Nigeria’s opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), happens to be a clone of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
The pity is that clones do not live long, as exemplified by Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal. Dolly was born, sorry cloned, at the Roslin Institute in Scotland on July 5, 1996 but was not announced to the world until February 22, 1997. Poor Dolly died in 2003, barely six years after.
It is in this cloning context that I am seeing the great shouts being made about the proposed presidential bid of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, after his long-foretold defection from the PDP to the APC. His bid to contest for the presidency of Nigeria, by a curious twist of fate, reminds us of another worthy who equally contested to be Nigerian President in 2011 as an opposition candidate – Mallam Nuhu Ribadu – who has since gone the opposite way by defecting from the APC to the PDP to bid for the less glamorous post of Adamawa State Governor.
The cloning going on is such that whilst Tambuwal is being praised to the high heavens in the quarters of the much-ballyhooed progressives, the erstwhile darling Ribadu of the EFCC fame is being lambasted for lacking in principles. The praise songs for Tambuwal are indeed very loud as he is being lauded by his supporters as the one man with a vision who can change the destiny of a nation. It is on record, the Tambuwal crowds assert, that no less a personage than Nigeria’s influential former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, advised the Speaker to gun for a higher office.
Born on January 10, 1966 in Tambuwal village in today’s Sokoto State, Tambuwal boasts of a 1984 Teachers Grade II Certificate from Government Teachers’ College, Dogon-Daji before gaining the Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, LLB (Hons) degree in 1991. Called to the Bar in 1992, the political education of Tambuwal started with learning the legislative ropes from 1999 to 2000, while working as Personal Assistant on Legislative Affairs to Senator Abdullahi Wali, the then Senate Leader. In 2003 he took the plunge into running for elective office as the representative of the Kebbi/Tambuwal Federal Constituency on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Back in 2005, he was the Minority Leader of the House until he defected to the PDP. In the wake of his re-election to the House in 2007, he was elected the Deputy Chief Whip.
Tambuwal had issues with his party, the PDP, when it tried to impose a Speaker on the House of Representatives in 2011 in the shape and size of Alhaja Mulikat Akande. He upset the apple-cart by bagging the post of Speaker against the odds of his party. From the very beginning, Tambuwal had been supping with opposition party leaders such as former Head of State, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), and former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
In 2013 Tambuwal threw a bombshell in Lagos as the guest lecturer at the Distinguished Management Lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Management (Chartered) where he thundered: “The most compelling reasons for revolution throughout the ages were injustice, crushing poverty, marginalization, rampant corruption, lawlessness, joblessness, and general disaffection with the ruling elite. You will agree with me that these describe conditions in our nation now, to a very large degree.”
As I said from the beginning, cloning has a very short life, and Tambuwal needs to learn from the experience of Nuhu Ribadu who recently said: “I will not allow anyone to trade with me for the second time.” Tambuwal should well beware of the political traders for they are still very much around.
Tambuwal should learn very well from Ribadu on the short-circuiting of political careers by political carpet baggers. For now it is very obvious to most political pundits that if General Muhammadu Buhari fails to clinch the presidential candidacy of the APC the party is as good as finished. Godfathers such as General Olusegun Obsanjo and of course Babangida may be uncomfortable with Buhari, but then, what return of valid votes can the duo of Obasanjo and Babangida guarantee?
The truth as I see it is that Tambuwal will end up being left on his own midstream. The other APC presidential aspirant, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has warned that it is too late in the day to work out a consensus presidential candidate within the ranks of the APC. Tambuwal may have been promised the heavens in certain quarters but in terms of the ground rules he remains a non-starter in the manner that Ribadu was dumped by the ACN of yore.
Like the cloned sheep Dolly that had a very short life, Tambuwal’s presidential dreams may have a very short shrift in the murky terrains of Nigeria’s high-wire politics. It will just be a case of recent history repeating itself, and the wheels of Nigerian politics will keep rolling on as though nothing happened. A tear for Tambuwal!
Written by Uzor Maxim Uzoatu.
