WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com | justme4justice@yahoo.com
In 2015, the APC and the Buhari tsunami swept across the country and presented a force beyond the capacity of the then ruling party to comprehend and respond to. Ultimately, the unthinkable happened; for the first time in the history of the country, a ruling party and an incumbent was defeated at the presidential poll. Many thought it was a chance victory for APC and the party’s president-elect but that was not the fact; PDP as a political party had lost touch with the political realities of the Nigerian state and lost focus of its own structures that won elections for it over time. But a more important reason for the embarrassing defeat of PDP in 2015 was the apparent mammoth degree of corruption that became the norm under the party. The country was taken to a new low of overindulgence in corruption that resulted in a marked and uncontrollable regime of insecurity of the manner and magnitude we had never witnessed in the past.
The country has had rough times since independence but the PDP era of 1999 to 2015 was an icing on the cake of the dilapidation of the country by its leaders. The proven record of corruption was too alarming and disturbing in a myriad of ways. The capacity of the country to really develop was clamped; GDP growth that were never reflected by industrial nor infrastructural visible structures; but rather, increased impoverishment of Nigerians, increased unemployment, increased deaths in the hands of insurgents and gradually developing bandits became the order of the period and the legacies of the then ruling party and the evil empire it erected.
The country was at that time at the mercy of men and women who became uncontrollably desperate to enrich themselves at the expense of the country and the increasing population of impoverished citizens of the country. The story of Diezani Madueke will continue to echo through ages to come; the story of a public office holder who literally without shame or remorse transform the national vault into a personal piggy bank and which she drained unchecked for over eight years while the party PDP held sway as the ruling party and she served as the Minister of Petroleum.
Allison Madueke was just one out of many reasons why PDP became a no go area for Nigerians, but one other case among the lot that was disturbing was the then security adviser, Dasuki’s open and deadly perpetuated corruption regime that defied all rational explanation and understanding. While the country was being ravaged by the rising Boko Haram insurgency, the man who was supposed to be at the center of directing the country’s responses to the insecurity challenge was only interested in making money for himself. While he advised the government to part with a whopping $2.1 billion to fight the insurgency, his only interest was never to help the country see the end of the insurgent but to corner the money to himself and for those on the same course as him.
The emergence of the Buhari-led APC government became the beginning of a new era in the historical dispensation of the country Nigeria; riding on the back of the change mantra, Nigerians rushed to the acceptance of the party, with expectation of immediate changes. The Buhari government burnt the candles, working the nights to salvage the country and set the ball rolling for a new dispensation of corruption-free, and infrastructurally developing Nigeria. The President had explained to Nigeria; the changes we desire would not come as suddenly as we had thought, changes would require a new laid foundation and a new dispensation of tedious and conscious building on the foundation. And that is what we have seen in the country in the last seven years; development in the critical transport industry cutting across roads, bridges, railways, airports and capacity development across each and almost all of them. We have seen a new dimension of social programs we were never used to pre-Buhari; direct assistance to businesses and individuals that has to a large extent re-write the economic status of the beneficiaries. The rice revolution was a feat we could not even contemplate years back not because we did not have the capacity but because we lacked the political will to imagine it, not to talk of implementing it. Today, the country is gradually moving closer to absolute sufficiency in rice production. And these are just but few of the many feats of the APC Administration led by the ever working president Muhammadu Buhari.
It is quite unfortunate that today, the street rhetoric is opposite of realities of the government performance; it is heartbreaking that the media would become a tool in the hands of the enemies of the country, to the point of ignoring the many achievements of the government and set their focus on the negatives of the time as tools for discrediting the ruling party. PDP, bent on returning to power, has gotten alliances across media to sell its propaganda that belittle the achievements of the APC-led government. It is ridiculous to see reasonable media outfits that were around in pre-APC era and witnessed the gross insecurity of the days when Nigeria became totally unsafe and inhabitable in several areas and we all literally could not go to bed with our two eyes closed, even in FCT, castigating the Buhari government for the insecurity of Nigeria despite the overwhelming drop in the veracity of insurgency and others as compared to what was obtainable in the past.
Turning ASUU strike into a weaponised bullet against the ruling party is one of the many attempts of the PDP to find its way back into the hearts of Nigerians but it won’t work; Nigerians are well aware of the history of ASUU strike in the country and are fully abreast of the fact that the demands of today are promises and agreements that PDP defaulted in fulfilling in the past and which compiled into load for the government.
This is the same way a party that celebrated fuel scarcity on a quarterly basis for the entire period of its existence as a ruling party ordinarily should have no mouth to talk about because of a passing problem in the sector. APC has successfully sustained supply and availability of the product over six years, and what we are experiencing now would soon be a thing of the past.
The future of APC after President Muhammadu Buhari is purely in the hands of the party. Indisputably, the party performed beyond expectation given the gamrots it inherited; however developing the capacity to counter the external forces that are bent to pull it apart would be the only tool that will retain the party in power at the center. This is a critical period for the party as PDP is leaving no stone unturned to discredit the party having realised it could never win the party at a fairly contested elections.
2023 is around the corner and the last few months has presented the ruling party with realities that may spell doom for it going into the 2023 election year, if care is not taken and appropriate responsive actions taken. Of concern to the party should be the many external factors that are discreetly dictating happenings within the party as well as reshaping the electoral processes to create hurdles that may injure it irreparably.
APC must put its house in order, resolve it differences, sing its own praises and upheld merit and capacity above settlement and other considerations in its selection or election of its leaders and representatives at the polls come 2023. Obviously, the 2023 presidential election is for the APC to win except it let it go by its own negligence.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NOGERIA!
