Broom Movement: True or rogue democrats?

 in the social media, the harangue signed by the Convener of a group called Broom United Movement (BUM), Mr. Fuad Oki, some weeks back, I got strung-up with the level of hypocrisy and shenanigans in our politics and in our polity. The speech, an inadequate lecture note on POL 301, exhibited stupendous expertise in fictional creativity. The lecturer, a serial political manipulator, engaged himself in rhetorical and polemic narrative on the fundamentals of political science without establishing any theoretical foundation for his epistolary politics. From its convocation to its deliberations, it was obvious that the movement was a political misadventure packaged by a troubled hireling echoing the whisperings and murmurings of his frightened masters “refuging” in the tunnel of perfidy. In short, the entire grandstanding was a whispering campaign by a drowning collective aimed at Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Hear the Convener: “Today we want to commence the process of building Our Party (APC) by demanding genuine reconciliation of our members that their voices will be heard and that their votes will count whenever such need arises… Our Party in Lagos State has never been this divided and dis-United. The current graveyard silence that permeate (sic) our political landscape with a siddon look, a o mu erin joba syndrome, is very dangerous…”

I cannot but laugh listening to my good friend, Oki talking about “the process of building our Party (APC) by demanding genuine reconciliation…” Agreed that every political party draws its membership from the citizenry that identifies with its ideology and political philosophy, this does not in any way suggest that every member of the party is a founder. There are founding fathers, there are founding members and there are ordinary joiners. When a joiner begins to claim the status of a founder with this kind of statement” …building our party (APC)…”, one should wonder where this whimsical usurpation is coming from. As an insider, I have sufficient understanding of the trajectory of APC from its original derivative, Alliance for Democracy (AD). I am aware of the fact that a Political Party is a formal association which should be funded by members through levies and dues; in some cases, through donations from influential members of the Party, from interested corporate organisations and institutional affiliates. However, knowing the massive expenditure that politics and elections require in Nigeria, some of the founding fathers of the party who are moneybags have always taken it upon themselves to fund the Party single-handedly. This was the case with Asiwaju Tinubu who individually shouldered most of the financial commitments of the transiting parties AD, ACN and APC. Without sounding somehow hyperbolic, Tinubu was the major financier of these parties at a time that success or victory at the national level looked very bleak and hopelessly impossible. During these trying times, where was Fuad Oki? Where was Biodun Oki, his brother? Where were his masters that are teleguiding everything today from their hideouts? It is sheer opportunism for Oki and his treacherous band to be ascribing to themselves a status they know they do not deserve. Most of Oki’s allies are mere joiners as they were nowhere around when the birth of APC’s progenitors took place. Those who founded AD, those who funded AD from the scratch and those who pioneered AD from the beginning are the real founders and under no guise should they be denied the fruits of their labour. Personally, I feel fate and people have not been fair to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with the way and manner they have been trying to rubbish his historic contributions and efforts in the making of the APC and by extension, his role in the consolidation of our nascent democracy.

When Oki was talking of “genuine reconciliation of our members”, “voices of our members will be heard and votes will count”, “Our Party in Lagos State has never been this divided and dis-united”, “a o mu erin joba syndrome”, who was he referring to? Tinubu of course. These vituperations are laced with mischief because Oki was aware of Tinubu’s appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as APC Chief National Reconciliator. The intention was to discredit and cast aspersion on Tinubu peace credential. What Oki was saying in essence was that the choice of Tinubu by Buhari was not in consonance with extant political realities since Tinubu’s base, Lagos State, was in “total turmoil”.

But what Oki failed to state in his statement was that whatever imaginary trouble that exists in Lagos APC today was a creation of his sponsors. As far as I know, Lagos APC is not witnessing any graveyard silence. Every member of the party in the state is committed to the Ambode second term project. All members of the State House of Assembly, all House of Representatives members from the state and the three Senators from the state have all stated categorically that they will go all the way with the governor. Those who are expressing the only dissenting voice are Oki and his cohorts whose defeat during the 2015 primaries was Tinubu’s cardinal sin against Oki’s principal. Those who are advertising a non-existent crisis are the people whose inordinate ambition for the gubernatorial throne has crashed as a result of the sterling performance of the governor of the state. I am still baffled that while the opposition in the state is obviously and reasonably reluctant to contest with the governor, Oki and his sponsors are calling for party primaries. Is leadership no longer about performance? Why must any responsible individuals and group think of changing a wining and performing team. Was Oki’s principal not deservedly compensated with another term by the same Tinubu when it was generally acknowledged that his performance was outstanding? Why advocate for another primary when there is a general acclamation that the present governor of the state has been more than outstanding?

