A coalition built on sand
They built their house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash –
They built their house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash - Bible
IT WAS just a matter of time before it happened. The collapse was imminent but they were only the ones who did not see it coming. They could not see it because they were living a lie. From the outset, the coalition was bound to crash because it was built on deceit.
The way they hijacked the platform for themselves was fraught with hanky-panky. It was an underhand deal in which many leaders of the original African Democratic Congress (ADC) were sidelined. They only got to know about it after the deal had been struck.
The party’s founder and chairman Ralph Nwosu was the front and back of the deal. Everything he wanted he got from the desperadoes who needed his party at all costs as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the 2027 elections. To them, that was all APC is good for, no more, no less. Nothing else mattered as long as the platform was available and run by them for the purpose of pulling President Tinubu and APC down.
They believe that the only way to win in 2027 is to first destroy the President and his record to make it look like he has not done anything since coming into office in 2023. Tinubu may not have scored 100 percent in all areas but which leader anywhere in the world has such a record. None, whether living or dead.
The truth is nothing Tinubu does will ever make the opposition happy. They are only good at finding fault, but poor in doing the right things for the country’s development. Those in the coalition are not new to Nigerians. They are the same lot who ruled the country in one capacity or the other in the past. They have nothing to show for it.
That the ADC coalition would not work did not need the say-so of a seer. How can it when its arrowhead, Atiku Abubakar, has his own agenda? He arranged the coalition without showing his hands, allowing the noisemakers like Amaechi, El-Rufai and one other governor to think that they are the brain box of the contrivance. Amaechi, for instance, is ever ready to gloat over his role in the formation of the coalition.
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El-Rufai too likes to do that. Their former counterpart from a Southwest state applied native intelligence in the matter knowing the political implications for him back home. Amaechi did all he did because he thought Atiku would allow a level-playing field in determining who gets the coalition’s presidential ticket.
Peter Obi and the latter-day convert, Rabiu Kwankwaso thought so too until the scales fell off their eyes. Atiku is not ready to yield the presidential ticket to the South, the zone which all the parties seemed to have agreed should occupy the office till 2030, beginning from 2023 when Tinubu became president. The fatal blow that the mirage of a coalition suffered in the Supreme Court last week hastened its crash.
The court ordered its David Mark-led national working committee (NWC) to return to the high court to sort out its leadership crisis. It was a postponement of the evil day for the party, as it were. There is no way it will come out of the case unscathed. Without much ado, Obi and Kwankwaso jumped ship, exposing the coalition for all to see it for what it is. An arrangement to grab power at all costs by any of its leading lights without caring about what happens to the larger group.
The exchange of words among the various tendencies representing Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso truly exposed the coalition as a SPV to be ridden to gain power by the strongest among its leaders without carrying others along. What the coalition said about Obi’s exit is profound.
It said Obi was not ready to join hands in building the coalition but was only seeking a SPV he could use to contest for president. The same can be said of Atiku, Kwankwaso, Amaechi and the rest. So, how will the coalition not die? Rather than face reality, they are pointing fingers at the government and the ruling party. May it not be too late before they know the truth.
