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Fourteen senators and 37 members of the House of Representatives left the Progressive Congress of President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday to join the opposition, while the next general election is scheduled for February 2019.
While the primary Congress of Progressives (APC, in power), in view of the Nigerian presidential election of February 2019, are scheduled for the month of August, the last plenary sessions before the parliamentary recess of Parliament were sparse: fourteen senators and 37 members of the House of Representatives were missing on Tuesday, July 24.
Most of them, members of the presidential party, denounces an authoritarian mode of governance and the powerless power to stem the violence that occurs spread for months in the country, and joined the ranks of the main opposition party, the Democratic People's Party (PDP). The party's national secretary, Kola Ologbondinyan, hailed these rallies as "a good development for our democratic culture," accusing the head of state of "intimidating" and "harassing" the opposition.
Candidates potential
The list of senators who joined the opposition included the influential Rabiu Kwankwaso, a former governor of Kano State, who was seen as a potential candidate for the February 2019 presidential election, where the President intends to run for a second four-year term.
M. Kwankwaso has not commented on the issue yet, but he could become a powerful rival in the PDP against former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who left the APC in 2017 and does not hide his presidential ambitions
Rumors of massive defections have been raging for weeks, amid continuing rivalries between the executive and legislators, who have repeatedly denounced a "witch hunt" targeting alleged opponents: many politicians targeted by corruption courts belong to the PDP
Settlements
Senate Speaker Bukola Saraki, who had left the PDP for the CPA before the 2015 presidential elections, is suspected of being origin of massive rallies to the opposition. Although still officially a member of the APC, his differences with Muhammadu Buhari are well-known.
The Nigerian Supreme Court recently lifted corruption charges against him after a long court battle . But the president of the Senate was summoned Tuesday by the Nigerian police, accused of having ordered a series of robberies of banks in his political stronghold, the state of Kwara, last April.
In a statement published Monday evening, M Saraki denounced a "ploy" to prevent impending defections of ruling party parliamentarians and on Tuesday morning, police forces surrounded his residence in Abuja.
"Security services are instrumentalized to settle political accounts" , commented AFP Cheta Nwanze, consulting firm SBM Intelligence, based in Lagos. "What has just happened shows impunity at a level never seen since the military era."
"Converted Democrat"
M. Buhari, a 75-year-old general who led the ruling military junta in the 1980s, was elected in 2015, describing himself as a "converted democrat". He enjoys strong popular support in the predominantly Muslim North, from which he comes, and from his position as President in office, in a country where the traditional winner is the incumbent after a first term.
But many voices have been rising for months against the inefficiency of its fight against corruption and the daily difficulties faced by the majority of Nigerians, after a serious economic recession in 2016. It is also very criticized for its inability to restore order, then that Nigeria is confronted with multiple conflicts, between agro-pastoral violence in the center, jihadist insurrection in the North-East and rebel groups in the South oil.
At the beginning of July, more than 30 parties including the PDP formed a alliance against the candidacy of the Head of State for his own succession. At the same time, a dissident group has launched a new movement – the reformed PCA (APC) – within the ruling party, denouncing "the monumental catastrophe" that the Buhari presidency has been saying since 2015
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