CPC Black Sheep, holding Press Conference today, to support the Tinubu-led federal government & APC”

The last week has been an interesting time in Nigerian politics. The Tinubu government with an absentee president who would never transfer power to his sidelined deputy as required by the Constitution is away to France for 8th time on one pretext or another (but never the truth – serious health challenges). Tinubu’s media team went helter-skelter managing the fall-out of the accusations of violating the federal character provisions of the Constitution by appointing over 150 persons with Yoruba-sounding names in virtually every key agency of the government in every economic, financial, legal and social sector – by suggesting that all appointments were on merit, of course.

It is not only the other five geopolitical zones that were unconstitutionally excluded from the distribution of key appointments in the Tinubu government. The members of the defunct CPC which was the largest single electoral bloc amongst the parties that merged into the APC in 2013, has been virtually excluded from the leadership of the executive and legislative arms of government. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders, but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.

As soon as the Tinubu government settled into office, former president Buhari and his legacy came under deliberate attack for a reason that wasn’t clear then, but evident now. Every hardship caused by the reckless policies and their poor implementation and sequencing was being on what was inherited from the Buhari administration. Every incident of insecurity and the failure to prevent is blamed on the Buhari administration. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
A deliberate policy of appeasing and paying kidnappers and bandits in the North-West zone is reminiscent of the decision of a previous government to ignore Boko Haram’s territorial gains in the North-East at the time, as part of a strategy of vote suppression in zones that are perceived as unlikely to vote for the incumbent president in those days. The Tinubu approach to solving security problems in the North-West combines denial, media propaganda and negotiating with (and paying) bandits. In the guise of ‘non-kinetic strategy’, kidnapping and banditry incidents have escalated in Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, and Kaduna States in the North-West as the bandits have been paid billions in ransom monies that have been then used to acquire even more lethal weapons. The states of North- West were the most consistent electoral base of the defunct CPC and former President Buhari. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
Tinubu’s national security and economic policy officials appear to have undying hatred for Buhari and his legacy and did everything to rubbish him as soon they got into office. It is on record that officials like Nuhu Ribadu and Wale Edun had attempted at various times to blame the fallout of the Tinubu government’s ill-timed fuel subsidy removal (without any thought of a social safety net) and the equally idiotic floating of the Naira (without adequate foreign reserves to ensure exchange rate stability) on the Buhari administration that had prudently managed these for 8 years without causing harm to lives and livelihoods. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
The combination of some of the reasons above led to the rational decision by some former Buhari ministers led by the quartet of Raul Aregbesola, Isa Ibrahim Pantami, Abubakar Malami, and Emeka Nwajiuba on the one hand, and other Buhari loyalists like Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir El-Rufai and Kashim Ibrahim Imam on the other, to reach out to other patriots to explore an eventual exit from the non-functioning APC to another progressive party. This has created panic that the ‘used and dumped’ CPC bloc is about to be lost. The only known appointees of Tinubu that had ever been in the CPC – (Yusuf Tuggar and two special advisers) neither have the grass-root reach to prevent the imminent exodus of CPC faithful from the APC, nor possess the capacity to rebuild the bridges that they deliberately and recklessly burnt.
These defunct CPC chieftains are being targeted by security agencies – their phones, laptops and homes under round the clock surveillance for exercising their constitutional rights of association. Some are being actively investigated by both security and anti-corruption agencies with a view to intimidate them into silence and prevent them from exiting the APC. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
All of a sudden, what we have seen in the last few weeks was affirmation that the ‘expired’ Buhari that caused all the problems of Nigeria that Tinubu is trying to solve is now the new messiah needed to preserve a suffocated and dying APC. The progressive governors’ forum came appealing to Buhari to abridge the constitutional rights of free association and direct all defunct CPC members to remain in an APC that has not met in nearly two years, and cares little for the concerns of ordinary Nigerian. The northern states governors’ forum has been directed to visit Buhari as well, and appeal for Northern unity behind the Tinubu administration. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
And when former Vice President Atiku Abubakar paid a long-delayed visit to Buhari on Friday with former Governors Achike Udenwa, Bindow Jibrilla, Gabriel Suswam, Nasir El-Rufai, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and several former Ministers like Idris Umar (Gombe ), with Abubakar Malami and Professor Isa Ali Pantami, Tinubu and the APC leadership went into unmatched panic.
The response of the Villa is to compel the APC chairman-on-paper – Abdullahi Ganduje (a.k.a Gandollar) and his NWC minions to rush to Buhari and disturb his usually quiet Friday evening. Gandollar who once referred to Buhari as “Habu na Habu” of the famous Mamman Shata song (of a drunk who invited people to his home for celebration and then scattered the event due excessive drunkenness) in 2022, now shamelessly seeks Buhari’s validation. This has not only angered the defunct CPC leaders but has infuriated the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
What the Tinubu government and the APC are doing this Monday morning is to mobilize those that the defunct CPC bloc refer to as the Black Sheep of the family to hold a press conference under the leadership of former Nasarawa Governor, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura (who was stepped down as APC chairman in 2022 because of a suspicion of being sponsored by Tinubu) and Waziri Bulama (a wannabe-National Secretary of APC that Tinubu sponsored as replacement at some point and the APC NEC rejected).
These Black Sheep will claim to speak for the defunct CPC bloc and its electorate. Those in the old CPC know them. They are doing this for their personal benefits and selfish advancement – and not for the defunct CPC faithful. They are no longer CPC leaders, and they will never speak for us. Let them collect their benefits and appointments and join Tinubu and Gandollar. It is their choice. Their bold usurpation and action will not only anger the defunct CPC leaders but will certainly infuriate the electorate that gave Tinubu more votes than even his ancestral Southwest gave him in the 2023 election.
We wish these Black Sheep all the luck in their ill-chosen path of betrayal of the defunct CPC, Northern Nigeria and the Nigerian people.