APC, Tinubu and the Yari Challenge

eniola.bello@thisdaylive.com

0805 500 1956

By Eniola bello

After many years of planning, moving, manoeuvring, building alliances and waiting, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu last Monday transited to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, following his victory in the February 25th presidential election. On the road to that electoral victory, Tinubu fought many bruising political battles. There is no doubt that the new president is bound to be confronted with similar, yet different, kind of political battles from the ones he fought on his rough ride to the presidential office.

The first of such battles is the ruling party’s decision to zone the leadership of the National Assembly – the Senate President to the South-south, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and Deputy Senate President to the Northwest, and the Deputy Speaker to the Southeast. There has been a furore in the ruling party since the APC released the zoning arrangement a few weeks ago. Some members-elect interested in those offices but were zoned out threw up a storm. The North central, which was not allocated any leadership position, as against the Northwest with two, requested for a review.

The party leadership, in managing the situation, promised to take another look and appealed for calm. But that calm has been like the silence of the graveyard. Mostly. Some of the senators and House members who have a problem with the party’s zoning arrangement have refused to be quiet. They have refused to be zoned out and have vowed to pursue their aspirations irrespective of the party’s decision. Foremost among these is Senator-elect Abdulaziz Yari, a former governor of Zamfara State. Although the Senate President is zoned to the South-south and Tinubu and the ruling party have endorsed Akpabio for the office, Yari has refused to back down. He says having been a member of the House of Representatives,  he has the knowledge, experience and ranking; that as a former governor, he has the administrative capacity; that of the three arms of government, since the Executive and Judiciary are headed by southerners, the North should not be denied the leadership of the Legislature; that the Northwest, having delivered, in the presidential election, more votes to the APC than other zones, it should it should be accorded primacy to produce the Senate President; and the party should allow members of the National Assembly produce its own leaders in accordance with section 50 (1a&b) of the 1999 Constitution. To show he meant business, Yari has turned the 9th floor of the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja to his Campaign Secretariat, and has been meeting a cross section of senators-elect individually and collectively.

For Tinubu, however, his endorsement of Akpabio is primarily informed by the need to have a religious balancing. The thinking in the president’s camp is that a Christian Senate President would almost even out the Muslim-Muslim ticket the APC fielded for the presidential election, a ticket which generated divisive controversy and caused a negative campaign against the party, particularly by the Pentecostal clergy. With the zoning of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Northwest, the APC is faced with a fait accompli of another Muslim in Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, the Northwest not having a Christian member in the House, nor even in the Senate. The Tinubu camp therefore is taking Yari’s ambition with a dim view, with some interpreting it as an attempt to destabilize the government even before its proper take-off, if there was no single Christian among Nos.1 to 5 as Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola is a Muslim.

The Yari camp, however, have a counter argument. They say religion should have no bearing in the election of principal officials of the National Assembly. That what is important is the provision of the Constitution directing members to elect their own leaders. They think it is hypocritical for those who did not see religious balancing as an issue while picking a running mate to now use religion as a weapon to deny others their right to pursue their ambitions.

What appears clear, from the foregoing, is that Tinubu is faced with the first political battle of his presidency. How this is handled will have a great impact on the direction of his administration. The matter shouldn’t have gotten this low had the APC National Chairman Abdullahi Adamu understood the importance of consultation. As president, it is Tinubu’s prerogative to endorse any candidate of his choice for the leadership positions of the National Assembly. A presidential endorsement, however, does not equate an immutable pronouncement; it shouldn’t stop other members of the legislative houses from putting their popularity to the test. That would be dictatorship. Ideally, when a president expresses preference for a particular aspirant for a legislative office, it is left to the party leadership to, to use a peculiarly Nigerian political parlance, deliver the president’s preference through consensus building. It does appear Chairman Adamu is incapable of building consensus on any issue. Immediately the APC made public the zoning and endorsement arrangements, others interested in the legislative offices at stake rose in bitter protest, complaining they were never consulted.

This inability to consult, the propensity to take unilateral decision seems to be Adamu’s style. Indeed, when immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari apparently wanted Senate President Ahmad Lawan as APC presidential candidate, Adamu, with magisterial authority, declared Lawan as the party’s consensus candidate. He made the declaration without necessarily carrying out consultations with other presidential aspirants or state governors or National Assembly members or other party leaders. How do you arrive at a consensus without consultations? Of course, it was no surprise that some other aspirants challenged Lawan’s endorsement, with Tinubu leading a revolt with his ‘Emilokan’ declaration in Abeokuta. In no time, the state governors of the party killed Lawan’s supposed endorsement. 

The danger in zoning and presidential endorsement of National Assembly positions, when chaotically handled, is its propensity to snowball into a needless crisis between the Executive and Legislative arms of government. We saw it in 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo’s endorsement of Evan Enwerem as Senate President instigated a crisis leading to the election and removal of four senate presidents in four years. That crisis spilled over to the House of Representatives and the ensuing instability led to Obasanjo’s attempted impeachment. We saw it in 2011 when Aminu Tambuwal led a parliamentary coup in the House of Representatives that upstaged the zoning, by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), of the Speaker to the Southwest. This led to a cat and mouse game between the House and President Goodluck Jonathan, and a crisis that contributed to Jonathan losing the 2015 election. We also saw it in 2015 when Bukola Saraki successfully led another parliamentary coup to stop the APC-endorsed Lawan as Senate President. The ensuing unease degenerated into a lack of cooperation between the National Assembly and President Buhari, and even Saraki’s prosecution (or what he called persecution) by the Code of Conduct Tribunal. 

On the flip side, there is no reason to believe that the National Assembly under a presidential endorsed leadership is necessarily good for the country. The 9th National Assembly under Lawan is arguably the worst Legislature in the country’s history, approving every policy and (in)decision of the Buhari administration, however woolly. Having emerged Senate President in 2019 following another presidential endorsement, Lawan promised to get the Senate to approve every of Buhari’s request. He over delivered as critics described the National Assembly under him as no more than a rubber stamp, approving every request from the president without interrogation, and treating its oversight functions with levity. As it is, it wouldn’t be out of place to say Lawan’s 9th National Assembly enabled Buhari’s ineffective leadership.

The way out is for Tinubu not to attempt to force through his choices by using presidential powers to threaten and intimidate others interested in leadership positions. Should that happen, and members riding on the wave of presidential endorsement fail to win, as they could, that would amount to a hostile takeover of the National Assembly.  It would be difficult to predict how the likely crisis from such a scenario would end. The nation is faced with too  many problems requiring the president’s focus devoid of distractions from attempting to impose a leadership on the National Assembly.