Discerning political watchers had long predicted an implosion in the marriage of convenience that was christened the All Progressives Congress (APC), but no one thought it was going to come so soon in the day, as it did on June 9, 2015, when a group of lawmakers went against the grain of what was thought to be popular choice of the party for Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives.

It was thought that the APC preferred Dr. Ahmed Lawan for the Senate and Femi Gbajabiamila for the House.But both men and the party were sorely disappointed as the lawmakers, though peopled by APC, thought and acted otherwise. They voted Dr. Bukola Saraki upstairs and preferred Yakubu Dogara downstairs.

Some top party men were livid; and their rage, according to Saraki and others, has shown since then as efforts began to rope him in for some alleged past malfeasances.He bore his cross at the Code of Conduct Tribunal with suppressed anger, and a measure of grace, until he exploded recently, as fresh charges of forgery were slammed against him and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.

Seeing that he was been primed to sink with his ship of supporters, the former Governor of Kwara State, who joined a coterie of political associates to deal the most deadly blow on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) went politically ballistic with information that had long being in the public domain; but which no one of note had given credibility. He suggested that Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, who rode on a crest of popular support, was a puppet in the hands of a cabal.

Since he articulated the position, no one at par with him among the President’s supporters, has offered a meaningful defense.In fact, another APC sympathizer and one of the men who thought Buhari was one of the best things to happen to Nigeria in a long while, dug in with a double-edged sword.

Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a Kano based social commentator, did not only stop at underscoring Saraki’s position, he bluntly accused the President of nepotism. He even threw alleged corruption, favouritism, and obstruction of justice into the mix. His interview with newspapers shocked many and left others wondering if there was a script at play to discredit the President and some members of his kitchen cabinet.

In an interview trending on the social media, which he confirmed to The Guardian as his, the Second Republic politician exhibited his disdain for some of the President’s men, by using less than decorous language to describe them. He particularly singled out the President’s nephew, a man believed to be the head of the alleged cabal, Mamman Daura, for the sharpest edge of his tongue.

Daura is seen as one of the last vestiges of the dreaded Kaduna Mafia. Junaid Mohammed also referred to him as a member of that phantom group that is said to have run Nigeria for decades.Saraki’s explosive statement was full of indictment and portrayed the President as a lame duck, even though he made copious reference to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, who is being fingered by sympathisers of the President, as the one causing the mess for the 73 year-old man, bent on renewing a country he loves so much.

His statement: “The leaders of the Nigerian Senate reiterate our innocence against the charges filed by the Attorney General of the Federal Government of Nigeria at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court on the allegations of forgery of the Senate Standing Rules document.

“In our view, the charges filed by the Attorney General represent a violation of the principle of the Separation of Powers between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch as enshrined in our Constitution. Furthermore, it is farcical to allege that a criminal act occurred during Senate procedural actions and the mere suggestion demonstrates a desperate overreach by the office of the Attorney General. These trumped up charges is only another phase in the relentless persecution of the leadership of the Senate

“This misguided action by the Attorney General begs the question, how does this promote the public interest and benefit the nation? At a time when the whole of government should be working together to meet Nigeria’s many challenges, we are once again distracted by the executive branch’s inability to move beyond a leadership election among Senate peers. It was not an election of Senate peers and Executive Branch participants.

“Over the past year the Senate has worked to foster good relations with the executive branch. It is in all of our collective interests to put aside divisions and get on with the nation’s business. We risk alienating and losing the support of the very people who have entrusted their national leaders to seek new and creative ways to promote a secure and prosperous Nigeria. As leaders and patriots, it is time to rise above partisanship and to move forward together.

“However, what has become clear is that there is now a government within the government of President Buhari who have seized the apparatus of Executive powers to pursue their nefarious agenda.

“This latest onslaught on the Legislature represents a clear and present danger to the democracy Nigerians fought hard to win and preserve. The suit filed on behalf of the Federal government suggests that perhaps some forces in the Federal Republic have not fully embraced the fact that the Senate’s rules and procedures govern how the legislative body adjudicates and resolves its own disputes.

“Let it be abundantly clear, both as a citizen and as a foremost legislator, I will continue to rise above all the persecution and distraction that have been visited on me. In the words of Martin Luther King Junior, “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at a time of challenge and controversy”.

“I will remain true and committed to the responsibilities that my citizenship and my office impose on me. Without doubt, the highest of those responsibilities is the steadfast refusal to surrender to the subversion of our democracy and the desecration of the Senate. This is a cross I am prepared to carry. If yielding to the nefarious agenda of a few individuals who are bent in undermining our democracy and destabilising the Federal government to satisfy their selfish interests is the alternative to losing my personal freedom, let the doors of jails be thrown open and I shall be a happy guest.”

