28042019 - No delaying minimum wage, go ahead and pay, FG tells MDAs, states, others

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PAGE 12— SUNDAY VANGUARD, APRIL 28, 2019 *Saraki *Tinubu *Dogara 2023, Tinubu and the NASS leadership tussle National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, last Sunday, lashed out at the leadership of the National Assembly amid the jostle by members-elect to succeed the current principal officers. Sunday Vanguard x-rays the situation and its concomitant effects on the party’s preferred aspirants especially in the House of Representatives. By Levinus Nwabughiogu The name Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,resonates across the land. He’s a master strategist and goal getter. He is a grand politician, savvy, sagacious, likeable, intelligent, sociable, phenomenal but sometime, fierce in his political arithmetics. Tinubu was a senator in the botched 3rd Republic. Between 1999 and 2007, he held sway in Lagos as governor. In 2015, he became the National Leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC. From his base in Lagos, Tinubu survived the ferocious attacks by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government. The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as it happened then, had made inroads into all the States of South- West and seized power but Tinubu made Lagos a no-go-area for then-ruling party. His Alliance for Democracy, AD, weathered the storm. When the AD outlived its usefulness, Tinubu played smart and caused his structures to metamorphose into Action Congress, AC. The new party blossomed but with no national colouration. In the pursuit of the national spread and recognition, the Asiwaju added “Nigeria, to the party’s name which then read “Action Congress of Nigeria’ , ACN. With this, Tinubu’s political stronghold expanded. Cashing, in on the angst against the ‘weak’ government of former President Goodluck Jonathan and the eventual withdrawal of Obsanjo’s support, Tinubu’s ACN launched an alliance with three other political parties and transformed to All Progressives Congress, APC, which is While political actors who are opposed to Tinubu’s choices could only make insinuations of a possible 2023 game plan, Tinubu, in a bid to clear the fog, accused Senate President Bukola Saraki and the House Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, of padding national budgets in the last four years today the ruling party at the federal level. APC was later to see Tinubu as its National Leader having been jolted into power by his political sagacity in 2015. A legion of persons has benefitted from Tinubu’s political tutelage: Babatunde Fasola, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Governor Kayode Fayemi, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, Rauf Aregbesola, Akinwunmi Ambode” , in fact, the names are endless. Even President Muhammadu Buhari would not deny that he has not benefitted from Tinubu as it was his clout that gave him the presidency in 2015. With APC, Asiwaju has since expanded from his South-West enclave and established allies across the country and, to that extent, he has,become a toast of many Nigerians. That is, for sure, benevolence at work. But a man whose chi has cracked his palm kernel even before he was born needs not to take everything and everyone for granted. That was the case in 2015 when after producing Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Tinubu went ahead to project Senator Ahmed, Lawan from Yobe State and, of course, Hon. Femi Gbajabimila, from his Lagos State, as his preferred choices for Senate President and Speaker, House of Representatives respectively. The disappointment that later followed had since found a place in the political lexicon of the country’s democratic experience. Unfortunately, four years after, the same scenario appears to be playing out. Tinubu and the party have expressly endorsed the same men again for the same position. Would it work? Time will tell. Tinubu’s allegations against N / A s s e m b l y Leadership In a statement released by his media aide, Tunde Rahman, on Sunday, Tinubu predicated his choice of Lawan and Gbajabimila on the aspiration of the party and the government to achieve their objectives seamlessly. He said: “Since the inception of the APC, my focus has been to assist President Buhari develop, refine and implement a progressive agenda that would give every Nigerians a fair chance to prosper and provide for their loved ones. “As he enters his second term, President Buhari has stated that he will give the economy special priority. “His goal is to defeat poverty and joblessness while spurring the type of growth and development that will make Nigeria a durable and flourishing economy. These goals are laudable and necessary to move Nigeria forward. “It is against this backdrop that my support of the party’s position regarding the National Assembly leadership must be interpreted. “There is no surprise in my supporting the party and the president’s position regarding the National Assembly positions. Nor is it wrong that I do so. “That I have actively and publicly supported the party and president should not result in such public backbiting. “We all know how important these positions are to the fulfillment of the president’s agenda”. War of words While political actors who are opposed to Tinubu’s choices could only make insinuations of a possible 2023 game plan, Tinubu, in a bid to clear the fog, accused Senate President Bukola Saraki, and the House Speaker, Yakubu Dogara of padding national budgets in the last four years of their administration. Perhaps, unknown to him, that was the first salvo that may have launched an attack to his support for Gbajabimila in the House. In response to him, Dogara did not only dismiss the allegations of budget padding, he also called Tinubu a fascist and power grabber who wants to control all levels of government. He said: “The parliamentarians are representatives of the Nigerian people and you don’t expect them to rubber stamp budgets that are heavily skewed and lopsided against most sections of the country. It is their responsibility to ensure equitable and even distribution of capital projects across all the nooks and crannies of the country, if the Executive fails to do so. In any case, it is false to state that legislative intervention in the Budget Process is to benefit the legislators and not their constituencies. We challenge Asiwaju Tinubu to prove otherwise. He should also show in what way the 8th Assembly acted differently from other Assemblies of the past to warrant the kind of language used. In any case, all