By Ehichioya Ezomon
Before the New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) resurrected in the All Progressives Congress (APC), and transformed into the Reformed All Progressives Congress (R-APC), it’s doubtful if 99.99 per cent of politically-active and enlightened Nigerians had heard about Buba Galadima, “the new kid on the block.”
Elder statesman and the acclaimed “Mr. Fix It” of Nigerian politics, Chief Anthony Anenih, will envy the way Galadima boasts of having the power to unmake President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 elections.
A politically savvy, sagacious and calculative Anenih would rather vow to make governors and presidents, by issuing his famous “there’s no vacancy” either in a particular state Government House or Aso Rock in Abuja. He made such declarations for the re-elections of Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, respectively.
But not so for Mr. Galadima, who, even as secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the platform that Buhari used for the 2011 elections, was not publicly considered as synonymous with the political life of the former Head of State.
Lately, Galadima touts himself as not only the tactician that brought Buhari into politics, and responsible for the cult-like following he has garnered since he first threw his hat into the arena in 2003, but that without him, Buhari wouldn’t be president today.
In his “larger-than-life political image,” Galadima brags about “controlling” over 75 per cent of members of the APC, and that having the ear of the National Assembly members, he could, if provoked, ask them to impeach President Buhari, and pronto, the retired General would be sent packing.
Such is the encompassing and awesome powers Galadima ascribed to himself that he predicted the death of the APC through a seismic defection of R-APC members in a matter of weeks. He surely hit the bull’s eye!
Three state governors, a deputy governor and over 100 members of National and State Assemblies, have exited the APC to the main opposition PDP, from which they decamped prior to the 2015 elections. The jewel among the defectors is Dr. Bukola Saraki, the Senate President and Number Three in the hierarchy of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
As more defections are envisaged in the countdown to the party primaries from mid August, Mr. Galadima, as his recent “revelations” indicate, has adopted a strategy of remaining in the news by raking up issues with the potential to stoke further division in the APC, and de-market Buhari before the critical voting public.
Polity watchers were fed with the notion that the APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, sold the idea of a merger of political parties to Buhari, who bought into it as capable of redeeming his failed attempts at the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011.
However, Galadima claims that but for his insistence, Buhari was against, and would have jettisoned an alliance with Tinubu, and the choice of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as his running mate in 2015.
Galadima’s words: “Buhari was the one who was against the alliance with Tinubu and I don’t want to say anything. Let Buhari deny what I have said. I was for it and I organized it and I wrote a memo and even produced a candidate for the vice-presidency, this same Osinbajo.
“We were a committee of three: Osinbajo, Sule Hamma and me. Sule Hamma promoted the alliance more than anybody else. It was Buhari that refused. Let him deny before us and we will show him. Whenever you see him, ask him why Buba Galadima said he wouldn’t sign INEC’s form with Tunde Bakare’s name. I don’t want to say much. Buhari cannot challenge all these things we are saying.”
We can’t hold brief for Buhari, Tinubu, Osinbajo, Hamma and Bakare on these hot-potato matters addressed by Galadima. But still, three issues stand out in his session with the Abuja-based, ‘The Interview’ monthly magazine.
One, Buhari’s alleged “refusal” to align with Tinubu for the merger that birthed the APC. Two, the nomination of Osinbajo, as running mate to Buhari, which the public had “erroneously” attributed to Tinubu. Three, the stoppage of Pastor Bakare from clinching the vice presidential slot for the second time in 2015, having first ran with Buhari in 2011.
Meaning that Galadima was “responsible,” and not Buhari, for the CPC’s merger with the former Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to form the APC; he, and not Tinubu, should claim credit for Osinbajo’s vice presidential nomination, and the shutting out of Bakare from that position again.
If Galadima were this powerful, as a vote-catcher and political “kingmaker” since 2003, he could, as he parrots, determine, and dispense with President Buhari’s electoral fate in 2019.
All said, it’s safe to emphasis that before Galadima sprang out of the blue, discerning Nigerians knew that the romance of strange bedfellows in the APC would not last till 2019, considering the manner of its formation, the acrimonious election of principal officers of the National Assembly, and the mutual mistrust therefrom between the executive and the legislature.
In their resistance to the APC and Buhari administration’s efforts to “right the wrongs,” the APC-dominated two chambers of the Assembly accusingly turned an “opposition” to the government. Thus, the current omens were a matter of time!
Conclusively, the exodus from the APC to the PDP is in spite of Galadima’s own-hyped political wizardry, which can only be measured if he’s able to “halt”, particularly in his (Galadima’s) northern turf, President Buhari’s re-election, and prevent the APC from forming the next government. Otherwise, it’s time he curtailed his swaggering persona.
* Mr. Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.