Adams Oshiomhole Came Around A Little Bit Too Late To Rescue it
The Oasis Reporters
July 21, 2018
I have never met him in person but I have seen his photographs and heard or read about him quite a lot. I live in Kaduna and whenever I am driving or being driven along the Western Bypass somewhere around the precincts of Nassarawa Tirkaniya a suburb of Kaduna is the Textile House. I am not aware if Adams Aliu Oshiomhole has ever worked in any of the now comatose textiles either in Kaduna of elsewhere but I got to learn that Oshiomhole was once the President of the Textile and Garments Workers Union and that he did a good job of protecting the rights of the employees in the textile industry.
Being a unionist in many a case has prepared people for the terrain of politics and true to this school of thought, Oshiomhole ended up contesting the gubernatorial elections in Edo State and won. I know too that Edo is as complex as my Kaduna State but this rather diminutive character was able to swim his way through the shark, crocodile and barracuda infested waters of Edo State politics. This capacity may have singled him out as the sole candidate to replace the jaded and thoroughly compromised Chief Odigie Oyegun as Chairman of the now troubled All Progressive Congress.
Chief Odigie Oyegun whether anybody admits it or not was the greatest undoing of the APC. His tenure as Party Chairman blighted the political party that uprooted the PDP from power bringing the APC to near ruin. Had the President not foreseen the danger in retaining Chief Oyegun as Party Chairman and acted very swiftly to remove him, he would today have been sitting tight as APC National Chairman for that was what he was positioning himself for. The decay in the APC had gone too deep and the Party was going to die suddenly when the fighter in Adams Aliu Oshiomhole stepped in. That Chief Odigie Oyegun was himself a governor in now Edo State and performed so woefully as a political party chairman is intriguing. How did he survive Edo politics?
Had the President of the Republic kept in touch with what was happening in the leadership of the APC, there is no way he would have tolerated Oyegun longer than he did for the former Chairman simply surrendered the leadership of the APC to some unscrupulous governors at the core of which is the dictator of Kaduna State. The former Chairman was not in the least concerned with the myriad of crises which were brewing in the State Chapters of the APC, all he was concerned with was protecting the interests of the governors who were picking up his bills while feathering his nest.
The larger interest of the Party was subsumed in that of Chief Oyegun and the legion of governors who were bent on arm twisting everyone else to have their way in the struggle to not only remain as governors but to succeed themselves whether they performed or not. That Chief Oyegun could not have known that the State governors were systematically flouting the Party Constitution and electoral guidelines with regards to elections and Congresses is most tragic. Once the Congresses were manipulated to suit the whims and caprices of the governors, all was well.
The rift in the APC became common knowledge when the aggrieved groups within the APC organized parallel Congresses, the outcome of which the Oyegun leadership rejected even when he knew that no actual Congresses were held to have produced the results forwarded by the governors. Little wonder then that a High Court in Imo State ruled that no Congresses were held to have produced the delegates list forwarded from Imo. We in Kaduna State are in court over the same issue. The ruling in Imo on the face of it presupposes that the delegates from that State who took part in the APC Convention did so illegally.
In any case, the Convention got rid of Chief Oyegun even if some members of his cartel are still around. The advent of the Adams Aliu Oshiomhole leadership of the APC appears to be trying to resuscitate the already fragile APC. For Oshiomhole and the not entirely new Party leadership trying to breath new life to the APC is akin to swimming against the tide or worse upstream in a fast flowing river on empty stomachs.
I love the courage of Oshiomhole because no sooner had he taken over the reins of power than he sent a clear message to the effect that the party was over. Henceforth, everyone was going to be subjected to the supremacy of the Party he declared, from the governors to the president, this is the material required for building strong institutions.
Notwithstanding the fact that he inherited a bad situation in the APC, he has been struggling to stitch together the fallen pieces of the Party. Thus far the most profound decision he has taken is with regard to the delegates lists which during normal times would have been deployed in producing flag bearers of the Party for elective positions. You and I and everyone else knows that the delegate system has been fraught with massive corruption leading to the emergence of unpopular candidates. The adoption of the direct election process to determine the successful candidates is much more democratic and less acrimonious. Most of those usually pencilled down as delegates are mildly put, glorified political prostitutes who would readily go off with the highest bidder during the primaries.
Under the new system, every Party card carrying member will have the right to cast his vote for his/her candidate of choice in which case the most popular candidate emerges as the flag bearer in the Party. This decision has technically pulled the carpet from under the feet of some over ambitious and overtly dictatorial governors including our own local dictator in Kaduna. For the dictatorial regime in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, it is a return to the drawing board. It is our votes as card carrying members of the Party that will decide who will contest for the office of governors of Kaduna State come 2019 not those of arrangee, compromised and tainted comedians called delegates.
Whether Adams Aliu Oshiomhole will make successful the very difficult task of putting back the falling parts of the APC is yet to be seen. One thing though which you cannot take away from Adams Oshiomhole is that fact that he is a dogged fighter. Those who deluded themselves thinking they could deploy state power and resources to muddy the politics of our nation with impunity must now have a rethink. If we are to grow our democracy, we must make the electorate the engine room. Any dubious attempt to defraud the voters as has been happening in Kaduna State in this dispensation will come to naught. The criminally minded politicians garrisoned in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House under the command of one Mallam Uba Sani and his ilk must now ‘re-strategize. Any political aspirant must be prepared to go out to the field and ask the electorate for their votes.for this is the path and language of democracy.
Come 2019, there will be no shortcut to Sir Kashim Ibrahim House. The popularity and political pedigree of the aspirants will be meticulously scrutinized and from the exercise will come forth the candidates. Those who deployed some godfathers of sort back in 2015 to put themselves forward must now come to terms with the new thinking. The clouds of arrogance, culture of foul language and impunity are together approaching their sunset. Our people in the present political dispensation in Kaduna State have borne the insults and hardship inflicted on them by the El Rufai dictatorship with equanimity but we have all learnt from it and we are stronger together and more determined to face 2019. Any effort designed to achieve reconciliation at the instance of the gang in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House must be seen and interpreted as a continuation of deceit and falsehood the key characters of the regime. Should any aggrieved individual or group be approached and offered the dummy called reconciliation, listen to them but you must tell those messengers of falsehood that the GREAT PARTY is over.
Written by Col. Gora Dauda (rtd)
The writer is the Chairman of R-APC in Kaduna state, North West Nigeria.
