The Black Arrow, PMB and the APC Macramé of a Primary – a descant -By Jimi Bickersteth

The VIP movement around the Eagle Square, Abuja ocassioned traffic diversions and an affordable Gridlock. Arriving at the designated parking space, I spotted a man about to get into his car a few metres from the venue of the APC special Convention and presidential Primary. I flicked down my LX570s trafficator, braked and stopped. The drivers behind me hooted, all giving me a frustrated glare. I nearly laughed. The parked car moved into the stream of traffic and I manoeuvred into the gaping hole.

This descant is on the race for who wears the APC’s toga in the 2023 general elections, with presidential primaries, which are about now been concluded across the federation. I can say of the die-hard politician that ambition was like the spots of the leopard. Once you are landed with it, you were stuck with it. That’s why the nation has so many with many years of experience in the corridor of power and changing political ideology and pendulum with no real ideas of moving the realm of the state forward.

Ambition sometimes burned inside one with the intensity of a blowtorch flame. It nagged like raging headache. Thinking, scheming, strategising and re-strategising were its key elements. Patience! was another it was going to be more than tough, but not, impossible, particularly, that of the ruling party. Must be tough, hard, ruthless and determined. The philosophy was: the weak to the wall; the strong takes the jackpot. That exactly was what happened in the last Tuesday’s macramé (pronounced mak-ruh-mey) primary, designed to fulfill all righteousness.

They teach you how to bark in the Army and I hadn’t forgotten. I’ll voice my unwarranted opinions. The primaries were war of nerves! There’s an old saying about waiting for … men’s shoes. The political ‘set-up’ was as intriguing as it was ìntéresting as it sought to separate the men from the boys. Sooner or later, the aspirants would have found out and it seemed to me it was better sooner than later, (especially with the precarious situation of the nation and the uncertainty surrounding the very 2023 general elections) what aspiring to become Nigeria’s president under the circumstance and arrangement was. What with the serial and mindless killings across the length and breadth of the nation, the clamour for dissolution of the entity known as Nigeria, the maladministration, the heist, hunger and wholesome poverty in the land amidst plenty. Need one say more!

There was no smile to the ‘politricians’ than there is to a ham. They are in the know of how the nation has been bastardized, we often hear ‘by the GEJ’s gang’: who have refused to lay low and keep dark: things are awfully mixed now; and, PMB trying to better it have worsened it a thousand times, take it or leave it. PMB and his coterie of advisors know and accede to the facts!

About the crowd of aspirants juggling for his seat, PMB was able to tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world even as the dollar skyrocketed to a whopping #610. The poor things, about 23 of them were that glad and happy to be jostling for the no.1 seat. It made one’s heart ache to see them and the delegates and by extension the nation getting fooled, and lied to so, first it was a consensus convention, then the discarded zoning arrangement, and now no zoning, every eligible member should contest having doled out ₦100 million for the nomination and expression of interest form. One can’t change the general tune – a monetised primaries and a contest of the highest bidders.

I thought the poor things and the ‘ìntérest’ groups that helped procured the #100,000,000 million only nomination and expression of Interest forms would break their hearts for grief; particularly, those of the vice President’s camp who should bury their heads in shame for being a part of such a monumental fraud and incompetence. I shuddered when the VP said his administration would continue from where PMB stops. His interest saw the southwest family saw itself vague, divided, separated, undecided and was almost watched the watched the presidency or at least the primaries snatched away. I can’t ever get it out of my memory. I thought of which geopolitical zone would present the vice-president if APC wins at the 2023 general election.

For the Yoruba elements in Abuja that watched the proceedings at the convention and presidential primaries ground, the carnival, the attendant intrigues and subterfuges, there weren’t no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses–because people always blows their noses more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. All looking pretty sick and tolerable silly. Standing there a-thinking and scratching their heads. All getting still and solemn, only the people in the southwest and each holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent and sobbing a little, bemoaning what fate befell them. Ogún ọdún tí gìgìrísè tí nsáré, iwájú l’atànpàkò wáà! Do excuse the witty proverb.

From what I had seen of BAT’s movement around the country and the APC’s body language, I’d say right here and now even before the delegates began to cast their votes that the chances of his emerging the APC’s candidate was more than remote. However, the grapevine was fierce. An incumbent with a face as expressionless as a death mask. A malicious little laugh. Would they cage the bourdillion lion? 

In spite of the seriousness of the concern of whoever becomes the presidential candidate of APC, in politics, can anyone be absolutely sure of anything! Here I salute all the aspirants and hoped their bodies would come together again, becoming a president of a united Nigeria, was like getting entangled in a cement mixer.

