The best word to describe Nigeria at this moment in time is chaos.
Troubled by the surprise turn of events, the ongoing reconciliation efforts by the ruling All Progressive Congress is threatening to overwhelm the party and President Mohammadu Buhari’s presidency, and there’s every reason to believe things will get worse, not better, in the coming days.
The APC at the National level is plagued at all quarters by bad stories — Poor governance, lack of internal democracy, corruption, inadequate attention to the economy, political high-handedness, nepotism etc., etc. — but President Buhari’s perchance for surrounding himself with a group of cabal also forced these stories around him.
The storm is gathering and it does not look good for the party. The only leverage that they have is that the APC has little to no opposition to their plethora of bad stories.
The PDP which is supposed to checkmate the APC is still drooling from the defeat it earned itself in 2015. The party is yet to recover and assume its rightful position as opposition.
The signals coming from the chief reconciler himself over the past few days seem to paint a picture of a party too divided and too distinct to galvanize its members under one roof.
Hardly had Bola Tinubu settled for the daunting task of unifying aggrieved members of the party that no other person than his wife took to a national TV and declared that her husband was sidelined after the elections.
Few days after she spoke her mind and perhaps, that of her husband, the reconciler in chief wrote to Mr. President informing him of the role played by the National Chairman of the Party, John Oyegun, to scuttle the peace process initiated by the President.
During the same week, State Chairmen of the party endorsed the extension of the National Chairman’s tenure with a loud deafening statement.
The events of the past week have shown that the party is in a huge tumult — not uncommon for greedy power grabbers anyway– but it seems incredibly incapable of managing its internal affairs.
These sceneries are reminiscent of what transpired within the ranks of PDP in 2014. The then ruling party was engulfed in an internal struggle that the then National Chairman, Adamu Muazu, stated that time when others worked while the rest enjoyed the fruits of their labour was over.
President Jonathan did not get that signal. Those close to him kept assuring him that all was well and better without really doing their homework to ascertain where the party needs to make amends.
The people close to President Buhari are not doing him any favours by forcing such nonchalant attitude out of him.
In short, it is glaring that save for what they are getting from running round corridors of power, they do not proffer sound solutions to the storms threatening his presidency.
Even long-term loyalists of the party and President Buhari’s defenders are beginning to disassociate themselves from anything that has to do with him. The President is too preoccupied with misgoverning the country to see it.
What is important is not that the president thinks that he has done so well for the country to deserve praises that he is not getting at the material time. He thinks that all the time. What is perhaps different this time is that the biggest opposition to his government is within the levels of his own party and here is why:
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been at daggers drawn with the APC controlled National Assembly over the order of the 2019 general elections with many analysts saying that attempts by the National Assembly to effect the change is targeted at the president.
The legislators want their election to come before that of the president and state governors. INEC on its part has refused attempts by the National Assembly to change the election orders citing certain Electoral acts in the constitution.
In short, the commission took it a notch higher by arranging election orders for the next 30 years.
The National Assembly might attempt to veto the powers of the president in that regard and plunge the country and the party into deeper crisis.
However, the biggest chaos is reserved for the day that the ruling party will conduct its national convention. The times are changing.
