APC and its traducers
For me, to say that the ruling (some have substituted that with ruining) Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is living on a borrowed time is to state the obvious. With the multiple crises rocking the party from all angles, Nigerians’ increasing disenchantment with the administration it spun and the all but-consummated coming together of the leading […]
For me, to say that the ruling (some have substituted that with ruining) Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is living on a borrowed time is to state the obvious. With the multiple crises rocking the party from all angles, Nigerians’ increasing disenchantment with the administration it spun and the all but-consummated coming together of the leading opposition political parties into the All Progressives Congress (APC), the days of the self-acclaimed largest party in Africa in the driving seat of governance are coming to an end. With it would also go the impunity that has stunted the nation’s progress for thirteen years now.
To be sure, the PDP has so progressively misgoverned the nation in the past 13 years of the current democratic dispensation that even after four general elections, the so-called largest party in Africa has yet to convince majority of Nigerians that democracy is indeed the better alternative to the military dictatorship it replaced in 1999, or even that there is a fundamental difference between the two. Even the much-vaunted rule of law would now appear, to all intents and purposes, only in name, as the political space is suffused with intolerance to views opposed to the official line. In Aso Rock Presidential Villa as in Wadata Plaza, dissenting views are not suffered lightly, as language best suited to the denizens of the motor park is the ready medium of response to government and party critics. Presidential spokesmen and their erstwhile PDP counterpart would shame any self-respecting motor park tout any day when it comes to using unpresidential language to respond to criticism, no matter how constructive. General Muhammadu Buhari, Bola Tinubu, Nuhu Ribadu and Fani Kayode, among others, would attest to this.
Although Nigeria’s earning in the past 13 years has been unprecedented, the level of decay of infrastructure, the pervasive insecurity and abject poverty in the country have been equally unprecedented, courtesy of the even more unprecedented level of corruption which has assumed a new definition under the present government, becoming a byword for governance. So pervasive is the nauseating corruption in high places that Nigerians always look back with nostalgia to preceding administrations from1999 to date.
Therefore, the response of the collapsing PDP to the opposition political parties’ re-strategising ahead of the 2015 general elections did come as a surprise only to the gullible, because it is not dissimilar to the panic of a drowning person.
Ever since it became obvious that there was no going back on the proposed coming together in a merger by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction each of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), the PDP has made a very poor show of concealing its panic at the prospect of having a formidable opponent to face in future polls.
The merging parties had hardly revealed the name of their proposed party as the All Progressives Congress when some agent provocateurs rushed to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register political parties with similar APC acronym.
And now that that antic has failed the emerging APC has been labelled a Muslims political party, with those sponsoring this line of profiling mischievously ignoring the fact that the 35 positions in the interim EXCO are about evenly split among Muslims (18) and Christians (17).
In between and, in fact, long before these puerile attempts to undermine the oppositions’ emergent APC, some of its principal promoters have been variously profiled as strange bedfellows, religious bigots, liars, expired politicians, ethnic irredentists, etc, by both official spokespersons as well as sponsored commentators.
For most Nigerians, these attempts to undermine the APC are all the more reasons why its promoters should remain resolute and steadfast even after it is successfully registered, for those willing to use religion to divide the society in order to cling to power will not give up until the results of the 2015 elections are announced.
Meanwhile, proponents of progress should take consolation in the Hausa saying that “In rana ta fito tafin hannu baya kare ta”, which loosely translates as “the palm cannot cover the emerging sun”.
Malumfashi wrote from Kongo, Zaria, Kaduna State