There have been a series of developments in Nigeria in recent days that have sharply divided the polity. While some aggrieved politicians are realigning ahead of another round of general elections billed for 2027, the highest lawmaking chamber in the land is embroiled in sexual harassment allegations and other mundane issues that have no positive bearing on their core mandate. In Anambra State, Valentine Ozigbo dumped the Labour Party, but not until he de-marketed the organisation.
The amalgamation of strange bedfellows
Two clear years before the next round of national elections, the nation’s political turf is already shaking with politicians who are outside the corridors of power but want to become relevant in the next dispensation.
In Nigeria, where there is no clear-cut role for the opposition, politicians outside power relapse into political wilderness and irrelevance for four years after a general election.
Many of them go underground and are never heard again, until another round of elections. That is why some go to Dubai for a long holiday.
But now, there are renewed alignments and realignments for the 2027 general election. A number of those involved are aggrieved politicians who, because they lost out in the power play in the current administration, are screaming blue murder.
Many of them who are talking about mergers today were strange bedfellows yesterday whose association in times past ended in a spat.
Some of them, if President Bola Tinubu had accommodated them as ministers, would be seeing a different Nigeria by now. They would have been loud microphones for the administration and the APC government.
For instance, Nasir el-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, was a die-hard supporter of former president Muhammadu Buhari. Despite the enormous pains that the administration inflicted on the masses through the obvious incompetence of the president, el-Rufai saw nothing wrong with what was going on. Today, he is screaming blue murder, not only against the government but also against the APC.
When he was in government as governor, he was among those that determined what happened in the party, even at the national level. But as soon as his tenure expired, he became an ordinary man, which was compounded by the refusal of the Tinubu administration to rehabilitate him with an appointment.
To worsen his case, Uba Sani, who became governor of Kaduna State through the instrumentality of his predecessor, has since cornered the state chapter of the APC, shutting out el-Rufai. Some of those who fled the party while el-Rufai called the shots in Kaduna have started coming back to the APC and regrouping.
Having stayed in the cold and outside the decision-making machinery of the party, both at the state and national levels, for close to two years now, he has become so alienated that he began to feel he was a stranger, hence the decision to “port.”
An alignment where the actors have their individual ambitions to fly the presidential ticket of the party they are joining may only create a fresh chaos.
For instance, if Peter Obi should join the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as he is being wooed by el-Rufai, would he be allowed to emerge as the party’s candidate?
If the nocturnal meetings going on between former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and el-Rufai are aimed at wooing the Adamawa-born politician into SDP, would that not engender confusion in the new party?
It is believed that Atiku has a made-up mind when he is going to any party. He has never hidden his ambition of picking the presidential ticket of such parties.
For instance, at the height of the crisis ahead of the PDP presidential primary in 2022, he had exuded confidence, thus: “Have I ever failed to get the ticket? I will get it this time too.”
The experience of the 2022 primaries of the PDP may not hold any lesson so far for Atiku. If it were not for the insistence of the former Vice President to grab the party’s flag, against all advice, PDP may not be in the position it is today.
Granted that it was morally right for the north to win another four-year term after Buhari’s eight straight years, Atiku’s decision to choose Ifeanyi Okowa, former governor of Delta State, over a more vibrant and outspoken Nyesom Wike was a miscalculation that nailed the coffin for the PDP.
Assuming Atiku did not listen to the doomsayers that Wike would not be controlled as a vice president, the party would have been better off today.
Pray, who will play second fiddle in any alliance for 2027 that has presidential hopefuls such as Atiku, el-Rufai, Obi, and others?
Wrong confession from the Senate
Last Thursday, while many Nigerians were expecting an earth-shaking confession from the presiding officer of the Senate over an allegation of questionable alliance with Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, a wrong voice was heard instead. It was the voice of Senator Sunday Karimi, representing Kogi West Senatorial District, who said he had a confession to make.
He said he was confessing the things that were done in secret. The senator said he was apologising to the Senate and specifically to the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, for an intense lobbying for Natasha to chair the committee on local content, which she did not merit as a greenhorn in the Senate.
He disclosed that he had to press so many buttons to pressure Akpabio to yield to his request.
Karimi said, “When my sister came to the Senate, you were very reluctant to give her a leadership position. I want to recall your words; you said, ‘She’s a rookie, and there were people that came before her.’ You said, ‘Karimi, why would I give her a chairmanship position?’ I said you wouldn’t do that, and your conscience will not allow you to do that. I went to some leaders to put pressure on you, and then finally, I and Senator Jibrin came to you (to tell you) that the position Senator Ohere left is for Kogi State and that you must give it back to Kogi State.
“I even went to hold a meeting with the husband to strategise on how she will be given that chairmanship of local content, and finally, you succumbed. I’m very sorry, sir.” This appears infantile!
But evidence in the public place shows that Natasha was on top of her game at that committee, for which she was also given awards by some organisations. The real reason she was yanked off the committee has remained a controversial subject.
Karimi went on to read a personal message he sent to Natasha on February 24, 2025, trying to get her to apologise to the Red Chamber. What was he trying to achieve by such disclosure? Was it to gain favour from Akpabio?
Unfortunately, also, that same Thursday, while the Senate was promising to give the womenfolk the support to ‘accelerate action’ on their potential, they were punishing a woman for daring to speak up. It is a little bit hypocritical.
Some other women who had been in the Senate and weighed in on the matter merely “filibustered.”.
If the highest lawmaking chamber in the land could be conducting its affairs the way it did last week, then hope for a democratic Nigeria remains distant and faint.
The question to ask is, how concerned is the Senate about the homelessness of many Nigerian citizens, the escalating poverty and hunger crisis in the country, the worsening situation of citizens who have been in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps across the country for years for no fault of theirs, or the unjust killings and kidnapping cases going on in the country?
Sadly, the lawmakers are wasting their precious time on trivial and mundane things, reducing the otherwise hallowed chamber to a theatre of the absurd.
Valentine Ozigbo’s kiss on Peter Obi
As the off-season gubernatorial election in Anambra State approaches, politicians in the state are restless. They are also moving from one party to another in the hope that their chances of winning would be brighter. One of such restless souls is Valentine Ozigbo, who contested the gubernatorial election in the state in 2021.
He was marvellously helped by Peter Obi when he contested the 2021 election and did not waste time to join the ‘Obidient Movement’ before the 2023 presidential election.
Ozigbo, like many other political practitioners in Nigeria, practices what can be described as politics of ‘shifting cultivation,’ as it were. After his unsuccessful attempt in 2021, he moved to the Labour Party (LP), where he thought that the popularity of Peter Obi could brighten his political future.
A few days ago, he gave Obi a long “goodbye kiss of betrayal” and emptied himself and his political machinery into the All Progressives Congress (APC) family. What a rolling stone!
But one thing common among all defectors is that they never leave honourably without demarketing their former parties and without whipping up sentiment against those who had accommodated their excesses. Ozigbo did just that!
Ozigbo may have made his calculation and come to a conclusion that victory could be easier for him in the APC than in the LP. Again, having been in the cold for some time now, he believes that declaring for the ruling party at the centre could purchase him rehabilitation shelter of sorts.
