A thief always visits at night. He has no business being seen by the day. Petty thieves, most especially, would be convenient burning candles by night. They could drink their liquor and sleep all day, knowing fully well that the night cometh, when no one must tolerate sleep.
Thieves and burglars are brutal criminals. But while the former may only hide in the act, the latter have no time for hiding. They would perpetrate their criminality even at daylight, having been well armed with ammunitions.
The act of stealing may be criminal. But the deed itself could best be an art. It could be illegal but its notion in the minds of its practitioners is inexplicable. A vocation, sometimes to those who walk the night, the demoralizing imports of armed robbery with regards to morality cannot be overemphasized.
Armed robbers break into banks in broad daylight carting away huge sums of money without being afraid of being caught. This is the height of resplendence on how ignoble ventures could be so boldly executed with such classic finesse.
Apparently, one should not be surprised at how thieves rock the night or the daytime forcefully taking what belongs to the public. One is rather seriously worried at how mischief makers would most skillfully meditate on and successfully perpetrate the idea of thievery against those who made the world know that they have the solutions to it.
A professor of mathematics should not be found on the floor with pupils complaining about his inability to solve a problem. A teacher must not be heard telling his students that he has no answer to the simplest of puzzles in his parlance. A situation like this would best retell a story of a ship captain who gets drowned in the ocean without a tempest.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) came to Nigeria’s political limelight during the 2015 electioneering period. Through mergers, the party came up as a humongous and formidable platform with the vigor and prospect to unseat the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The APC ran a discrete campaign of condemnation and accusations against the PDP. It called the PDP all evil names and told Nigerians how the party stole away their fortunes. As expected, the people, the voters, turned against a party whose alleged politics of crass impunity they felt were enough in 16 years.
The result was that popular dethronement of then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and the resumption of “Mr. Integrity”, Muhammadu Buhari. He seemed to have had the courage to suppress criminality. He had what it takes to dethrone impunity.
In fairness to him, it seems he also had the intention of making decisions that would positively affect the common man. When he therefore won his reelection in 2019, Buhari partially became the man Nigerians long wanted him to be. He directly sent funds to the local governments. He granted legislative and judiciary autonomy. He impressed on the state governors to allow the template function because according to him, developments are best felt when extended to the local people.
Unfortunately, thieves who must not sleep at night were still working very hard to gain their grounds. The thieves spent their nights brainstorming on how they could possibly disfigure the selling point of Mr. President. These thieves were not very far from the President himself.
In fact, most of them were closer to him than his enemies were. They were members of his ‘kitchen cabinet’. They were the President’s ‘advisers’. They were those who could insist that something is good and in the best interest of the Nigerian populace, even though such decisions were practical principles for self-destruction. And so the saboteurs reigned with the king.
They were thinking of their life after his reign. So they blackmailed the President with the war against corruption. They worked very hard and dethroned the then finance minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. They worked extremely hard to keep their bandits. They worked too hard to retain the vigor of their terrorists. They kept strengthening Boko Haram in Borno and Kaduna state.
The President’s home state, Katsina, was not left out. Their monarchs became materials freely exchanged for ransom. The second coming of Mr President became a tough time for Nigerians. Of course within the first few weeks of his second term, he had clearly told the nation that he was going to be tough.
The bombings in Borno State, the savagery and wanton wastage of lives became the rejection of his second coming toughness. The open confrontation and killings of Christians became an overloaded memory of religious discrimination.
All these anomalies became the horse on which the thieves rode to instigate disunity in the party. Ideally, governors from the party and other stakeholders became conscious of their future survival. They knew very well how they existed before Buhari’s Presidency. Their futuristic inclinations also took them deep into the future, making them imagine the post-Buhari Nigeria.
They wouldn’t be wounded if they must match back to Egypt, provided their political projections are not miscalculated. And so they started a fight and attempted to dislodge the national chairman. Reports were available of how Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole threatened to “tell Nigerians who is living in Aso Rock.” They ‘tentatively’ dangled their axe. Perhaps the thieves were waiting for their right time to act.
They re-strategized and launched a return match. It fell in the right spot as Ondo and Edo States were marching towards the hilltop ballots.
Indeed they struck the right cord. Behold their adjustments and realignments paid off. Intra-party and anti-party conspiracies greatly progressed. They rode behind the appellate court verdict which insisted that Adams Oshiomhole stood suspended as the party’s national chairman.
A brutal macabre dance ensued and three factional chairmen emerged. While the court favoured Victor Giadom as the new acting chairman of the party, the former Oyo State governor, now late, Abiola Ajimobi, was said to have laid claim to the top job.
In a statement issued by the party’s national vice chairman, South South, Ntufam Hilliard Ettah, the party had picked a former attorney general and commissioner for justice, Mr. Worgu Boms, to replace Giadom and fill the vacant post of the deputy national secretary of the party.
What many have come to describe as the shameless war of words and practical demonstration of pettiness was deep, cracking the spinal cord of the ruling party. The politics of the party’s leadership became unfounded and very distasteful.
Great was the crack that even the President had to weigh in and give a new direction. In his address, during the party’s emergency national executive meeting, President Buhari condemned the infighting in the party and recommended the immediate withdrawal of all court cases, ratification of Edo primary of the party, dissolution of the party’s executives and nominations of interim extraordinary committee for the planning of the party’s convention.
Meanwhile, the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who subscribed to the President’s swift intervention and recommendations, called on party faithful to remain loyal to the party and work for the progress of the party. Tinubu, who believed that “poverty and economic inequality, insecurity, lack of infrastructure are longstanding obstacles” which blocked Nigeria’s access to national greatness for too long, maintained that APC leadership and members must deal with and navigate through the rude economic consequences of COVID-19.
He insisted that the party must restore its collegial nature and that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and other stakeholders must play their crucial roles, working hard for the party’s progress in both Edo and Ondo governorship polls.
Condemning how the APC had been senseless, especially in playing politics with the death of Abiola Ajimobi, whom the party said was still recuperating; Reuben Abati on Monday wondered what manner of men could be gambling with dying and death.
It is on record that while Ajimobi’s death was being announced by reliable media reports, the APC chieftains were still insisting that he was reviving. While that unfortunate case is happening at the time the party itself was gasping for breath, it is trite to establish that the whole wranglings have been the gluttonous bites of the thieves. The troubles with the party have been a cross purpose interface between strong stakeholders of the party who have chosen to conspire with external bodies to cause disintegration.
Truth be told, the crises bedeviling the ruling APC is an obvious product of serial manipulations by party men. They are making productive use of their opportunities, hiding behind the masks and stabbing the party to death. These men are best defined by their post-Buhari reflections, future political ambitions for the maintenance of their private estates.