Justifying the birth of BUM, the convener explained that “our party suffers from low organisational capacity and lack of internal democracy… This apparent weakness underscores the need for reform and institutionalisation of a process whereby professionals become more central to the running of our Party”.

It is hypocritical of Oki to pretend not to know how or what was responsible for what he called “low organisational capacity and lack of internal democracy”. Since he came on board the party leadership at the state level, what efforts did he make personally to check the perfidious activities of his sponsors? Rather than do this, Oki conveniently oscillated between the two groups because he found in treachery a rewarding treasury. Those who hawked and escalated party division; those who destroyed the mechanics of party system, those who planted the seeds of discord in the party; those who indulged in intrigues for prebendal enterprise have lost the moral authority to pontificate on political morality. Who is Oki to berate the party leadership for dysfunctional internal democracy within the Party? I submit again that he does not possess the moral credential to theorize on internal democracy. Two personal examples would suffice. In 2006, when a campaign organisation was being set up for Babatunde Fashola gubernatorial activities, this writer was chosen as the Director-General of the campaign organisation during a caucus meeting. In attendance at the meeting where the decision was taken were: Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Tunde Fashola, Gbenga Asafa, Mutiu Are and Kunle Odufuwa. The meeting lasted for almost six hours. But before the decision could be communicated to me officially, Oki was able to persuade Babatunde Fashola to convince Asiwaju Tinubu to replace this writer with himself. In his usual placatory gesture, Asiwaju Tinubu concurred, promising to compensate this writer with a top political position in the new government. The rest is history because nothing was done afterwards. Yet, one has remained loyal to the party and to its leadership. The same scenario was replayed in 2015 when again, Oki was imposed on Akinwunmi Ambode by Tunde Fashola who did not want Ologunde as the D-G of Ambode Campaign Organisation (AMBO). Since Tinubu and the party leadership were looking for a way to carry him along in the whole project, it was easy for Fashola to have his way.

Secondly, this writer, as a close Personal Aide to Asiwaju Tinubu, was present in all the meetings that Asiwaju Tinubu had with the so-called “Aggrieved “12” who protested in 2006 the selection, imposition and eventual investiture of Fashola as the gubernatorial candidate of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in most of these meetings, Tinubu continued to justify the selection and enjoined the “Aggrieved 12” to accept his decision in the interest of the party. His reason was that the number of candidates was unwieldy and that any attempt to organise primaries was capable of inflaming tension among members and thus escalating the crisis beyond what the party could manage. He begged. He pleaded. He cajoled. He mesmerized. Eventually, the deal was sealed but it was not easy. All the while, Fashola was anxious and panicky because he did not want Tinubu to succumb to the demands of the “Aggrieved 12”. It was obvious that he did not want primaries because at that time, he was unknown, unpopular, apolitical; he was hated by the politicians and even with Tinubu’s support, he was still not confident that he would win the primaries because he knew how unpopular he was with the politicians. It was the same Fuad Oki as the D-G of the Campaign Organisation that was frustrating intra-party efforts to conduct party primaries.

Now hear the so-called BUM convener on Party Primaries in 2018:“Competitive Party and electoral politics is imperative in order to facilitate internal democracy within our Party, through requirements like Party nomination primaries…” Though this is the ideal thing to do in a normal democratic setting, manipulation of Party constitutional provisions in a society like Nigeria, where aberrations and impunities reign supreme, cannot be considered alien. Irrespective of this, it becomes frightening and disturbing when past beneficiaries of illegalities and impositions condemn with hypocritical passion, the very methods through which they were lifted to power.

Anyone who reads the Convener’s speech without knowing his antecedents will applaud his esoteric preachment. But a profound understanding of his past political antics and jingoism will reveal the vacuity of his delicious sophistry. The kind of idealism being marketed by the Movement cannot be facilitated through political treachery nor can it be canvassed by past beneficiaries of systemic anomalies. Those who lack the integrity and dignity of sainthood should not be the ones to promote Utopianism as they lack the moral credibility to undertake such political advocacy.

Those who are preaching Party cohesion are the same people desecrating the sanctity of democracy by snubbing the internal redress mechanisms and going to the extreme to seek “justice” through party dismemberment. Genuine democrats who believe in the sanctification of democratic tenets will not indulge in sanctimonious cyber carnival of party internal matters. Political rascality and theatrical democratic pretensions are the professional tools of rogue democrats. The Convener, the apostles and the faceless sponsors of Broom United Movement are nothing but rogue democrats seeking recognition through democratic deception.