If the Presidency’s challenge to Saraki to name the cabal in government that had seized the rein of executive power to pursue some personal agenda, was not heeded to by the nation’s number three man; a rash of publications in some popular online publications seemed to answer the pertinent question.

One appeared to detail how some men close to the President had stalled the confirmation of anti-corruption czar, Ibrahim Magu, simply because he was doing a good job. But sources said that the attempt to shoot down the career of Magu was targeted at the National Security Adviser, Mohammed Babagana Monguno.

Monguno and Magu are believed to be in the same camp in what is said to be a bitter struggle around the President, and for which he is acting like he is not aware. At least, for now.

Last week, when the composition of the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was named, many did not fail to notice that an alleged member of the cabal and the President’s Chief of Staff, Alhaji Abba Kyari, featured prominently.

Meanwhile, reacting to the claims by Saraki, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, said the claims must be backed by facts.“This claim by Senator Saraki would have been more worth the while, if it had been backed with more information. If he had proceeded to identify those who constitute the “government within the government, it would have taken the issue beyond the realm of fiction and mere conjecture.

“But as it stands, the allegation is not even worth the paper on which it was written, as anybody can wake from a troubled sleep, and say anything.“The Attorney General of the Federation is the Chief Law Officer of the state.  It is within his constitutional powers to determine who has infringed upon the law, and who has not.

“Pretending to carry an imaginary cross is mere obfuscation, if, indeed, a criminal act has been committed.  But we leave the courts to judge.
“To claim that President Muhammadu Buhari is anybody’s stooge is not only ridiculous, but also preposterous. It is not in the character of our President.”

If it was facts that Adesina was asking for, the online publications and Junaid Mohammed provided their own version of the facts, as if they were primed to do what the nation’s number three man could not do. Or, did not want to do for now.

On phone with The Guardian, Junaid Mohammed insisted that the comments he made were his and he stood by them.In the interview, Junaid said: “Both the president, particularly his principal adviser, his nephew… Mamman Daura; then the Chief of Staff (Abba Kyari), who in fact was brought up by Mamman Daura; and … the Secretary to the Government of Federation (Babachir David), including most of the incompetent ministers, are not cut out to work harmoniously in a political environment with the legislature.”

But that does not mean he spared the legislators. “On the legislative side, they want to continue business as usual; that will mean impunity, blackmail, open corruption to extort money from ministries, departments and agencies of federal and state governments, because they did not come into politics to serve. They came to make money. That is the basic fact.

“You can see why it is impossible for anybody, no matter how reasonable, to work with the National Assembly, especially the Senate, because unless you are prepared to open up the national treasury and offer it to them, there is going to be no peace between the executive branch and them.

Junaid was not done with the President’s men. “And of course, there is the unfortunate, additional bad luck of Buhari being surrounded by his own relations who are not politicians. They are not even members of the APC (All Progressives Congress) but dictate policy, especially Mamman Daura. So I can see no peace, I can see no cooperation, and God save Nigeria.”

He told The Guardian last week that though he was not a member of the APC, he knew enough persons within to know those who were members and those who were not.It appears that there is no nexus between the challenge thrown by the presidency to Saraki, and the response provided by Junaid; but whether or not there is a cabal or government within a government as Saraki put it, will determine the future of the nation.

Prof. Samuel Egwu, a Political Economist in the Department of Political Science of the University of Jos, said, “it is always the case in any government that key decisions are made at both formal and informal levels and may be at times difficult to make a distinction between the two because it may essentially be a continuum.”

He added, “in this country in particular, there is no civilian president or military head of state that was not surrounded by some inner circle and informal group that make useful input into policies.”

According to the political economist, “in this particular instance, my sense is that it is the direct call of those, who make reference to the cabal to either name them, when it is necessary to do, or accept what is normal that such tiny circle of power brokers exist even in the most advanced democracies.”

He said, “the statement under reference should be situated in the wider context of the frosty relationships that have existed between the executive and a section of the APC leadership on the one hand and the leadership of the Senate on the other.

“Unfortunately, unnecessary whipping of emotions on both sides has tended to becloud the real issues, which could have helped Nigerians to separate the substance from the non-substance issues. So, logically, it is expected that when politicians are involved in war of positions such as this, this is what to expect.”

The former Head of Department of Political Science and Defence Studies, Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Professor Moses Tedheke, doesn’t think a cabal has hijacked the government of President Buhari. “It is that elements in the past that is terribly corrupt, which is on guard is trying to discredit this administration. And I have been telling people in the streets that once this administration is discredited and falls, we will be in for it.”

