By Ugoji Egbujo

When an eternally genial , self effacing , peace- loving man like Bisi Akande fits in anger then so much has gone wrong. Genuine peace makers are scarce. Mr president , Akande must be encouraged to remain one.

Idealism is good but reality often demands that it is tempered by principled pragmatism. The unbending idealist, otherwise infinitely noble, can come across as aloof or naïve when idealism becomes impractical inflexibility. Soldiers are particularly distrustful of politicians and revel in their contempt for the cynical ways of politicians. But when you wake up and find yourself seated on Ceaser’s throne in Rome, wouldn’t you embrace everything nobly roman? Buhari must embrace real politik.

One meeting was called, or was it called? There is so much murkiness, so much shiftiness now. Truth has been allowed to acquire too many perspectives, every body peddles his. That meeting didn’t hold but should have held then or preferably much earlier. People put their houses in order and dirty linens do not become public spectacles. The cleanest house is only so clean because of order, the sewage system is kept out of public view. The pipes have burst open now.

If it was obstinacy, it must have been encouraged by naivety. You may not like dirty politics but even clean politics requires shrewdness and guile. There was ample time. And there must have been clear warnings. The truth is, there were all kinds of warnings. The leader of a party must anticipate potential frictions and tensions and smoothen and defuse them in time. A proactive leader does not have the “siddon look” option.

It is not enough to mouth party supremacy. Everything is just so amorphous , so shapeless, so vague now. The official spokesperson would make a statement and a certain Timi Frank who is supposed to be his deputy will pick a megaphone and struggle to contradict him. They are members of the same national working committee, a committee that doesn’t know exactly what to be committed to now. There are many puppeteers. Things said are sometimes said only to be retracted. The Kwara APC in the name of freedom freely contradicts the party’s national body. And they are all the party? Before bothering about supremacy, let’s have a definition of the ‘party’.

And how can a president superintend such chaos and maintain equanimity? I like to hear people say, “I erred” , “ I was wrong” . Change must include that. Non interference is a lofty ideal, which even the United Nations mouths in respect of the sovereignty of nations. That is perhaps why they looked away and allowed the Rwandan Genocide. The legislature must be free to choose its leaders. Yes. Separation of powers and checks and balances are great democratic ideas. But we know good people and nations often cross borders to help arrange affairs of others to prevent disorders that are potentially widely disruptive.

With haste and desperation meetings are now being held . But I doubt that the trenches that have been dug will go away soon. Whatever was left of trust has been mangled after the party’s lists of principal officers were tossed away by presiding officers who are supposed to be members of the party. Party discipline has taken a leave of absence. Politicians are fluid but they know how to keep and settle scores. Fresh wounds are often more tolerable than reopened old wounds. Tinubu and Atiku? One always has to leave.

Sometimes soothsayers are needed. But the calamity that has befallen the APC was foreseen and foretold. “I won’t get involved”. Even if you had the majority to preclude the other party from clinching the positions, wouldn’t you want a smooth and rancor free process? And why wouldn’t you get involved? There was no unanimity, so harmony and solidarity had to be sought, forged. Going into it a divided house was not freedom, it was disunity, disorder . It was poor leadership.

A president is always the spine of the ruling party. This presidential system we borrowed makes the party subservient to the president to a large extent. So the much exalted party supremacy in a sense has meaning only if the party has an ideology that binds. It is one thing to intervene to ensure peace and help the will of the majority and the interests of your party, it’s however another to intervene by cynically truncating majority will, enthroning lackeys and sowing discord. Many warned of the ugly consequences of the later which Obasanjo and Enwerem typified

A leadership vacuum cannot exist , Somalia says chaos inevitably follows. When the war lords dig in, all that was quiescent becomes active. Sheathed daggers have been drawn. Old and new wounds are festering. Internecine skirmishes have erupted and proxies have started doing more harm than Fani Kayode and Okupe put together did during the campaigns. And they are taking down reputations the duo forgot to touch. The sewage pipes have burst open. Its all getting too messy

Nothing tells more of a seething cauldron than the outburst of the old man, Bisi Akande, the official midwife of the party. The pungency of his remarks was perhaps deliberate. “Yorubas have been betrayed”. Thoroughly unstatesmanlike, but sufficiently cautionary. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Exasperated Old man, choking with moral indignation. The kind of moral indignation that only ingratitude working together with treachery generates .

