Expectations of huge crisis from the belligerent groups within the majority APC in the Senate and House of Representatives is all over the place. The crises obviously serve the interests of many groups and individuals both within the legislature and outside it.
The expectation from these groups is that as soon as both chambers reconvene, the protagonists and antagonists would continue to lock horns and the leadership crisis would persist until either side gets what it wants otherwise the roof should collapse on the system. As unfortunate as this situation is, it is critical that those involved have a rethink of the impact and implications on the nation especially and their politics particularly.
This piece is intends to draw the attention of both the leadership of the APC and their elected representatives to the dangers that lie ahead of them and the party in the event that they don’t get over the crisis soonest. One thing that seems palpably glaring is the hypothesis that the crisis suggests many things among which is the fact that the interest of the political leadership, regardless of the political party and those in parliament, this time around the APC, is the advancement of self-interests and not those of the nation.
This assumption is increasingly becoming germane when placed against the backdrop of the fierce rattling that is heard, especially from the APC mainline loyalists in the Senate, of their preparedness to either have their way or everything else should collapse. This is the picture that several Nigerians are seeing from this unfortunate development.
In the House of Representatives, the agitation is more simplistic than it is in the Senate and the reason is simple. The APC has a larger and more comfortable majority in the House than it does in the Senate and I wonder why the leadership of the governing party failed to see this vivid reality soon after the March elections and instead sought to take the same unholy path that the PDP took in 2011 and got the defeat of its life in the House.
It is dangerous to continue to raise the crisis even in the Senate because it is gradually eroding the hope, support and confidence that Nigerian voters had for the APC and its candidates. What is clear is that all the factions in both the Senate and House are responding to their self-fulfillment and the fact that the party felt defeated, in my view, must not be taken to the extreme as several members, especially in the upper chamber, are doing and seem ready to go all the way to either get through or pull down the roof.
The APC leadership must get its acts together by understanding that the crisis is presenting the otherwise dead PDP with the opportunity to bounce back by not just being active but relevant in the scheme of things in the political economy of the central government that it had lost. The APC needs to be more organised and this can simply be achieved if the current leadership of the two chambers is accepted and worked with.
The idea of party supremacy is real, but has to be built on the platform of justice and fairness and not through arbitrary whims of those who call the shots at the party hierarchy or in government. Party supremacy must be rooted in party discipline and not any other thing, as this case seems to suggest.
Whatever the feelings of the party leadership may be, there is a general consensus that a fundamental blunder has been committed by the party and it will only continue to compound the problem by the seeming recalcitrance of some of its members, especially in the Senate. What must be done is for the party to call those who feel shortchanged by what happened on June 9 to order so that the national legislature is allowed the space to function rather than this dangerous position that is only capable of aggravating the problem.
For sure, the whole Senate leadership debacle is opportunistic and aimed at serving selfish interests and not the Senate or the nation or even the political party, a platform that saw them to victory. Every right thinking person should know that it is impossible to remove Bukola Saraki from that position just because some people in the APC feel he is not their choice.
The debacle will not serve the nation well even if those who are engaged in it desire to force their way through, the colossal damage that the instability is having on the very fabric of both the legislature, our democracy and the nation as a whole, is unimaginable. I think the embattled groups must sheathe their swords and to me, effective leadership supremacy in this case before us, is more on the party to ensure that the antagonists rest their case while those in position of leadership bend backwards to attend to some exigencies of the political realities of our time.
Nigeria’s democracy is at a very great risk, especially at this time when most of the nation and even the international community, is at home with the reality that credible elections were held in March and April 2015.
This National Assembly leadership crisis does not and will not serve anybody any good. The earlier the APC and their elected representatives realised this, the better for them and for all, especially because 2019 is just next-door.
We expect the National Assembly to reconvene in good order and in peace otherwise they may face the wrath of the people if minor issues of leadership bordering on selfish obscurantism would obstruct the course of legislating for good governance.