It does beat all how neat the North played their hand. Histrionic talent! Hmmmmm! The way they played their game to fool any body. The presidency whose palms scalloped the entire political horizon cast a thick shadow as thick as the bland blackness on all the nature of things, but only a thin and intermittent, phosphorus taciturnity offered a landmark, that bisected reality from reflection. Nothing was certain, in spite of the political gladiators in ineffectual desperation, as one runs through sand in a nightmare. There was altogether too much darkness and silence in this now unfamiliar nation.

PMB was just that kind of character who if he took the notion–there was no backdown to him, I judged. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion he had more sand than any politician of the 1999-2021 era; in my opinion he was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery. But you don’t know whatever was tattooed in his mind.

Blimey, if PMB didn’t have to brace up mighty quick, he’d have squshed down like a bluff bank that the river of the nation’s politics had cut under, it took him so sudden; and mind you, it was a subterfuge move that was calculated to make most anybody squashed without any notice.

Now I say to myself, he’ll throw up the sponge–there is not much more use. What you see on the black arrow was a small dim PM and a B  (which is an initial), and dashes between them P-M-B. Not all saw that embossed mark because everybody was in a state of mind. I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.

The postponement of the initial dates of the  convention and presidential primaries was like a day gained was a day won. It got darker and darker. It got awful dark. The air was still and hot with a hint of an approaching storm. The wind swished and swushed along, the lightning come brisker and brisker, the thunder boomed. All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare. And the voting began.

The South would just have to swallow it and say nothing about the lack of unity, cohesion and leadership: mum’s the word. Osinbajo must now be angry and frustrated to realise that although he’s the arrowhead, his own pan in the ‘subterfuge’ play and power game plan was of vital importance, he had such a small active part to play without his own political structure. He had been treated the way movie stars treat a part bit player. He had just been used by some elements at a time the anointing oil on him was at the lowest and like a performing ape who answers to signals he had not hesitated to hook his foot around the APC southwest, upsets it, sprawling it on it’s back, flailing! And left it struggling to line behind its own.

I saw an Osinbajo that was very impatient, and excited, but looking kind of unhappy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out, even his face mask couldn’t masked his discomfort. Thinking like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular.

I maintained that those goading him on were more clever than him. Are the Yorubas really who they say they are against the mighty ingenious–under the circumstance! I laughed.  I haven’t no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, transparent, out-and-out mythical and miserable business called APC primaries. The Popcorn and ice-cream nearly made it the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. The rascality, stubbornness and widely perceived ungratefulness. Of course, everybody naturally despised an ungrateful soul, and they’d make him feel it all the time.

I stood out my head nodding from the heat of the sun coming after the chilling wind of the night and thus, I know not how, the nation missed the track and took a side-road, yet all were not aware of it for all this country was strange to us. I hasten to add in parenthesis, that if BAT had survived all the intrigues, backstabbing, intrigues and conspiracy against him, he would be a better president, and a sole political warrior of our time. Kí eégún jó bàtá jù bẹ́ẹ̀ lọ, ìlù tí wọ́n ma lù fun ní wọ́n ma lù fun. That was a resounding outing for BAT. Ẹni odò f’ẹ́ gbé lọ tó rí ìtàkùn dìrọ̀ mọ́. BAT had had a lot of experience in jungle fighting, war of nerves in the trenches and has just shown that he knew how to approach a hostile objective silently. However, there’ll be no congratulations or worries here until he pummels and trounce the perennial presidential candidate at the other end and begins to perform.

Newsmen surged forward and flashlights popped. There was a yell for a statement. Obviously enjoying his moment of importance after a hard-fought contest, were waved away. I know that the press would do a fine snow job on the APC presidential primaries. It would be a most vomit-making reportage I’ll ever read. To meet PMB again, I would have done a moon shot.

Groups of people were standing around, talking. There was only one topic of conversation in Abuja today. In politics you don’t trade confidences. The march is on. Yet, I suddenly had a thumping pulse about the truth in the ‘one Nigeria’ chant I hadn’t before experienced. I found it so depressing, I rejected it. 

The APC primaries has more of the traditional mathematics algebraic find the value of × which all school leavers have been trying to fathom till date.

One can feel the dust and smell the dust that made one understand the continuous struggle Nigerians were making to survive. We all have to plough our own furrow.

The smell of grilling bacon and onions spluttering in oil reminded me I was hungry: life continues!

I conclude with this evergreen shot from commander Ebenezer Obey:

Irú ọ̀rẹ́ wo nì wọ́ jẹ́,

Ọ̀rẹ́ ìlọsíwájú ni,

Ṣó dá ẹ l’ójú…#Jimi Bickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger, writer and a public affairs commentator.

He could be reached on Twitter

@bickerstethjimi

@alabaemanuel