the aspirants to the Senate Presidency and Speakership he is sponsoring are majority leaders in the 8th Assembly and took part in the Budget Process that he made the chief basis of his crude attack. This proves beyond doubt the hypocrisy of Asiwaju’s stated reasons for supporting his candidates. He should find better reasons other than the lies being peddled about the Budget and obstructing government business. Asiwaju shouldn’t take better informed Nigerians for fools. Otherwise, when he sought to take control of the 8th Senate and 8th House in 2015, was it because of any Budget Saraki and Dogara had delayed or pet projects they had inserted into any Budget before 2015? Asiwaju must come clean on this matter. He should let Nigerians know why he wants to install both the Senate President, the Speaker and leadership of the 9th Assembly. He may yet win the support of some of them if he comes clean on this matter. We do not expect Asiwaju Tinubu to dwell on brazen mendacity, much less murder facts and decorum in his rabid bid to justify his patently clear facist agenda of controlling all levers of power in Nigeria.” Don’t pitch Buhari against members-elect— Bago Campaign organization The APC leader also dwelt on the issue of loyalty so much so that the campaign organization of Hon. Mohammed Umaru Bago, another aspirant to the speakership from Niger State, North-Central, suspected a mischief and, in its reply, reply asked him to allow Gbajabimila to run on his record and reputation. The statement signed by its spokesman, Hon. Victor Ogene, read in part, “We have perused the statement released by the National Leader of our Party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, especially as it concerns the leadership of the House of Representatives, and wish to respectfully disagree with him on some of the conclusions therein. “For starters, even though he took extra care not to mention his choice candidate by name, the laborious attempt to pass off same desire as the onerous craving of President Muhammadu Buhari clearly leaves his real intentions exposed. “Not too long ago, in 2015, when Tinubu tried to foist the same mentee of his as Speaker, in spite of the rational voices of caution by many stakeholders, many had been left wondering if the enforcement effort was at the instance of President Buhari and the Party. “Although, a greater portion of the statement centred on his probable scheming for the 2023 presidential election, real or imagined, our concern revolves around the oblique reference to loyalty as basis for his decision to stand by his adopted as the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. “It is on this score, and several other incontrovertible facts that we disagree with the position of our national leader. “It is our contention that nobody has the monopoly of loyalty. Put succinctly, it is not anyone’s exclusive preserve and no one is a custodian of it. “In deed, the pursuit of equity and fairness in an enterprise where we are all stakeholders cannot vitiate our candidate’s long standing, earned reputation as a loyalist of President Buhari, our party, the All Progressives Congress, and above all, the people of his constituency, his state, Niger, and the North Central zone who have invested their trust in him to represent them. “Instead of seeking to pitch party faithful who seek their just due against the President, we rather expect Asiwaju Tinubu, as a father to all, to critically consider the legitimate aspiration of the North central zone and ensure that justice is done. “At the risk of sounding repetitive, we restate that no one currently jostling for the Speaker’s position is more loyal to President Buhari than Hon. Bago. “From 2003 when he became a member of The Buhari Organization (TBO), to 2011 when he contested and won election to the House of Representatives on the platform of the defunct CPC, to 2015 and 2019 when he won reelection on the banner of the APC, Hon. Bago has remained a core Buharist, and any attempt to tar him with any brush of disloyalty cannot stick.” Gbajabimila should make sacrifice, step down to move Nigeria-Onyejiocha For Hon. Nkiru Onyejiocha, another aspirant from Abia State, South-East, Gbajabimila, even though the preferred choice by the party, should take the path of honour and step down in the interest of peace and stability in the parliament. While formally declaring her intention on Tuesday, she said: “All of you know very well that Mr. President is a good man. Mr president even before this time had taken his vice president from south east. Dr. Chuba Okadigbo was his running mate and all that. And so, there is no way the president will sit down and tell people that south east does not matter. And of course, you know that we have 3 arms of government. Moving forward, there is no way our party will not want work with the members of House of Representatives including people from the opposition parties because you are talking about governance now. “And I also know that the leader of the House, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, a good gentleman. But there is a time in somebody’s life that any leader who is a leader indeed will make sacrifice. And that time is now for the leader of my party and the leader of 8th Assembly; he was the minority leader and now majority leader an so, he is a leader in all rights. And so, this opportunity comes only once in a leader’s time when a leader will look self and says it is not about me, it is about Nigeria. And I believe that Nigeria needs healing. The land needs healing and so, somebody has to make sacrifices to say let us move to the next level”. Any Implications for Gbajabimila’s aspiration? To keen observers of the political trend in the country, Tinubu’s latest statement is thoughtprovoking. In essence, the observers are of the view that the statement has become an albatross to Gbajabiamila’s aspiration and inadvertantly swayed sympathy to other contestant like Bago whose campaign is understandably gathering momentum by the day. They had preferred the APC National Leader to have maintained a subtle silence or, best, push remotely from behind instead of the open lash at the National Assembly leadership. They believe that the leadership even though is exiting the scene can still exert some influence. But the cat is already out of the bag. How much of its impact would however be seen in the days ahead when Gbajabimila who is currently performing lesser hajj in Saudi Arabia returns. Whichever way it goes, the ultimate result would be known on the inauguration day of the 9th Assembly in June.
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