Nigeria’s APC: The Consequences Of Being Ineffective And Ineffectual

July 27, 2018 Greg Abolo

The Oasis Reporters

July 27, 2018

Nobody expected that the child christened the All Progressive Congress ( APC ) back in 2014 was going to live for such a short time and to compound issues, the death occurred suddenly after a brief illness as people would usually say upon a passing.

A survey of the very circumstance of the conception of this child that lived for this short a lifespan shows that It is suspect if a bride price was paid in the first instance to fulfil at the very least, the basic requirement of a legal union in consonance with the provisions of the Marriage Act. When there is this grave failure in a marital relationship even a political union, it will only be commonsensical to expect turbulence in such a union and so it has been with the union that yielded the APC.

No one is in the least surprised at the fate that has befallen the relationship which was not consummated because it was established on loose sand. I am aware from the lessons of history that no alliance is so sacrosanct that it remains unshakable for all of its life.

That the APC gave itself a new larger than life image much in the manner of the PDP before it very clearly explains why it has put itself asunder. The leadership of the APC failed abysmally to learn from that instructive Pirelli Tyre advert ” Power is nothing without control “. Had someone somewhere been courageous enough to exercise some oversight functions on the very strange contraption put together by the leadership of the Party, surely some people would not now be weeping and gnashing their teeth.
They let Chief Odigie Oyegun to systematically put the Party under and now they are picking up the pieces which cannot be stitched together ever again. The Oyegun leadership of the APC perhaps never realized that a political party is built essentially on the social contract theory which provides for groups or individuals surrendering some (not) all of their rights to the sovereign. The Oyegun gang was not out to provide any form of leadership or to protect the rights of party members but those of the State governors who were sustaining their insatiable hunger for money.

I see Chief Oyegun as a hangman who put the noose round the APC and executed the hanging. Wherever the former chairman is hibernating now given the collapse of the house of cards which he has just vacated, he must if all is well with some of his faculties feel a deep sense of complicity in the fate of the APC and I wish his mood could be made available to the people his leadership betrayed.

Chief Odigie Oyegun is not alone in putting the APC asunder, sharing in this is the President himself. Some people are saying that the President is the father of the Party but I find this difficult to believe as no father will look the other way while the foundation of the house he is living in is being undermined. Had the President kept an eye on the Oyegun leadership, he would have known while there was still time that all was not well in the Party on whose back he rode to power and perhaps would have applied the brakes to arrest the drift.

Typical of Baba Buhari, he looked the other way as he has often done with very important issue particularly those of national security. For example, when the genocide was going on in Southern Kaduna and other States mostly in the Middle Belt, Baba appeared not to be interested in directing that immediate steps be taken to stop the killings. Surely Baba ought to have known that all was not well particularly in the Kaduna State Chapter of the APC perhaps because the dictator running the show may have been feeding him with lies. If the President cared at all, there are other sources from which he would have known the state of affairs in the APC in Kaduna State.
No, the President did not care even after the Kaduna Restoration Group had written a number of petitions, copies of which were addressed to his office. Some concerned fellow said the other day that the dictatorship in Kaduna State had a water tight arrangement to ensure that no negative documents relating to its activities got to the Presidency. And so it was until now that the dam has collapsed releasing a deluge down stream with devastating consequences for the APC.

Left to me, I would have wished that the APC roof collapsed on the heads of the Oyegun gang. Like I had written earlier, Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomhole with all his impeccable credentials as a Labour activist and former governor was coming rather too late in the day to save the APC. Funny enough even as I was writing this post, I came across another in which supposedly Chief Odigie Oyegun was lamenting how he had warned against the choice of Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomhole as the person to succeed him as APC Chairman but that he was not given any hearing. He appeared to be saying that Adams Oshiomhole had in just 4 weeks brought the APC to it’s ruination with his mouth.

If it is true that Chief Oyegun said words to this effect then something must be wrong with his memory. For all that many of us former members of the APC hold to be true, Chief Odigie Oyegun had made a complete mess of the APC before his routing. Adams Aliu Oshimhole succeeded him at a time the APC was already primed for implosion.

My personal viewpoint is that had Adams Aliu Oshiomhole been around say one and half years ago, he would have brought his immense experience to bear on the many internal squabbles in the APC thus saving the APC from the political asphyxiation which has turned out to be it’s fate. The events of the past 4 days have been calamitous for the APC in spite of the flurry of negotiations and consultations which had all been focused towards persuading the aggrieved members of the National Assembly and some State governors not to dump the APC. Any right thinking person should have known that there was simply no way for the defections to have been avoided as the decampees had made their minds up long ago.

Something tells me that the decampees made the right decision in the circumstance as it would have amounted to total capitulation had they yielded to the narrative of remaining in the APC. What has played out is exactly the price paid for a leadership which is ineffective and ineffectual as the Oyegun’s.
As a people and a nation, we must draw lessons from the near unbundling of the APC. Impunity is the worst enemy in any organization because the message it transmits is that members who have issues with the manner such an organization is being run do not matter.

Events in Kaduna State since 29 May 2015 largely miniaturizes those at the national level. Leadership has never been recklessly exercised as in Kaduna State where the dictator is all knowing. You simply cannot connect with this character if you have a mind of your own. This has reduced almost everyone working closely with him to a zombie ( my apologies to late Fela Kuti ). The outcome of this style of leadership is the ruins of Kaduna State which a new governor will take over after the votes are counted in 2019.

What happens when a relationship breaks down is not for the unhappy party to continue sulking and living in a past full of regrets, no, what you do is to put the pieces of the past together, subject them to critical analysis at the end of which you move on with your life guided by the lessons of the previous outing.

Sadly, what is remaining of the APC are busy engaging in name calling and buck passing. For them to be claiming that the fortunes of the APC will not be affected by the decampings is the very height of self delusion. Assuming that this claim was true what was the purpose of trying to convince the decampees to remain? Adams Aliu Oshiomhole himself has been quoted as saying that the migration of members of the National Assembly and some State governors to another political party is ” A storm in a teacup “. Oshiomhole for all the respect due to him knows he is lying on this one. Even if it was true that there is indeed a storm in a teacup, Adams Aliu Oshiomhole and all the vuvuzelas now responsible for the noise pollution together amount to the tiny spoon in the tea cup.

One grave mistake the APC is well on the way to repeating is to mistake 2019 for 2015. The reasons are as simple as they are many. First it is common knowledge that the violent storm which swept the APC to power has all but died out. Secondly, the APC has clearly demonstrated in words and action that the electorate do not even matter. Thirdly, there is no internal democracy which has been her Achilles heel.

Much more important is that many of us know and believe that the President of the Republic clearly lacks the capacity to lead this complex nation. He may have had such capacity once upon a time but if we are true to this beleaguered nation, we must all agree that those days are long gone. The APC or what is left of it must now be less talkative and bombastic so it can concentrate on mending the parts of the broken fence through which the decampees escaped.

I am wishing this nation well and praying that God Almighty will give this nation a new breed of leaders completely detribalized and who will not be bugged down in the quagmire of religious bigotry, leaders who will not advance the narrow self interest of one ethnic group well and above those of others, a leadership that will be quick and timely in responding to issues threatening the health of the nation.
Whenever I look at focused leadership in France, Canada, Croatia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and China to mention but a few, I feel a jolt of envy run through my spine. Let us all harness our group and individual competences towards rescuing this nation from the slow death already underway.