STILL ON ASHIWAJU’S ATTACK ON KACHIKWU

I admire Bola Ahmed Tinubu, APC’s national leader, former senator of the Federal Republic and former governor of Lagos State. I admire him for his political sagacity; I admire him for his talent in recruiting competent hands in governance. I admire him for his skill in mobilizing public opinion for or against any issue of interest to him. Most of all, I admire him for his fearlessness in fighting a cause he believes in.

In the wake of the crisis that accompanied the unfortunate annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election, Tinubu proved to be an adroit in sub-surface and opposition politics. He, along with other NADECO chieftains, became the scourge of maximum rulers, Generals Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida and Sani Abacha. Both eventually left office under less than desirable circumstances – one disgracefully out of pressure, and the other by Providence.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu has since then gone on to achieve one political feat after another, culminating in his 2013 cobbling of a coalition of centrifugal fringe parties to form the APC with the sole aim of toppling the PDP and halting its16 years of comprehensive misrule of Nigeria.  It is these political feats that perhaps more than anything else gave him the title of Ashiwaju of the Yoruba which he is largely called by today.

"I opine that if Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has some political issues to resolve with President Mohammadu Buhari, by all means, he should please do so directly and not try to take out his anger on Kachikwu. Kachikwu has so far done nothing to warrant the angst being visited on him"

Being the astute political cobbler that he is, Tinubu sold the idea of CHANGE to the APC as a unifying and rallying political creed. Nigerians bought it, and based on it, voted out the Jonathan government. Thus, the APC succeeded in using it to achieve its main objective of easing out the PDP from power. Change to the APC meant (still means) a clear departure from the usual way of doing things in Nigeria, and the proffering of a new paradigm founded on truth, honesty and transparency.    

The Asiwaju’s political ascendancy seemed effortless and almost of a stroke of genius. But even geniuses are humans and must make mistakes or make the wrong call once in a while. Given what we know of APC’s “Change” mantra, I think the Ashiwaju’s recent attack on Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, over the latter’s comment that he was not a magician as to be able to make the ongoing fuel scarcity vanish over-night, is one such wrong call.

Commenting last week on the lingering fuel scarcity across the country, Kachikwu had reportedly told Nigerians that “One of the trainings I did not receive is that of a magician, but I am working very hard to ensure some of these issues go away”. The issues referred to here were the reasons for the lingering fuel scarcity across the country. The Ashiwaju’s reaction to this was a 10-paragraph statement blasting the junior minister and describing his comment as both an insult to Nigerians and a disappointment. According to the Ashiwaju, Kachikwu spoke with the imperious nature of a member of the elitist government the people voted out last year and not the progressive one they voted in.”

Since the Ashiwaju read his Riot Act on Kachikwu on March 27, there has been a deluge of calls for the junior minister’s resignation or removal from office. The calls emanate mainly from the APC and its members. With a speed hitherto uncharacteristic of the upper chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate has somehow joined the fray by summoning Kachikwu to appear before it today, 29th March, to explain the cause of the lingering fuel scarcity.

From all indications, it appears Kachikwu is being set up to take the fall. I fail to see how his forthrightness (which is in tune with APC’s change promise, by the way) merited the condemnation from Tinubu and those in APC calling for his head. I thought the kind of Kachikwu’s  candour and sincerity is what Nigerians want at this point in time after many years of being lied to?

Indeed I find myself now asking if the Ashiwaju would have preferred Kachikwu to continue with the deceit and lies we had been used to hearing. If that is the case, where lies the “change” then?

We once had a Minister of Transportation who wept publicly, and messed up her pretty face in the process, over the deplorable condition of Benin-shagamu road. Nigerians bought the deceit, and till the minister left office she did nothing to get that road rehabilitated. Several years afterwards, that road is still essentially in the same condition the minister met and left it. Three days ago I drove through that same road on my way to the east. I spent over three hours between Shagamu and Ore (a journey of about 100 kilometers) due to its bad condition.

Not too long ago we had a minister who told us that the Nigerian economy was the largest in Africa, even as realities on ground suggested otherwise. We bought the lie and beat our chest as truly the Giant of Africa. Today we know better.

We also once had a minister who told Nigerians that they would enjoy 24 hours uninterrupted power supply within 6 months. But that never happened. Many years after the minister was assassinated in 2001, that promise is yet to be fulfilled. The minister was a member of Tinubu’s party, the AD, at the time.

