2023, Buni, Intrigues enroute APC’s Imminent Implosion – What’s called working a hunch -By Jimi Bickersteth

I had been trying to concentrate on T.S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party, but my mind kept straining from the lighted screen until the words of the play had become a meaningless jumble. I stood up and peered from this height down into the street below. Rain, beating against the glass, made it difficult to see clearly, from the fourth floor window the street looked narrow and the parked cars like toys.

To say that the nation’s ruling party, APC is churning and brewing by the minute political intrigues in the tardy manner it was handling the issues around its national and state executives and its convention would be anything but a masterpiece of understatement. I know that the APC was a makeup or better still a gangup (however you feel, depending on which side of the swing you are looking from); but the two terms of its presidency has witnessed the borderlines seriously thinned out, that one could not see where that contraptions in the alliance began or left off, and or where its politics was tending towards.

The instability and lack of cohesion in its own internal dynamics, organization and planning was impacting negatively on the nation’s political atmosphere, that the people were beginning to call and praying for an alternative. Not an alternative to democracy though, but to a disorganized ruling party – the APC, with the inconsistencies, political football, leadership absence and dire, arrant illegality the party had becomes since its December 2020 tactless sacking of its national and state executives. Let me quickly add here in parenthesis that not many wanted the APC, but the PDP also was not a credible alternative, but anything in the circumstance would do.

One began to wonder if the APC and the nation generally were being sincere, honest and or really serious about 2023. In any case, that was a statement in passing, back to the object of fancy in this treatise; with things remaining as they were, and with noone steering adroitly the party in the proper and correct direction, the APC stood to lose so much on technical grounds with its errors of omissions, commission, cautious optimism, cultured confusion, continued aberrations, outright disregard of the nation’s constitution and extant rules. The party is held up and consequentially, it was holding up the country’s general progress and developmental strides. Why! A ruling party’s cohesiveness or otherwise has a bandwagon effect on the state of the nation it is superintending.

The light (powered by my generator powered by diesel (AGO) bought at #700.00 per litre) in my library shone brightly, and the shaded lamps made the atmosphere intimate and cozy, I doubt if that was the atmosphere in and around the nation since 2014, nor was it a cozy atmosphere for a number of passengers stranded in the rainforest due to shortage of fuel and eventual breakdown of the diesel engine powering their train to Ibadan. The APCs government’s conspiracy of silence on the national front, on the wars it was winning and the battles it was losing, forgetting that a war is never won until the last battle; the haemouraging economy, the fuel and politics of subsidy, nation- building, peace, equity and equality of access to the blessings and joys that it has pleased nature to endowed the country with, all of which met with the people’s hypnotised silence at the one job PMB, his cohorts and the 9th NASS did manage to do well and efficiently, – amassing colossal sums in foreign debts, thus, mortgaging the nation’s future.

Take the ‘improved’ railway infrastructure and train services for instance, a trip to Ibadan from Lagos is about #1000.00 per passenger, by bus, for the 45-60 minutes trip. The APCs train services on the same journey costs about #3000.00, for 180 minutes, the simple economic sense tells the rest of the story. Oh, well, I guess that’s past history with details in the nation’s future. On the laps of the foregoing was the Russia-ukraine imbroglio with its attendant repercussions on the global prices of goods and services and living conditions generally.

Nigeria, nay, Africa is particularly vulnerable and exposed to the impact of the Ukraine war. The IMF had said that the knock-on effects of the war will affect Africa in four ways; increased food prices, higher fuel prices, lower tourism revenue and difficulty to access international capital markets.

Meanwhile, the world economy is facing stagflation. A historic surge in commodity prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, coming on top of already-high pandemic inflation, has gotten investors and economists searching for parallels – with the energy shocks of four decades ago and the prolonged slowdowns that followed.

The global supply chains will be re-written by the ‘second Cold War’. Growth in the global trade that has stalled since circa 2008 and with the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating the on-boarding of manufacturing. Now the Ukraine war will intensify the trends as the West and China and Russia form two distinct trading systems. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Europe to turn to African countries like Nigeria for energy supply with the crises and instability in that sector:
i. is the nation ready to take advantage of the scenario presented to the world to up the ante in this exclusive distressed state of affairs by the nation’s ruling elites,
ii. is the nation doing anything (for instance, restrictions of exports of basic food products) as a measure and tour-de-force to mitigate against future suffering.