Treachery is a serious charge, it is perhaps the worst possible affliction that can beset a relationship. I don’t believe the president is a treacherous man. Not all promises may be fulfilled but trust must be preserved.

A more dispassionate reading of Akande, a reading divested of emotions, would reveal his discontent with the president’s perceived weak leadership of the party. Did the ideal of non interference leave the party rudderless in the last couple of weeks? Tardiness can be treacherous too but not when it is a product of naivety. I have sympathy for the president. In the midst of cunning, desperate and scheming characters, honesty and simplicity could amount to naivety.

Some however insist that the president is not as innocent as his seeming indifference suggests. His perceived aloofness and the resultant trampling of party decisions are a strategy, they claim, to whittle the powers and influence one or two of his powerful allies. Political gamesmanship? It is doubtful that ambivalence and equivocation can serve the president well. A man reputed for forthrightness and firmness has little to gain by being wily now . But why does he preach party supremacy and yet cannot enforce party decisions? Who has the party’s big stick? The party has been spineless. Helplessness is gradually becoming an official policy.

Meetings that didn’t hold when they should are now being held. Now everyone is getting involved, independence of the legislature has yielded commotion. No one knows if we are seeing a stitch in time or nine late redemptive stitches . Or a multitude of fruitless stitches, medicine after death. Time will tell. But no soothsayer is needed to tell that if the party survives many of the stitched, unstitched wounds won’t heal soon.

Leaders like to be unpredictable, but when you head a ruling ‘coalition’ yet lacking in cohesion, like the APC , unpredictability becomes arbitrariness. No one needs taciturnity and mystery. If the president fails to take full charge of the party, and transparently too, the party will disintegrate. The presidency and the party must be a unity. It is still early days. The president inherited a fractious coalition of many lords with mutually incompatible ambitions. Cohesion, real cohesion must be founded on discipline and order. Discipline will come at some cost but should come soon. He has to craft cohesion even if that means pruning off some rascally, more peripheral , more politically weightless characters.

At the recent APC NEC meeting, the president perhaps gave one of his longest impromptu speeches thus far. Party supremacy , the vacuous new mantra , was on sale again . Many clapped, party supremacy is a good pitch . But Saraki’s mournful smiles and virtual one handed claps told a story.

A culture of impunity is taking firm roots in the APC. Who knows? Now that treachery has become rampant someone in Kwara state may soon know enough to demand his ‘freedom’, the sort of freedom common amongst auto mechanics that comes at the end of apprenticeship. Rebelliousness is contagious , must be checked.

Many who were hardly seen during the campaigns are all over the place now. Many who sat on the fence , meeting with Jonathan in their sitting rooms , weighing their options, and weighing the interim government alternative on the eve of the elections 

Peripatetic jobbers of questionable electoral worth.

Threats have also started flying around. No one should be held to ransom. Not the president . The south west APC must stay patient and focused. No tantrums. But wisdom would dictate that all remain acutely aware of some cold political calculations. Without the southwest, the APC becomes an electorally and morally crippled, regional, northern party. The Southwest gave Buhari more than votes.

They laundered him, gave him a southern foothold and gave the party intellectual depth. Many northern politicians helped Buhari’s cause but none affected it dramatically. Many have been bandying numbers, Babangida Aliyu and Sule Lamido would have been doing same too.

The different interests should be catered for but many need be reminded that , contrary to their posturing, their contributions to his victory were marginal. The truth is that with Buhari and the southwest allies , the APC has a formidable electoral base. Some political savviness will help the president.

Mr president, please put your house in order sir.