By Ademola Adegbamigbe

The wizened diminutive man with a hooked nose was adored in his country and beyond. The Jamaicans so respected Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia that they called him the Jah Rasta Farai. At home, he was king of kings, lion of Judah, a descendant of Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. However, the warlords of the heavily divided Ethiopia of the 1920s saw him as a mere mortal who urinated, farted and suffered headache and flu like others. They did not want to subject their own territories to Selassie’s suzerainty. One after the other however, the Emperor, with the approach of carrot or stick or a combination of both, was able to suck them in except one named Dejazmach Balcha, the warlord of Sidamo. He did not acknowledge Selassie’s authority or visit him like others in Addis Ababa, the capital.

Then Selassie invited him. Balcha accepted but with a caveat; he would visit with his own army of 10,000 men. The Emperor agreed. Balcha and his men camped about four kilometres off the city. With alcohol induced threat, he said: “The king of kings will come here to meet me.” Selassie did not go himself but sent his chamberlains who invited Balcha for a banquet to seal their friendship. He did not trust Selassie yet. That banquet he would attend, but with 600 guards. The emperor accepted. At the ceremony, Selassie’s singers chanted Balcha’s panegyrics, his head became swollen, but he was still suspicious. He insisted to Selassie that he must return to his region that day, otherwise his 9,400 fighters would descend on Addis Ababa. Selassie allowed that august guest to leave. To Balcha, apart from leaving the city with his head still on his shoulders, he believed that his braggadocio worked. In his own estimation, he had scared the daylight out of the Emperor who many saw as superhuman.

Balcha, with his muscles and tendons bulging in triumph, returned to his camp, with a plot in his delicate brain matter to come back, invade the city and take the lion of Judah hostage. However, a surprise awaited Balcha, a development that sent his adrenalin boiling and moustache twitching malevolently. His camp was in ruins, his tents had been burnt into ashes and there was no single soldier in sight. A passer-by who saw what happened told Balcha, who was still dazed, how a large army, loyal to Selassie, came and bought Balcha’s soldiers and their weapons with money and gold and food and cloth and women. The same soldiers, having been made rich, burnt their own tents and voted fast with their feet, saying to themselves, to hell with that bastard Balcha! When he realised that he had been hoodwinked, Balcha marched back with his remaining fighters on the city, with a vow to corner the Emperor like a rat and make him regret his action. But Selassie had fortified Addis Ababa. “For the first time in his life,” Robert Greene narrates the story in 48 Laws of Power, “Balcha agreed to enter a monastery.”

What this shows is that in war and politics, deception, money, treachery, change of fidelity (with regards to the highest bidder or where one’s bread will be better buttered or yam better palm oiled), strategies and counter strategies take place. Ability to predict the next move of the opponent and act proactively is also part of the game. When these happen, the masses face the consequences. And in the present situation in Nigeria, the crisis in the All Progressives Congress and its effects on the masses are on my mind. The bone of contention is the victory of Dr. Bukola Saraki as Senate President with Senator Ike Ekweremadu of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as his deputy. Although Saraki and Ahmed Lawan are in the same All Progressives Congress (APC), the party favoured Lawan. Saraki was elected unopposed while a large chunk of APC Senators were holding a meeting at the International Conference Centre. In the House of Representatives, APC supported Femi Gbajabiamila against Yakubu Dogara. Dogara was elected. However, the drama in the Senate, more than the House of Reps., has generated more acrimonious debates, causing some dangerous fault lines that can result in dangerous tectonic shifts in the polity.

Out there, political analysts are already chanting deja vu!. This is because in June 2011, it was the same handshake across the parties that saw to the emergence of Aminu Tambuwal (now Sokoto State governor) as speaker, House of Representatives. The then Action Congress of Nigeria (now APC after merging with others), supported Tambuwal of the PDP against Mulikat Adeola-Akande of ACN. Also in the Second Republic, President Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was in accord with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP). While NPN produced Joseph Wayas from Cross River State as Senate President, NPP put forward Senators John Wash Pam from Plateau State as Deputy Senate President. In the House of Representatives also, NPP threw up Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke from Anambra as speaker, while NPN provided the deputy, Idris Kuta. There is however a big departure. In the second Republic, NPN and NPP had mutual agreements. In 2011 and now, however, there is non between PDP and ACN or APC as the case may be. The only one between PDP and APC, as their relationship has shown, is like a memorandum of understanding between a goat and cocoyam or a mongoose and a cobra!

Here lies the reason that APC is at war with itself now. The social and old media are awash with real and imagined war among major personalities in the party. As this goes on, the nation which has been expecting change, is waiting helplessly.

My humble position is this: APC must reconcile because a house that is divided against itself will crumble. The party cannot afford to do otherwise. In any human organisation, there is bound to be conflict: the family, church, mosque, ashram, office, the carpenter’s workshop, the tongue and the teeth…Therefore, if disagreement is an inherent part of society, how it moves forwards is to widen its areas of harmony and narrow its areas of conflict. This is compromise.

The other main reason that APC must reconcile is that it has gone beyond itself. It is now everybody’s property. Nigerians put their hope in it; that is why they voted for its candidates in the last elections, from the president, governors, national legislators to governors and state lawmakers. So, everyone is expecting change, not exchange of fists.

Also APC needs to act as one in order to be able to tackle PDP, a common enemy. Now it has capitalised on President Muhammadu Buhari’s age because of a statement he made recently. That is to be expected. Given his position now, if the man coughs, critics will analyse whether it is high or low pitched or whether the phlegm is of high or low viscosity. Now APC that ought to respond to that kind of attack is busy with its own internal problem.

When APC reconciles, I can bet that the party will wax stronger and PDP that has been having an erection over the Senate drama will go limp.

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