Second Republic Governor of the old Kaduna State and prominent Northern voice, Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, has told the All Progressives Congress (APC) to insist on party supremacy in the current crisis rocking the party in the National Assembly.

Balarabe Musa however said, President Muhammadu Buhari must wade into the National Assembly crisis, should his party fail in doing so, arguing that, if the President fails to do so, the National Assembly will lead him into a worst situation than they led President Shehu Shagari in 1979.

According to the septuagenarian politician, APC cannot afford to let go of the developments in the National Assembly because its existence as a party depends on the loyalty of its members.

In his words, “No political party worth its name will sponsor a candidate and leave the candidate to do what he feels like, because at the end of the day, the party will be responsible for his conduct.

“Even as we talk of democracy and internal democracy, we cannot exclude the power of a political party over the power of a candidate it has sponsored in an election to represent it because there, they are representing the party.

“Under this circumstance, the APC should insist on the supremacy of the party without undermining democracy. It must insist on the loyalty of its members otherwise there will be no party and there will be no party government.

“First, the party through  its National Chairman should try to convince the members of the party in the National Assembly of the need to listen to the party and take guidance from the party,” he said.

The first Executive Governor of Kaduna however advised that if the National Assembly members refuse to listen to the party chairman, the President must intervene between the party and members of the National Assembly.

“But this will be very difficult under the current circumstance because those he would be persuading are not members of his party, this is because it was PDP members who elected the Senate President and the Speaker, so there is a limit to how the party and President can prevail over these members. He will be trying to prevail over Senators and members of the House of Representatives who are not members of APC but PDP, the party he defeated just yesterday. So, it is not an easy task, it is a very difficult matter.

“But all the same, President Muhammadu Buhari has been elected as the President of all Nigerians, like the Yoruba say, ‘Oga patapata or Kabiyesi’ and the north would say ‘Sarkin yanka’. So, the President has  enormous power irrespective of the party. If he is skillful, he can still prevail over the members of the Senate and House of Representatives to behave in the interest of the country,” he opined.

While he likened the current development to the 1979 regime of President Shehu Shagari, Musa advised Buhari to turn to Nigerians for assistance if the National Assembly insist on dragging him into Shagari’s predicament.

According to him, “at the end of the day, Nigerians will choose whether to support the president or the legislature and from the look of things, Nigerians will prefer to go with their president, rather than pitching their tent with the legislature.

“One example the President should be reminded, because he knows about it is that during the Second Republic, when Shagari was the President of Nigeria and we were governors, a serious problem arose within three months of our swearing-in. Members  of the National Assembly attempted to fix their own remuneration. When Shagari realised that the economy of the country at that time could not support that, he called meeting of the National Economic Council and informed us that he called members of NPN in the Senate for a dinner and they refused to attend because he did not support the idea of National Assembly fixing its enumeration.

“So, he sought  for our help irrespective of our party differences. Initially, we told him to handle it alone since it was an NPN internal matter, but after making us to understand that it will become a national issue, we agreed to form a 5-man committee, made up of a governor from each of the five parties. After the committee sat down and recommended remuneration for all public officers throughout the country, from local government to the Presidency.

“After submitting our recommendations to the President, he went to the press to publish the recommendations of the National Economic Council and the National Assembly was up at arms, the Senate in particular, under the leadership of Senator Joseph Wayas. They even threatened to remove governors from members of the National Economic Council.

“Again, the President on our advice decided to involve party leaders to prevail on their members in the National Assembly because they were all sponsored by parties. So, Awolowo, Zik, Aminu Kano, Waziri Ibrahim and Akinloye were all invited to a meeting of party leaders with governors. In spite of the animosity between Shagari and Awolowo, Awolowo did not prevent his party governors from attending the meeting to help Shagari because he saw it as a national matter, but to our surprise, Senate President came to the meeting laughing. We later discovered that the President had approved the money they wanted.

“Now, that failure of the President to restrain the National Assembly members from fixing their own remuneration opened the gate of corruption, stealing and criminal waste of resources in this country, which we are still battling with. If Shagari had been able to stop them, we wouldn’t have been where we are today.  Immediately they got that, they began to give themselves all sort of allowances and harass ministers, asking for contracts and all that.

“Now, APC’s President Muhammadu Buhari is now facing the same problem that Shagari faced and could not deal with it. Now, if the President fails to prevail on the members of the National Assembly and fails to call on Nigerians for support, they will lead him to the same situation as they led Shagari and his own will even be worse because the state of the nation as it is today is more negative, 100 times more negative than it was in 1979,” said Balarabe Musa.