Tinubu himself as governor of Lagos state promised Lagosians a fourth mainland bridge to ease their traffic woes along the Lekki corridor.  It didn't happen; instead we had a Lekki tollgate (which many Lagosians are still bitter about till date) and a Lekki suspension bridge which cannot be said to exactly fit into the original promise of another bridge linking Lagos mainland to Lekki.

A former president of the country once told us that he did not “give a damn” how Nigerians felt about a particularly vexatious issue shortly after he came to power. Heavens did not fall.

And more recently, a prominent minister in the Buahri government publicly ran riot in Rivers State engaging governor Wike in an ego trip and a war of words that threatened the peace of Rivers State. The minister and his governor’s public utterances/threats did much to precipitate electoral violence and brutal murder of Samuel Dumebi Okonta, a member of the NYSC and ad-hoc electoral officer in the March 19 state and national assembly re-run elections in Rivers State.

In all of these incidents, I never heard party leaders call their members involved in these disappointing acts to order. Specifically, I never heard Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC leadership call Transportation minister Rotimi Amaechi to order over his public show of shame before and the during Rivers State legislative re-run elections.

One may now ask between minister Amaechi’s conduct during the recent Rivers State re-run elections and Ibe Kachikwu’s candour, which one constituted more threat to the people; or did more damage to the ruling party? And what of APC governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State who is currently owing civil servants several months in arrears of salaries and has even recently gone on air to say that he could not pay? Doesn’t this do more damage to APC than Kachikwu’s sincere statement? Has the APC leadership called for his resignation?

It seems someone is trying to be either clever or mischievous, by cashing in on the expediency of the current fuel scarcity. Either that or he is surreptitiously trying to run rings around the President with the intent to discredit him. I opine that if Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has some political issues to resolve with President Mohammadu Buhari, by all means, he should please do so directly and not try to take out his anger on Kachikwu. Kachikwu has so far done nothing to warrant the angst being visited on him.

Knowing full well that Nigerians are tired of hearing lies told by public officer holders, Kachikwu decided to tell them truth about the ongoing fuel scarcity so that they can brace themselves for the challenge till May when he promised normalization of supply. Why should the Heavens fall over this? If the Ashiwaju, as the APC national leader, felt that Kachikwu’s candour was impolitic, he should have quietly called him to order or get the President to do it without heating up an already over-heated polity.

Seeing as band-wagoners have joined the fray in calling for Kachikwu's head, one can only say that we are indeed a very interesting people. It seems we have forgotten so soon one vital fact in the current fuel scarcity mix.

Ibe Kachikwu is managing the fuel situation without the usual subsidy regime. So far nobody has given him credit for the deft way fuel subsidy was removed, thus saving the government huge chunk of money. Nor has anyone given him credit for apologizing to Nigerians two weeks ago over the lingering fuel scarcity and urging them to be patient as the government was working on long term solutions. So I ask, did anyone think that it will be a bed of roses to dismantle a hitherto fraudulent subsidy regime without some immediate consequences? Tinubu of all people should have known that to ease out a hitherto entrenched subsidy cabal will not happen without an immediate reaction from them.

All said and done, I find four potent dangers in Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu's public attack on Ibe Kachikwu. The first is that it is capable of dissuading public office holders from telling Nigerians and the President the truth about the true state of affairs in the country. There is no doubt that the country needs some blunt truth now in order to know how to start addressing her multi-faceted problems.

Secondly, Tinubu’s attack on Kachikwu is also capable of making public office holders not to put in their best effort as doing so may not be appreciated by party leaders. Whatever anyone may say, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu is an asset to the APC government, and seeing him being so vilified by the same APC leaders is bound to produce some consequences either now or later.

The third and danger is that Tinubu’s Riot Act on Kachikwu is also capable, as it now seems to be doing already, of whipping up a groundswell of anti-Kachikwu sentitments. Such may stampede President Buhari into taking a rash action to sack him. If that happens, then a dangerous precedent may be erroneously set by which once Ashiwaju or any party leader for that matter does not like a particular cabinet member, all he has to do is criticize the minister publicly to precipitate his fall.

The fourth and final danger is that Tinubu may have unwittingly stepped on the toes of some powerful APC supporters and who backed Kachikwu for the Minister of State for Petroleum’s position. Chief among these are former President Olusegun Obasanjo and T. Y. Danjuma. The capacity and capability of such men and women cannot be under-estimated as they may team up with elements in PDP, or the CPC wing of the APC, to cause a serious division in the APC solely with the intent to whittle down the influence of Tinubu.  

Whatever happens, President Buhari must resist the temptation to given in to the pressure presently being orchestrated to sack Kachikwu.

That is as I see it.