A DANIEL BWALA HAS COME TO JUDGMENT

Sometime in July 2022, at that rancourous moment when the APC decided to go with the controversial Muslim-Muslim ticket for the presidential election, Daniel Bwala, a legal practitioner and politician ran out of their camp,  claiming that the APC had chosen politics over unity while jettisoning “exclusivity, tolerance, common prosperity and diversity”. 

Just about a week ago, Bwala was on national TV, engaging with his viewers on the possibility and inevitability of an Atiku Abubakar ticket for 2027 as the only solution to Nigeria’s seemingly unsolvable problems.  

It is against this backdrop that one was taken aback by his sudden volte-face recently with his visit to President Tinubu and his comments thereafter. I am not as concerned about Daniel Bwala’s betrayal of his principal who himself, is a veteran of ideological fluidity and rigmarole, but about the lack of consistency on the part of our political elites in recent times. 

One of the major threats to the political development of our nation is the lack of organic political parties founded on tested ideological leaning and framework, especially after the first and second republics.  

Another semblance of such an era was President Babangida’s conscriptive political parties (SDP and NRC) which he said were founded on an ideological shift described as “a little to the left and a little to the right”. At the end of the day, we were all railroaded into two option-less choices that never saw the light of day. 

Daniel Bwala sure has a rich company of “jumpologists” to console himself with. Femi Fani-Kayode, a former Aviation minister and a PDP chieftain did it. He is presently wining and dining with the ruling APC. So is Godswill Akpabio, the present Senate president. Solomon Ewuga,  a former Minister and  Deputy Governor in Nasarawa State joined the ruling party just last week.

 It was the former Presidential spokesman, Dr. Doyin Okupe, (and former head of the Labour Party presidential campaign in the 2023 elections) who said, while he was leaving the Labour Party last week, that APC and PDP are nothing but “all-purpose vehicles” used by desperate politicians to achieve their aims. 

 There may never be a better description of the inorganic political processes of parties in Nigeria than that

Austen Akhagbeme, Abuja