- Warns, “This is not Nigeria of 1993”
Some stakeholders in the All Progressives Congress (APC) have expressed the phobia that the crisis generated by the domineering influence of a cabal in the Presidency is rising to uncontrollable proportion, warning of the potential dangers of pulling the Party-government into anarchy.
The former Interim National Chairman of APC, Chief Bisi Akande, a former Governor of Osun State, has identified what he considered two potential dangers that may plunge the country into unprecedented chaos and destabilize the gains of democracy since 1999. The former governor identified the reign of a clique in the Presidency as a major danger; warning of the need to avoid the political experience of 1993.
The threat of the cabal in the Presidency was long exposed by the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, when he said that a clique has taken the control of government out of the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari. The President was said to have lost control of the federal government.
Subsequently, the President’s wife, Hajia Aisha Buhari, re-echoed the cabal phenomenon in the Presidency, crying out loud that a clique has been holding the husband hostage. She decried that people who were not in the team during the campaign or power struggle now take up sensitive appointments and dictate who gets what, when and how much from the commonwealth under the husband’s leadership. This led to the statement by the President that the wife belongs to the kitchen, and the other room.
The former Interim National Chairman of APC, Chief Bisi Akande, a former Governor of Osun State, has decried the political intrigues in the body politic.
Akande, in a statement on Monday, declared: “There are two challenges facing the country today. The first and most critical is the health of the President, which unfortunately, is a development beyond his control and for which we did not prepare.” He maintained: “The second is the disorder and lack of cohesion between the National Assembly and the Presidency. These two great red flag dangers have the potential of plunging the country into unprecedented chaos and destabilising the gains of democracy since 1999.”
The former APC Interim National Chairman advocated that the greatest danger, however, is the political interests at the corridor of power attempting to feast on the health of Mr. President in a dangerous manner that may aggravate the problems between the executive and the National Assembly without realising if in the end, it could drag the entire country into avoidable doom.
Akande had declared: “As delicately fragile the union of nations making up Nigeria, so delicately fragile the democracy and the rule of laws governing the polity of the Union called Nigerian Federation. Certain Nigerian leaders, having been blindfolded by corruption, assume the possibility of using money in manipulating the national security agencies to intimidate, suppress and hold down certain ethnic nationalities or playing one ethnic nationality against the other with a view to undermining the constitution and perversely upturning the rule of law.”
Accordingly, the former APC Interim National Chairman (APC), admonished appointees in the presidency on the dangers of feasting on President Muhammadu Buhari’s health condition; cautioning those plotting to make political gains from it on the dangers of allowing the country to slide into anarchy.
Akande further had declared: “To avoid the ugly consequences of letting President Buhari’s ailments throw Nigeria into confusion, I am urging all Nigerians to begin to pray for his divine healing and perfect recovery.
“Let me warn today that those who wish to harvest political gains out of the health of the President are mistaken. This is not Nigeria of 1993. We are in a new national and global era of constitutionalism and order. We hope Nigerians have enough patience to learn from history.
“My greatest fear, however, is that the country should not be allowed to slide into anarchy and disorder of a monumental proportion.”
He disclosed that the last interaction he had with the President during his daughter’s wedding in December 2016, he observed a leader pained by frustration from those surrounding him.
“When last we met at the wedding of his daughter in Abuja last December, I complained to him that I was not happy about his stressful looks. His reply connoted some allusions to circumstances where an honest man fighting corruption is surrounded mostly by unpatriotic greedy ruling class,” Akande had said.