By O’tega Ogra, Nigerian Citizen

 

Time indeed reveals all things.

 

Barely three weeks ago, when they were still breaking bread, they sold a dummy to the Nigerian people, their followers, the press, and whoever cared to listen, that a certain man, in the person of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, was the cause of their disarray in what I had last year called AA’s Day Care aka ADC.

 

They impugned the Judiciary’s reputation. They cast aspersions wherever it suited them. Fortunately, the Judiciary, through the highest court of the land, gave them what they claimed they wanted. But with the President no longer available as a soft target to deflect from their obvious failings, they had to face their own truth.

 

Now the day care is splintered despite their now-failed attempt to present a united front in Ibadan, where the head of the PDP Governor Forum presides over. (NOTE: the ‘s’ in Governors no longer exists)

 

Some are now under a New Day Care, whose proprietor has been adept at keeping his cards to his chest since he set it up.

 

So who is to blame now?

 

The proprietor of AA’s Day Care even got a US-based firm to push their previous claims of a one-party state. Is it not strange that in this supposed one-party state, their friendly media has reported their movements across five parties, LP, PDP, ADC, NNPP, NDC, and still refer to them all as “strong contenders”?

 

Since the commencement of the Fourth Republic, which had five major parties at inception, I doubt there has ever been a time when Nigeria has had six “strong contenders” going into a general election cycle.

 

This is the irony they hope no one notices. Miracles indeed, still happen.

 

When they gather in one room, it is called a national rescue. When they quarrel in that same room, it is blamed on the President. When they move from one party to another, it is called coalition building. When their interests collide, it is called persecution. When the courts do not indulge them, democracy is in danger. When the courts give them relief, they suddenly remember the rule of law.

 

A country cannot be a one-party state on Monday, a dictatorship on Tuesday, and yet, by Wednesday, have half a dozen opposition vehicles all being marketed as viable routes to power.

 

At some point, even propaganda must respect basic arithmetic.

 

The truth is simple. The President did not create their mistrust. He did not write about their rival ambitions. He did not plant the suspicions of one another in their meetings. He did not design their impatience with one another. He did not force old landlords to become tenants in new political houses. He did not ask those who could not manage one platform to present themselves as saviours of a federation of over 200 million people.

 

What we are witnessing is not oppression. It is exposure.

 

Power is not inherited by noise. It is not assembled by resentment. Foreign Press briefings do not win it. It is built through structure, discipline, sacrifice, clarity, and the hard patience of politics.

 

The APC, for all their anger towards it, remains the only national political institution in Nigeria today with the capacity to absorb difference, manage ambition, win elections, and still govern at scale. That is not an accident. It is the product of organisation.

 

The opposition should stop blaming President Tinubu for the mathematics of their own confusion.

 

If these party contraptions, several godfathers, many former office holders, countless spokespersons, and a daily supply of sympathetic headlines still cannot produce unity, perhaps the problem is not the man in Aso Rock.

 

Perhaps the problem is that their day care has too many proprietors, too many prefects, too many lunch boxes, and not enough adults in the room.

 

P.S: Please pass this on to their US-based reputation laundering firm, whose reputation is as cloudy as the prospects of their Nigerian clients.

 

#TheTiger