Executive invasion of the National Assembly: APC’s badly scripted outing

APC

By Jude Ndukwe

The attempted “coup” of Tuesday, August 7, 2018, against the National Assembly has always been the desire of APC leaders and their strategists since their albatross, the gentle and meek but highly intelligent and calculative Dr Olubukola Saraki emerged as Senate President.

Every kind of sink has been thrown his way to intimidate, humiliate and harass him out of office simply because he contested and won the Senate presidency against their anointed candidates, an action that was well within his rights to take. They have dragged him through both regular and special courts on what has now become trumped up charges, embarked on brutal and relentless media campaign against him, denied him some of his rights and privileges, physically assault some of his loyalists and used every opportunity to demonise him, yet, Saraki has remained undaunted, unfazed, unbowed and unbroken. Rather he has always come out stronger and better with an increased rating among Nigerians every time he is maligned and a mob action deployed against him as it happened today.

On Tuesday, those behind his travails took their plans a notch higher having spent the last few days strategising on how to perfect their despotic agenda. So very early a detachment of masked armed men of the Department of State Services (DSS) stormed the hallowed arena of the national assembly, preventing both lawmakers and staff from gaining entrance into the complex and inflicting psychological trauma on them in the process.

It is most unfortunate that this development came on the heels of Saraki and the leadership of the national assembly acceding to the request of the APC-led executive arm of government to reconvene and attend to what they termed urgent national issues. However, it turned out that the executive and their wily APC senators had other sinister plans up their sleeves.

Fortunately for Nigeria and Nigerians, the siege on the DSS turned against the executive as their plans fell flat on its face. Having failed and as is typical in military coups, the executive quickly fell back to their Plan B which was to quickly create a victim from within them and sacrifice the person as one responsible for their acts of irresponsibility in order to save the face of the president, members of his cabinet and the APC. Lawal Daura took the fall and was subsequently “sacked”. But Nigerians are not deceived.

The truth is that with our experiences in the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari, the purported sack of Lawal Daura could be staged just to deflect blame and criticism from the president. After all, the PDP had earlier raised an alarm that the president’s trip abroad was to create an alibi for him when the illegalities of the executive arm are perpetrated.

So the sack of Daura may sound exciting to others on the face value but it is really not genuine. It is one action meant to cover up the shame of a blatantly illegal invasion of our legislature, an invasion that should never and could never have happened in the first place if the presidency was not aware as they now claim. If the renegade senators and their collaborative security agents had succeeded in carrying out their wicked plans, the presidency would have hailed them as “heroes of democracy”.

Both the sacker and the sacked knew about the script all along. When such scripts fail, somebody must be used to redeem the executive even if with so much drama.

Worse still, no one should be surprised if Daura is recalled tomorrow on Buhari’s return to the country “after a careful and more detailed review of the events leading to his earlier sack. All those involved in the illegal invasion of the national assembly without the EXPRESS permission of the DG DSS have been arrested and are facing orderly room trial after which they shall be charged to court”.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Case closed! As usual, Nigerians move on and nothing happens thereafter. Before you know it, we are back to where we started from, and the cycle continues.

We are wiser now! Let us not be carried away by such drama. A government that recalled the fugitive Abdulrasheed Maina of the infamous pension scam’ that has kept an Ibrahim Magu despite the damning report against him by the DSS and non-confirmation of his appointment by the Senate; a government that has refused to prosecute Babachir Lawal despite being indicted for fraud by a presidential panel; a government that refuses to sanction Kemi Adeosun and Okon Obono-Obla despite their alleged certificate scandals, a government that defies, defiles, violates, humiliates, harasses and embarrasses the judiciary with impunity etc, will do anything to save its face.

If they were wise, by now, they would have known that the more they pursue Saraki and attempt to malign him and desecrate the National Assembly, the more they make him and the legislature stronger and more popular. The earlier they desist from the vain pursuit, the better for them. However, should they decide to continue, Saraki will see the end of APC and their goons, very soon, to the cheers of Nigerians because enough has to be enough!


Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Twitter: @stjudendukwe

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