By Nicholas Ibekwe

By now it is clear to everybody that the hierarchy of the All Progressives Congress is out to get the Senate President, Bukola Saraki. To believe this “awakening” of the Code of Conduct Bureau has anything to do with President Muhammadu Buhari’s now famous “body language” or his campaign against corruption will be the height of naivety.

Dr.-Bukola-Saraki
Saraki

This is a witch-hunt. It is what it is. There is no point pretending it is not.

However, witch-hunt or not, The CCB is within its right to drag Saraki to the tribunal if it discovered discrepancies in his asset declaration. That is the law. Saraki should stop playing hide and seek like a child and go and defend himself. In fact, if he had done this last Friday, a police constable would not be escorting him to court as may likely to happen on today when the tribunal reconvenes.

Having said that, one thing is clear from this whole Saraki and Code of Conduct saga: the APC is a party that flourishes on Machiavellian principals.

Yes, we saw this “the-end-justifies-means” approach in its complete decimation of the over-confident People Democratic Party (PDP) during the recent national elections. There was no limit to what the party did to discredit the PDP and its slacking candidate, Goodluck Jonathan, before the electorate. it worked. To be fair to them, the PDP mostly dug its own grave and handed the APC the machete with which it was hacked to death.

Of course, this is politics and not a game of draughts. One is allowed to use whatever means legally available against one’s opponents in one’s quest for power and influence. This is even more so for a party whose leaders had been kept out of power for 16 years despite several attempts to get to the middle. One does not go to war against an opponent as deep-pocketed and entrenched like the PDP with cheerleaders’ antics.

But the problem of the APC is that it does not know where to draw the line. Still basking in the euphoria of the effectiveness of its method in upstaging the PDP, Some personalities in the party think this Machiavellian approach is a one-size-fits-all remedy to conflict resolution. So they have regrettably carried it over in resolving internal party disputes.

The over-bloated egos that make up the party have shown time and time again that they do not believe in dialogue and compromises as tools of resolving internal conflicts. The party is yet to wean itself of election hangover. When there are disputes within the party, members adopt all kinds of subterfuges and shenanigans to discredit one another. Going by the manner the party has resolved internal crisis since it won the election, one would be forgiven to think, it is mafia group and not a political party.

The party ineffective leadership has proved utterly useless in reining in the overlords within the party. It is every man for himself. These lions within the party will stop at nothing at destroying rivals for a share of the kill. They will decimate their rivals’ pride including the cubs. They do not take prisoners. This is Game of Thrones without the script and costume.

A look at the characters at the centre of this saga will reveal that this might turn out to be perhaps one of the biggest and most interesting tussles of power in the last 16 years.

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The egos involved in this duel are President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu on one side versus Saraki on the other side. It will definitely not end well for the loser(s) in this contest because all three characters involved are not famous for treating their rivals with compassion.

Tinubu is said to have a pattern of decimating his opponents. With the media believed to be under his armpit, he often initiates his attacks with a barrage of propaganda unleashed to rubbish his opponent. Mercenary writers, who are said to be under his pay, are hired to compose and distribute damaging articles against his rivals. On social media, an army of young people is always on the alert, lurking behind their flashy mobile devices ready to unleash 140 character attacks on his rivals at the snap of a finger. It doesn’t stop there. The grapevine insists he uses his money and influence to buy or force others to his side. Soon enough, as a result of all, or some of the antics mentioned above, his rivals will begin to feel as helpless as a crippled chick surrounded by soldier ants. Tinubu’s approach to conflict resolution is total destruction or complete subjugation. No wonder the Financial Times called him a Machiavellian politician in that near gushing piece. Tinubu has stepped on so many notable names in his quest to becoming the political behemoth that he is today. He is the wildfire of Nigerian politics. Everyone stupid enough to stand in his way is completely consumed. Femi Pedro, Kofo Bucknor-Akerele, Alliance for Democracy and even the Afenifere are all notable names that have been crushed by the Jagaban Borgu.

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If Tinubu is Machiavellian, so is Saraki, who, ironically, is playing the victim here. Saraki is the overlord of Kwara politics. Today, Tinubu is everybody’s political bogeyman because Lagos, which he hold sway over is the country’s most populous and prosperous state, thus it is constantly in the eyes of the media. But what Saraki is doing in Kwara is no different, if not worse than what Tinubu is doing in Lagos and other South West States. Saraki is the perhaps the first Nigerian politician to commit a political patricide. He effectively usurped his late father’s political influence and rendered him political relic before his death. His sister, Gbemi, wasn’t also spared. In the end she was forced to apologise and made to fall in line. One just have to study how Saraki emerged the senate president to understand he would stop at nothing to get what he wants, even dining with the devil, which has taken the form of the PDP in this instance.

Buhari always remembers. Three decade is not enough for him to forget and maybe forgive those who offended him. Could it be that the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, is in court today, for what, in my opinion is a frivolous illegal arms possession charge, because he lead the troops that effectively kicked the Buhari military regime out of office 30 years ago? Buhari was against the emergence of Saraki as senate president, is this him trying to punish Saraki for outsmarting the party by forming an “unholy alliance” with the PDP? Let not forget that the asset declaration charges against Saraki were filed just days after Tinubu visited the president at the State House. Well, not all conspiracy theories are untrue.

In all, this is bile-fueled party politics like we have never seen before in the history of the country. It is vicious. The party cannot allow this method of conflict resolution became entrenched. If something is not done to stop it now, it will snowball and will eventually consume the party.

http://www.olisa.tv/2015/09/21/sarakis-ordeal-machiavellianism-as-the-overriding-principle-of-the-apc/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

Hmm

This was written by Nicholas Ibekwe!