ANALYSIS: How Atiku, Tambuwal Clipped Tinubu’s Wings In APC

The current National Assembly leadership tussle that led to the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Honourable Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives, has revealed the cracks in what many perceived as the “strong” alliance that is the All Progressives Congress, APC.

It will be recalled that five (four major and one minor) political platforms, namely the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, and a faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, had come together in the first successful attempt to form a mega party in Nigeria to float the APC.

What do you expect the incoming government of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari to handle first?

• C) Corruption (39%, 6,725 Votes)
• B) Power (28%, 4,886 Votes)
• A) Security (21%, 3,579 Votes)
• D) Unemployment (11%, 1,806 Votes)
• E) Undecided (1%, 176 Votes)

Total Voters: 17,172

At the time, many political analysts and social commentators argued that the party was formed too early and thus predicted that the new mega party would be short-lived, dying even before the 2015 General Elections.

Instead, more thrust was injected when aggrieved members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, led by five outspoken and controversial Governors, joined forces to create what was called the new PDP, which eventually was absorbed by the APC.

The new party, united in its resolve to wrest power from the PDP, a party that had been in political control of the country for all the 16 years of the present democratic dispensation, managed to keep the faint cracks that threatened to show in check.

After the victory at the presidential elections, like any entity whose foundation is made by gluing separate pieces together, lines of demarcation were being drawn to segregate the groupings according to their origins.

Hence, the PDP group started agitating for relevance on the ground that President Muhammadu Buhari, his Vice, Yemi Osinbajo and the National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, were from the CPC, ACN and ANPP respectively.

Coming from a party that had become so unwieldy that indiscipline and personal aggrandizement of members has relegated party supremacy to the background, the aggrieved PDP members could not dance to the tune of one man, former Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

The Tuesday “parliamentary coup” could therefore be seen as a realignment of forces of old foes who recognized the importance of working together, no matter what has transpired between them earlier, to remain relevant.

Despite the fact that Tinubu, through the APC leadership, had blessed Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila as its candidates of choice in the National Assembly elections, reports filtered in that former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and former Speaker and current
Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, had other plans.

According to sources within the APC, Atiku and Kwankwaso allegedly colluded with Saraki to undermine the will of the party, while Tambuwal supported Dogara, despite their party’s stand.

Apart from this, Atiku has been fingered as one of those determined to “clip the wings” of the Asiwaju, which is why it is no surprise that it was Atiku’s residence that Saraki visited merely moments after his inauguration.

Another evidence of the division is that while Tinubu and the party leadership, through Lai Mohammed, have rejected the new National Assembly leadership, the President, in a statement by Femi Adesina that was more on the side of ambiguity than clarity, accepted the new leadership that came through a “somewhat constitutional” process even though he would have preferred that the lawmakers toed the party line.

Punch Newspapers, reporting the developments, quoted sources within the APC as saying that the party may introduce sanctions against Atiku and Tambuwal over the outcome of the National Assembly elections.

“Don’t you find it curious that the first person that Saraki visited after emerging as Senate President was Atiku? We have information that Atiku told his supporters in the Senate to vote for Saraki and that was what happened. We know that Atiku is still nursing a presidential ambition for 2019 and he is now beginning to build blocks,” the source said.
“Tambuwal is also nursing a presidential ambition and needs to retain control over the House. He will not be able to retain such influence if Gbajabiamila is the Speaker.”

All these cracks, divisions and squabbling within the APC is good news for the PDP as Senate Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu, who was holding the same position in the last dispensation and who, two weeks ago, was saddled with the responsibility of reorganizing the PDP for continued relevance in the country’s political scene was put in the picture.

The responsibility of Ekweremadu, who is the only principal officer in the new National Assembly that does not belong to the APC, to reposition the PDP, is also pointing to the fact that of the possibility of the return of the defectors to their former party.

If this occurs, and the possibility is very high because the renegades are still bonded, then a situation where the different political parties would control the Executive and Legislative arms of governments, a situation that trailed former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.