PARTY is supreme! Party is supreme!! Party is supreme!!!” chanted the Loyalists (as the group of pro-All Progressives Congress, APC, leadership in the House of Representatives branded themselves) in a deafening frenzy on the day they turned the House chambers into a boxing ring last June to disrupt possible announcement of the Principal Officers of the APC (Majority Party) by the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara.

The Speaker must read the letter from APC National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun, listing Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila and others as principal officers of the House or there would be no peace. The House and Senate chambers were shut down for several weeks- no thanks to supremacists, namely the Loyalists, Senate Unity Forum, and their puppeteers.

Meanwhile, the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki had apparently beaten them, once more, by largely following the party’s directive on zoning of each of the four Majority Principal Offices, but allowing each caucus to elect their preferred candidate for the zoned offices in line with Senate’s tradition.

Each Principal Officer is usually the caucus leader of his or her zone in the Senate/House. So, it is only natural and democratic that they chose someone they believe could deliver and represent their interest on the Senate leadership.

Unfortunately, the APC leadership thought otherwise. Although 11 out of the 13 North East APC Senators at the meeting on the eve of June 25 voted Senator Ali Ndume as Senate Leader, the APC Leadership insisted that it must be Ahmed Lawan or nothing.

In the midst of the controversy, however, Senators Sani Yerima and Danjuma Goje, both ranking Senators and former governors, raised points of reason, which obviously fell on deaf ears. Senator Yerima said: “There can never be imposition of candidates on the Chamber by the party leadership. It is unconstitutional and against the Rules of the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader; Deputy Majority Leader; Senate Chief Whip; Deputy Chief Whip were elected by their zonal caucuses in the Seventh Senate and the case of the Eighth Senate cannot be different. The best thing the party can do, given the circumstances, is to give us directives (that is zoning of offices)”.

He further called to moral question the booby trap in imposing Saraki’s political rival as Senate Leader, a sensitive position. “Allowing the party to impose a leadership on the Senate President is to make him to fail because he cannot be forced to work with his rivals”, he reasoned. Truth is, two cannot work together unless they agree.

Senator Goje, on his part, also warned seriously against any attempt to impose principal officers on the Senate because it would further polarise the party.  He advised: “By trying to impose another set of leaders on the National Assembly is to cause further crisis in the party. It will complicate matters and generate further crisis in the National Assembly.”

But that appeared exactly the intent of the APC leadership as both chambers were eventually shut down for several weeks to the admiration of some selfish party leadership and their supports in the National Assembly.

What was Senator Ahmad Lawan’s reaction to all of these? His words:  “I am not aware of any election. The party has spoken, it is now left for the Senate President to make the announcement.”  In other words, he must be named the Senate Leader and leader of the North East Caucus also, whether he is acceptable to his colleagues or not.  After all, the omnipotent and supreme party has spoken. How arrogant and disdainful.

Nevertheless, the inability of Saraki to name Lawan and his company as principal officers has spelt endless war against him and the entire Senate leadership. The loud Vote of Confidence on Saraki, his Deputy- Senator Ekweremadu, and the entire Senate leadership angered the supremacists rather than make them see that they were swimming against the tide of feelings in the   Senate.

As far as they are concerned, Senators did not come to the Senate as independent candidates and must therefore do the party’s biddings, whether sensible or not. They have no minds of their own. Their constituents do not also have a say.

Their acolytes, Senate Unity Forum, are in court on the futile mission of overthrowing the Senate leadership. And although their ex-parte application seeking to stop the Senate leadership from constituting Senate Committees was thrown out by the court, they are still pursuing a phantom forgery of Senate Standing Rules 2015. Laughably, the Forum’s members not only surrendered themselves for inauguration by the leadership elected on the strength of that Rules book, they have also been participating in Senate’s proceedings/business guided by the same Rules book. Anyway, that is a matter for another day.

The matter for today is that the same APC leadership has been helplessly unable to also extend the same supremacy theory to the appointments made so far by President Muhammadu Buhari. Also, Buhari who supported the supremacists to enthrone Gbajabiamila and company has not also deemed it fit to enforce it on himself.

That was exactly the point of hypocrisy of a section of APC leadership raised by Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the party, Timi Frank, at the height of the hullaballoo over party supremacy at the National Assembly. Timi remarked rather sarcastically on the African Independent Television’s Focus Nigeria: “Since party supremacy is now the issue of the day, I expect the national leadership to write the list of ministers and their portfolios and other appointees and give to the President to announce. The State party chairmen must write the names of the Commissioners and SAs and give to the State Governors to announce. That way, we will know that party supremacy has come to stay. Not just to enforce it on Senate and House of Reps. Otherwise they should allow the Senate to be. They should also allow the House to be”.

However, from all indications- nothing like that happened with Buhari’s appointments. Worse for the supremacists, they cannot even openly express their seething angers. But from the molten lead of wrath seeping from the APC’s National Secretariat; from the muffled shrieks of the so-called party Alphas and Omegas; and from their innuendos, anonymous interviews, and red eyes, Aso Rock is a no-go-area for their supremacy hallucinations. They hear the announcements on radio or TV like the rest of us who don’t even belong to the APC or to any party for that matter.

Even the mouthpiece of the APC overlords, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who insisted last June that “The President is not the Leader of the APC; he is a product of the APC” is dazed like a child that stumbled on a hydra-headed spirit. This party supremacy thing has become a different-stroke-for-different-folks, thus exposing the mantra as just a coinage by a few greedy APC party leaders to capture power at the National Assembly

Political jesters like Chris Ngige, Rochas Okorocha, Emma Eneukwu, Osita Okechukwu whose mouths ran like broken taps when their brother emerged as Deputy Senate President have tucked their tails between their tails as the South East is served empty plates in all the appointments into Buhari’s kitchen cabinet, military, para-military, and Federal Government agencies. They were also dumb-truck when the two APC Reps from the South East were left empty-handed in the distribution of the APC’s principal offices. Were ministerial and ambassadorial appointments not a constitutional must for every State, Buhari would again sidestep the South East.  Ethno-regional exclusion and nepotism have become state policy.

But since it can obviously not be enforced on Buhari and the Governors in their appointments, which are totally APC affairs, why should they foist a certain crop of people on the National where the interest of many political parties are at play? There are no moral grounds to do so in view of what is currently coming out from the Villa, by way of federal appointments.

Mr. Nick Efe,  a commentator on public affairs, wrote from Sapele, Delta State.