A re-edited “Dandalin Siyasa” platform exchange reproduced here reveals certain expectations on GMB shortly after the 2015 elections. Though he’d been ill half the time since then, the facts suggest that the PDP way of doing things seems to have prevailed thus far. Will it prevail all through?
Has Team GMB measured up? Will 2018 usher in new ways, truly GMB ways in all respects? How impactful is the fear of General Elections holding barely 400 days away?
The edited Dandalin
Siyasa exchange:
Two-and-a-half years ago, May 5th, 2015, GMB rejected requests to continue the PDP tradition of having ministers and other appointees chosen by governors.
A Tribune newspaper story Tuesday May 6th posted on “dandalinsiyasa@yahoogroups.com”, an engaging platform for debates on the 2015 polls galvanized chats, May 10th to 12th. To properly situate the long awaited controversial SGF list of Board members, calls for a reread. It recalls the PDP way of doing things, if somewhat untidily so.
State governors and the party alone gave all the names on the list.
Auwalu Dankano of Kwankwasiyya picking his cue from that report in 2015, said Kano and other Governors will send in nominations as was the tradition of the PDP. I took him up on that attempt to return us to the PDP way of doing things:
“Mene ne (What is) the object of democracy? It is to reflect the will of the majority.
“By voting Buhari, Nigerians rejected the PDP way of doing things. They rejected insecurity, fraud in governance and politics.
“Why shouldn’t we all support GMB to do things different? Why should we force him into working with people whose loyalty is only to those who nominated them?
“Let’s allow GMB define his team and succeed in reclaiming Nigeria. That GMB had to race round Nigeria appealing to voters to elect APC candidates confirms the mandate is essentially Buhari’s.
“In all previous polls GMB always got 2 million added votes despite PDP suppression. By 2011, over 12 million; 15 million in 2015; and over 10 million in 2007 if memory serves me right.
“In 2015 Buhari won due mainly to: 1. Prof. Jega’s INEC PVC; 2. Stout, survivalist support of Tinubu and the Yoruba South West; 3. The resolute support for genuine popular democracy by the western world;
4. The consistent, murderous incompetence of the PDP of Obasanjo and pals, and 5. GEJ’s fueling poverty and insecurity, particularly in the most populous areas of the North.
“Add to all these, the jackboot politics of “ka~ci, ba ka ci ba, ka~ci” (you are declared winner, whether you won or not) with party and INEC connivance. That is the root of the shameless corruption, feeding the vicious cycle of subversiôn of the people’s will.
“Those in power know that the people have no say in how they get to office and can’t sack them. So they have neither need nor incentive to run responsive and transparent governments.
“But be that as it may GMB, on the threshold of change in Nigeria, must not be allowed the chance to say his hands were tied by cabals. That they gave him a team he can’t set to work for us.
“That is not to say he should totally deny the various constituencies who worked to make him President, the option of suggesting nominees who must pass the test Nigerians have set him, tests that took him 13 years to get a chance to properly address”.
Dankano’s response: “One of the acceptable features of democracy is recognizing the contributions of party members, and paying them with lucrative offices.
“Despite “Hurricane GMB” those elected on the party (APC) platform, also played a role. Without the help of BAT (Tinubu) and our governors the story would have been different.
“There is nothing wrong, if GMB maintained the status quo giving the governors and party leaders the chance to nominate appointees, so long as they follow laid-down conditions. Unless he wants to prove the prophesy of GEJ”.
KMG follows up: “I am not advocating that people from Mars be brought in to work with GMB or enemies and those who worked against him and his party. No.
“My view is that we must not continue the tradition of the PDP you and Kwankwaso dumped for its celebrated impunity.
“We shouldn’t carry that into the GMB Government of Change.
“If the State Party Leaders alone are to nominate people for the GMB Government, many like you, no matter your competence or capacity may not make it.
“See how they unfairly manipulated the formation of the Party and the nomination of candidates?
“This is not only in Kano. Ask APC’s Hashim Ubali, Chairman, Dandalin Siyasa, from Jigawa. Check out Bauchi. In Sokoto too the same manipulations that gave Wamakko PDP’s ticket were re-enacted bringing forth the equation now on ground.
“In Yorubaland, Ogun and Oyo, powerful politicians supporting GMB were squeezed out into alternative parties, by those who seized the APC Change Hurricane to ride to power.
“Many who control the party and government in most states share nothing of the Buhari vision.
“Nearly all of them fought him to a standstill in all previous election cycles as PDP capos. They switched to APC, knowing well their previous wicked tools can’t work anymore.
“If they’d stayed in PDP they’d atrophy like those the PDP “decking” crushed. Or switch camps, as they did to win in APC.
“Now they have won, it would be foolish of them to expect a blank page in Buhari for them to do as they pleased.
“Much as GMB has to compromise and draw a line despite the gross injustices of the past, he can’t adopt the PDP Way of doing things when it wasn’t the PDP Way that won him the election.
“No, Dankano Sir. If you’d read mine to the very end you’d’ve noticed it covers your concerns. Yes, we expect the NewPDP and all local stakeholders to be consulted.
“But the buck stops on the General’s desk. It is GMB Nigerians voted for, that they will hold accountable.
“It is the PDP Way Nigerians rejected. It is Change we asked for. It is Change we want. And Change we pray we will get”.
“So re-read this bit to get my thinking and that of all GMBites”.
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