the presidential ticket to one of their stooges lurking around the corner with bated breath; and I really felt like crying on the how a tiny elites keep on holding all of us down for their selfish ends.

The incontrovertible fact that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians from all parts of Nigeria that commented and supported the sentiments eloquently expressed by Dele Momodu is graphic pointer to the fact that any mistake on the part of the APC on its choice of its presidential candidate would spell doomed for the Party in the 2015 general election.

He became a member of the House of Representatives in 2003 under the platform of the defunct ANPP.

Honourable Aminu Waziri Tambuwal is the Speaker of the Houses of Representatives. He became Speaker by default because the position was zoned to the South West Chapter of the People Democratic Party. But he broke contested and won by aligning with the opposition.

Just two weeks ago he decamped in a dramatic manner to the All Progressives Congress that resulted in overheating of the polity. This predilection for Tambuwal for mercurial and inconsistent political behaviour may be wrongly attributed to his being smart but it decidedly does not portray him as a principled person who should be trusted.

In 2007 he defected from the ANPP to the Democratic People’s Party with Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa but made a volte face and returned to ANPP when the DPP refused to give ticket to legislators from the ANP that defected to it. However when the ANPP Governorship Candidate for Sokoto State, Alhaji Aliyu Wammako, decided to switch from ANPP to the Peoples Democratic Party in 2007, Honourable Tambuwal followed him.

Just two weeks before the political dust and reverberation of his decampment is yet to settle, Tambuwal has shown that he can readily be a pawn in the cheese of some political overlords steeped in intrigues and manipulation by jumping into the race for the presidential nomination of the APC.

Tambuwal has portrayed himself as an archetypical Nigerian Politicians; all brawl, boisterous, opportunistic and unprincipled. He has changed political parties more than five times since his entry into politics about 11 years ago.

This trait does not show him as a principled fellow who can be trusted to win the presidency of Nigeria and carried the much needed radical political, social and economic reforms to change Nigeria; a country that is on the nadir of collapse after decades of mismanagement of the country by its bankrupt and visionless political elite.

Nigeria need a president that can be pushed, manipulated and is at the behest of some unseen political overlords and oligarch at this point in time.

Those who are clamouring and promoting the candidacy of Tambuwal are enemies of the APC and the People of Nigeria who are surely yearning for a change and tired of a leader that are susceptible to the whims, caprices and biddings of some anonymous political oligarchs.

The rather cold and negative reaction of the thousands of APC faithful and Nigerians alike to the news that Tambuwal collection of a presidential nomination form of the APC last weekend is a signal to those who are selfishly promoting and pushing his candidacy that there is a likely be a serious back rash and hostility to his candidacy that will surely cause the APC. A word is enough for the wise. The politics of presidency nomination and election is not all about youthful vibrancy, media savvies, blitzkrieg and razzmatazz.

Tambuwal cannot be the symbol of the change millions of Nigerians are yearning. He is too steeped in the prebendal and cliental politics that has been the bane of the country since independence. He is too unstable politically. He is not a determined and steadfast person. He is beholden to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and General Ibrahim Babangida and social forces that have held the country down. He seems he is not his own man.

I insist that the presidential candidate of the APC must be a weather beaten, hardnosed and principled and genuine oppositional leader not surely those who are scions of the wing of the political class that have made political prostitution and opportunism a virtue rather than a vice in Nigeria.

Credit: APC, Agent, Okoi Obono-Obla

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