He continued, “this is the kind of elements the National Assembly wants to continue. The fact is, reactionary elements are now striking to create confusion in his administration, and then, then National Assembly are not helping matters in this respect. That is just where the problem is. I don’t think there is a cabal. In fact, if there is any cabal creating a situation of confusion to prevent the President from achieving his stated objectives, it is even the National Assembly that is standing on the way and mounting roadblocks, because they don’t want the battle against corruption to be fought. So, the cabal should rather be inverted, and not at the Presidency, but at the National Assembly.”

For the political scholar, “this idea of cabal is funny, in the sense that the elements that talk about cabal, are, as far as I am concerned, part of it. They are the people preventing Mr. President from achieving his objectives for the nation.”According to Tedheke, “we knew how they came to subvert the rules of the National Assembly and how the ruling party that was just newly elected said that there was something happening at the headquarters of the party and suddenly elements of the party appeared in the Senate and House of Representatives and installed the leadership in those places. We knew how it happened.

Why have we forgotten so easily? Can this happen in advanced democracy? If really we are to be good example for Africa, can this happen in advanced democracy? Will the leaders not resign? What has just happened in Britain recently, because Britons voted to leave the European Union, the Prime Minister resigned his appointment as Prime Minister of Britain. Can it happen in Nigeria? So, if we say we want to have a true democracy, we should have a democracy to the core. It should not be a half-baked democracy, where somebody who is accused of corruption cannot resign his appointment and then face the courts, and clear his or her name. But, instead that person is fighting back, because he has the position of authority.”

A journalism teacher at the Jos campus of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), who is a public affairs commentator, Ugar Ukandi Odey, agrees with the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, that a cabal has hijacked the government of President Buhari, adding that in that regard, he is not certainly in control of issues and decisions of the present administration.

Odey told The Guardian, “some people, on their own, factored into the so-called anti – corruption crusade of the government, using the officials of the EFCC for dubious and very personal ends to witch-hunt some of their long-term ‘enemies’. I want to tell you that of recent, just this week that we are talking, this is the first time that Nigeria will have a three-day public holiday, of 72 hours run on. It has never happened.”

According to Odey, “cabal is a group of people, who, for their own selfish interests and their own uniformity of ambition, have grouped themselves together to cocoon the president, quarantine and foreclose the president from being in touch with the reality of the generality of the people. They do it so that they can always determine or influence the decisions of the president to favour only those interests that they have envisaged.”

Odey said, “for the cabal to properly function, they must be properly located in government. They must also have accomplices in the manufacturing, in the private sector, in different sub-sectors of the economy for their control to be effective.”The political commentator stressed, “it takes somebody who knows the system to talk authoritatively about it. If somebody like the senate president will cry out that a cabal has hijacked the government of Buhari, you want to know that he is not just talking, it is coming from somewhere.”

He added, “remember also that there has been this outcry about the appointments so far in the country. Now, if Buhari is the statesman we know, if Buhari is the statesman that has paraded during the campaigns, If he is the de-tribalised person that was presented, if he is Nostradamus that they said Nigeria needed in this circumstance, he would not afford to create imbalances in the structure of government by way of appointments, deliberately overseeing a situation where a certain region of the country is overloaded with key strategic appointment and certain sections of the country are just watching.”

Odey noted, “all the organs of para-military and security organisation in this country, check out, they are headed by ‘experts’ from the North. You remember the ambassadorial appointments, this is still the influence of the cabal, and they push things to go in a particular direction. If not, you will not expect a situation where the presidency consistently continues to make mistakes in that order. It is agreed that the presidency has been hijacked. It is the cabal that is pushing in certain directions to carry out certain acts or to implement certain policies as is desired by them.”

He admitted that the issue of a cabal is not peculiar to this government neither is it to the country. “In every state, at every level, whether local, state or federal, there has been effort by groups of people to constitute this cabal so that they can determine what the president or what the leader says, what he does, what he chooses to do, whom he chooses to favour or who he does not favour. That has always been that effort.

“And because it is a group interest pushing in a particular direction, the president or the state governor or the chairman has always had a brawl at one point or the other. He succumbs to the aggregations of those people. It may be totally unfair to say that the president has surrendered power. We would not want to agree. But it is still very possible that, because he has been quarantined from realities by this cabal, they have been pushing certain proposals to him which are not in tandem with what the generality of the people who constitute the reality now, desire and that is what is causing the agitations in the background. This is what is causing the chanting of this slogan, all over the place now, ‘change the change’ and that kind of a thing as a result of the fact that the policies being implemented or as at being implemented do not meet the expectations and yearnings of the people.”

Many political watchers in Abuja were not surprised at what Junaid said because it had always been known; which is why they claim Saraki used his position as the third most powerful person in the country to ventilate it, albeit for his own political survival.