By Sam Nwaoko
There is no doubting the fact that the political coalition which has now nestled in African Democratic Alliance (ADC) unsettled the boisterous and unruly ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Indeed, the announcement of the ADC threw the APC off-balance and created anxiety among many of its members and supporters. Try as many of them could to cover their alarm, it was manifest in their comments and analyses of the emerging situation. There is this feeling in the air that shows that the air of invincibility once trapped in the APC balloon, has been ruptured. APC and its catchments are currently still jolted.
That is why there have been reactions from even some unexpected quarters in the party and the government. Uncharacteristically, the Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN) posted a long statement on the social media through which he expressed his thoughts on the coalition. The last time Keyamo did something in the mould of what we saw on Wednesday was sometime before he became the Minister of Aviation. But the heat generated by the people of coalition got to him so much that he made an analysis of the emerging political scenario and its individual movers.
In the view held by Keyamo, it was already clear that Peter Obi and his ‘Obidients’ were the sacrificial lambs of the coalition. He said his crystal ball revealed this through the choice of David Mark as the interim national chairman of the ADC. To Keyamo, a northern interim national chairman of the party was a pointer to a northern presidential candidate, and that with what he was seeing, Atiku Abubakar had been positioned to clinch the party’s presidential ticket.
Perhaps, more importantly, Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, noted that those politicians who adopted ADC as their new platform had breached the Nigerian constitution. He said it is illegal to belong to two political parties at the same time. And we all know that illegal actions have legal and sundry consequences.
That opinion of Mr. Festus Keyamo is like a loud whisper. Who, on good moral standing, will disagree with him on this? It is wrong – legally and morally to belong in one house and work against that house. It is immoral not just in politics, but in everything that brings people together. In the Kegites Club, it is referred to as “Dual Belongation”. We strongly kick against it in the club: “There is no dual belongation. You either belong in or you belong out.”
So, Keyamo is right; it is proper to stay in a place and stick to principles you’re known with. With that, when you as a man of principle strays, you would be sought-after. However, Keyamo did not remember to remove the log in his own eye as a member of the APC before pointing at the speck in the eyes of the ADC members. Keyamo’s thoughts have conveniently skipped Nyesom Wike, the elephant who is tucked firmly in bed with the APC while still claiming that he is PDP. That is classic hypocrisy and gross duplicity on the part of both Keyamo and Wike. Keyamo had done a good job of trying to face his job all these while but the emergence of ADC has forced him to reinvent his erstwhile hypocrisy.
On the other hand, Mr. Bayo Onanuga’s reaction to the coalition came as routine. He was not unexpected to speak because we see him more often and he is the presidential spokesman. He speaks on nearly everything other than issues that concern the generality of Nigerians, and they are usually to counter whatever opinion Peter Obi and his mob express. Quite characteristically, he has dismissed the coalition as a team of hungry politicians whose only ambition is to oust Tinubu. He said what is certain is that “the group will soon unravel due to their irreconcilable personal ambitions.”
These were not the tones when the matter was ADA. The reactions were stronger than this and more pungent when the coalition group applied to the INEC for registration of All Democratic Alliance (ADA) as a political party. Translating that in political terms, it means that it is now like in the game of draughts. One move, you are on top, the other your defenses are badly beaten. For now, the APC must admit that their defence was beaten.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE: Tinubu departs Saint Lucia for BRICS Summit in Brazil
Politics, like the rat, runs on established lanes. The Igbo call those lanes òkpò, the Yoruba call them òpó. It is almost a rule that when a rat leaves his abode at dawn or dusk in search of food, he will follow only the established lanes. The cane rat will not run on the lanes created by other (smaller) rats. The lanes the rats ply can be read by those conversant with such hunting, and hunters of different families and sizes of rats know how to do their thing. This scenario can be translated to politics – if you do not know the lane, you could miss the game. Interestingly, snakes too know how to hunt the rats. And, sometimes, hunters – snakes and humans alike – meet while reading the lanes, in search of rats. Meanwhile, it is instructive to note that a group of rats in known as mischief…
If anything, there are reasons to agree with the school of thought that democracy has found a way to come alive in the country. We should at least believe that the president’s recent declaration that there was no truth in the contention that the country was drifting to a one-party state came alive. He ‘allowed’ a coalition of opposition politicians to find its footing to prove this point. But this is also arguable because people on the other side of the divide noted that the same President Tinubu, who said the fear of a one-party state was baseless, also openly told a bewildered world while addressing the National Assembly that he was delighted to see the opposition in disarray, and that he was enjoying their misery. The ADC said it knew what the government could do, given the current situation of the opposition political parties in the country and therefore found a clever way to do its business. The ADC has an alibi considering the fire ADA face when it was floated.
As things stand right now, I do not think that the APC is in a very good position to realistically make new promises to Nigerians. Whatever else the party may want to promise, Nigerians would not see it as rooted in truth because of antecedents. For the better part of 2025, the most important engagements of the party and the government has been more politics and less governance. The party has made politics of 2027 so much of an issue that 2026 has been omitted in Nigerians’ discussions. Any new promise would therefore be taken with a pinch of salt, and it would be deemed to have come from a place of reaction to the encircling opposition.
However, who says Tinubu too can’t stoop to conquer? Who says his camp cannot make concessions which could throw the coalition back into disarray, like the various political parties from which they came? Who says he didn’t have intelligence on the things happening around him in the polity, especially given his early ignition of the engine of partisan politics? Or, could that have been his undoing? Tinubu thrives in controversies and he has been handed an opportunity to show his prowess once again. It’s just that the turf is different this time round.
In all of these, there must be cautious optimism for all the gladiators on all the sides. There must also be deep concern on the part of the ordinary Nigerian. This raging fight which is about to escalate is not truly about them. At best, the masses would be the cannon fodder and the puns in the high-powered chess game. Like Michael Jackson sang, they don’t really care about us.