Where are we going to raise the wind with the bogus and corrupt fuel subsidy pay out. Here, I doubt if the nation knows what it was doing. So odd! I can’t shout! Nor cut my nose to spite my face. And I don’t like to deceive myself. If PMB as the nation’s minister of petroleum and the NNPC were satisfied, I’m not! I don’t believe in the shenanigans! It is plain, pure fraudulent and it foxes me.

Today, the nation’s PMS sold for between #220-#400 and AGO for between #550-#720 and the people with a hide like a tank are dying to queue and buy. What was the government’s reaction (s)? Mute! But there are wary, alert expression in the people’s eyes that the government didn’t notice. Why not look for a correct price that would be a compromise between petrol importers and the consumers, since the local refineries have collapsed. Meanwhile, ritual killings, abductions, kidnappings and various other vices went on unabated. Murder on the Express, Murder on BRT buses, I should have thought that government, dumb-looking, with a big pot on the boil at the moment, would have more insight than its presently exhibiting.

The people were making a loud slapping noise that was intensified by the silence that brooded over the whole nation from Zamfara to Maiduguri, Uyo to Numan, Ekiti to Lagos to Kebbi, as the government and bandits has with a movement too deft, too quick to follow, have whipped a cord over the people’s heart, crossed the cord and tightened it around their throats. Flattened to the floor, turning their wild scream into a thin, almost inaudible cry, and watching the convulsive heaving of their body and the feeble movements of hands scrabbling the bare floor.

As everything starts and stops with the government, it was careful not to used too much force and violence. What a stunted and refined democracy, as government saw with detached interest the people’s movements in the hands of bandits and common criminals becoming less convulsed and muscles twitched in a reflex of agony, which sets off as a good frame can very often set off an indifferent picture. The people were beginning to think that the APC was beginning to mistimed and misfired and missing rhythm and rhyme. It has frittered its goodwill, and thats been very sincere. Public opinion is a dangerous thing to come up against.

Come 2023, if there were any elections, someone will get the ‘sympathy’ votes. Governors Akeredolu and Matawale have spoken, SLOK, and belatedly, PMB too, have added their voices canvassing for peace and unity in the APC. On aspirant Tinubu and the rest, I have to say this. That In spite of making a fair success of life, and now as good as the next man as regards to money, but money isn’t everything. If one drop dead this moment, noone would remember one either as president, emir or king passed by this way in a week’s time. It’s the name and reputation people leave after them that counts. Politicians whose private lives wouldn’t stand investigation, on the surface they are about the finest collection of plaster saints and whose real intentions were as remote as the snows of Everest. The people need very astute, altruistic, knowledgeable leaders. The political terrain had trumped up leaders of the same plumage and its as difficult as diffentating between six and half-dozen.

All with faces puckered in a frown of impatience and irritation at the continued dithering and its effects on psyche and the nation’s political economy, I could see out of the blues a man of insatiable ambition; whose ultimate aim was to become president, commander-in-chief and inordinately proud of the fact. The contraption known as APC had at last trumped up an alliance and the chance he was looking for, and he had proved himself an able leader of men. With him human material resources came first before money. You can’t lead without all of the elements. There is no crime in that.

His business expanded and his kingdom grew, it was essential to have political power and a solid political machine in a political terrain such as Nigeria’s, and with this increased quislings and fifth columnists. The RCCG has reportedly commenced a clandestine support group for its own, but Remi is an ardent worshipper and congregant. The opposition in and outside of the party was stiff and the party was in disarray, but again with money, connections, structure, followership and coupled with the Asiwaju of the universe’s ruthless determination.

With the APC’s Bunu orchestrated confusion there was unease around the polity as to what the results would be. Meanwhile, the nation had stopped talking and was looking at his deft, calculated moves and consultations with curious eyes. He was used to being stared at, but today, with the situation in APC, he must feel those stares were accentuated by something more than curiosity. His declaration for the nation’s top job had caused a sensation, and people were already beginning to gossip about whether the APC and PMB would be sincere.

Admittedly, there’s bound to be all kinds of rumours; there are plenty of people who would like to make a stink out of nothing and everything. I doubt if BAT is getting any hot under the collar, but must be aware of the Ides of March and a likely double cross. At the mention of the word, doublecross and intrigues, I lifted my shoulders in a despairing shrug. I have watched BAT from very close quarters for a long time now, and I’m getting to know his methods. Money isn’t everything. In this straight-laced nation a sound reputation is more important than money, and scandal is as lethal as poison gas to anyone who gets into the political limelight. Up to now, he’s got by, but must watch out! Lucky enough, he knows his base from his apex. If there are better candidates and aspirants, let them show face.

#JimiBickersteth.
Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger, public affairs analyst and writer.
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