APC PRIMARIES HUMBLE SITTING REPS

Anthony EKPO BASSEY

BEFORE the first ballot of the 2027 general elections is cast, dozens of serving members of the House of Representatives have already discovered the bitter truth about politics: loyalty to power is not the same thing as security. Why?

At press time yesterday, scores of All Progressive Congress, APC lawmakers had either lost outright at the primaries or were staring at humiliating defeats from challengers they once dismissed as political boys.

Suddenly, “Tinubu’s mandate” is no longer sounding like a winning slogan. The same lawmakers who spent months thumping their chests on television, defending every hardship in the country with religious loyalty, are now learning that party structures do not remember emotional investments. Politics remembers usefulness. Nothing more. Across states, political giants became political refugees overnight.

Without a thought to conscience, some of them abandoned the parties that gave them life. They defected to APC with drums, cameras and long convoys. They insulted the platforms that made them lawmakers. They told Nigerians that they were “joining the mainstream.” Today, the same mainstream has swept many of them into the gutter. The irony is almost poetic.

These defections were not driven by ideology. Nobody was pretending. They moved because they thought APC was an automatic ticket to a second term. They saw the Presidency, saw federal might, saw appointments flying around Abuja and concluded that survival had become guaranteed. But primaries came. And reality came with them.

For some of them, their Governors and party leaders who smiled in the daytime with them had a thought contrary to their smiles. Now, some of these lawmakers cannot even boast of controlling their wards anymore.

Worse still, the trap they helped create has finally closed on them. The same Electoral Act many of them hurriedly celebrated now stands like a brick wall before them. After participating in APC primaries and losing, they cannot simply jump to another party to seek fresh tickets. The door has closed. Locked. Bolted. What a tragedy! Men who once spoke like emperors are now consulting lawyers over technicalities. Some are praying for court orders. Others are suddenly remembering “internal democracy.”

A few are already accusing party leaders of betrayal, manipulation and injustice, the same allegations they mocked when opposition politicians made them. This is the nature of Nigerian politics. Yesterday’s landlord becomes today’s tenant. And perhaps the biggest comedy in all this is that many of these lawmakers genuinely believed proximity to power meant permanence in power. It does not!

The APC primaries have once again proven one eternal lesson: in politics, and even anywhere, nobody is indispensable. Not even those who scream “Renewed Hope” the loudest. As 2027 approaches, the National Assembly corridors will become quieter. Some familiar faces will disappear. Convoys will reduce. Protocol officers will stop answering calls. And somewhere in Abuja, a former lawmaker who once defended every government policy with televised aggression may finally sit alone and ask the most painful political question of all: “After all my loyalty… na so e end?”