In recent years, politicians and most members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have shown themselves to have one of the worst reputations of any political party in Nigeria. These politicians are well known for their unscrupulous, crime-filled leadership, callousness, sycophancy, nepotism, organised embezzlement and pilfering of public funds meant for other uses.
The gap between these APC leaders and their wards and constituents is horribly alarming and this is easily attributable to how the politicians and other members of the party who wield political power perceive the ‘common’ man. These APC leaders break rules and violate the constitution which should ordinarily be the ground norm without implications simply because they possess ‘power’, to be more succinct, the situation can be likened to a cobweb that traps only helpless insects but allows big birds the luxury of flying through seamlessly.
The failure of governance in Nigeria and this horde of criminals in the ruling party manifests in the declining capacity of political leaders to recognize systemic risks such as election fraud, terrorist attacks, herder-farmer conflict, armed banditry, and police brutality and put in place the necessary measures to navigate these challenges. Instead, they are more focused on ruining everything that comes in their path and making sure that they steal enough money as it comes into their coffers. Other political party members have come to realise that in the APC, anything goes and this is where they can easily commit crimes without fear of repercussions or reproach. This is why they fight ‘tooth and nail’ to join the party just to enjoy the dividends of the political infrastructural looting.
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Nigeria is moving to an alarming rate of lawlessness and this is very obvious in everything and the reoccuring events which are taking place in the country. It is painful that the APC-led government and its criminally-minded politicians has indeed handed Nigeria its biggest blow by exposing her to the misfortune of rubbbishing its laws, legislations and the high offices of power that have been conferred on these criminals.
Even if one chooses to judge the maladministration against the yardstick it had set for itself, by comparing its performance to date to its key electoral promises, it is hard to get away from the fact that the maladministration is performing below expectations. In its election manifesto, the APC had made a number of promises, all of which could be classified under three key themes: improving Nigeria’s security environment; tackling corruption, and economic reform (which includes tackling unemployment). If one were to take a stern view, then the conclusion would be that the government has failed very woefully on all three fronts, but such a view would be too simplistic.
When President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office in 2015, the majority of Nigerians looked up to him as the miracle man, the messiah who would help to straighten Nigeria, and who with the force of his integrity will sort out Nigeria’s moral and governmental crisis. It was some kind of mass hypnotism that brought him to power because as have been duly noted, Nigerian was not even facing any major social, political and economic crisis of today’s proportions. Barely three years later, some of the worst scams ever in Nigerian history have been witnessed under his watch: his Minister of Finance, the equivalent of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, and Secretary of the Treasury in the United States has been implicated in an unexplained case of forgery, misrepresentation and perjury. His Minister of State for Petroleum and the Group Managing Director of the country’s oil company, NNPC got into an ego-driven argument about NNPC finances and made some disturbing revelations – nobody is looking into those disclosures. A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation was caught in a state of compromise and abuse; he got a mere slap on the wrist, he lost his position and appointed his own successor and he has since returned to the corridors of favour; and so on and so forth. Now, even a Special Adviser to the President on Prosecutions has been accused of forging his secondary school level certificate. And these are all APC party members, the party that promised paradise and delivered hell, even within its own quarters.
Even his maladministration ’s fight against corruption has been shown to be one-sided as the arrests and interrogations have been directed at members of the opposition party and others who are deemed as threats to the political party. The EFCC and DSS are being used as tools to encourage corruption and instil fear into would-be antagonists and those who dare to contest the maladministration and thievery of the party when it comes to their misuse of internally generated funds and loans. The public debt of Nigeria has currently risen to $89.303 billion as of May 2021 and it might still surpass that with far higher figures in the near future as the APC maladministration is still planning on collecting more loans to satisfy the greedy, criminally minded appetites within their circle of organised crime and not for the interest of the Nigerian masses.
Corruption, insecurity and half-baked leadership are what make up the All Progressives Congress and it is sad that Nigerians would have to bear the brunt of their irresponsibility and clueless leadership for the next two years. But it would be very worthwhile if Nigerians would be able to rise up and take a stand against the party come 2023. The influx of political big-wigs into the party should not be an intimidating factor for Nigerians no matter the tribe or ethinic group. If the cankerworm called APC and its theiving members can be removed and prosecuted in all entiriety, then Nigeria as a country might have the chance to grow again.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
