APC: TIME FOR STOCK-TAKING Bola Bolawole These are not the best of times for the opposition All Progressives Congress. It is assailed on many fronts by challenges of monumental proportions. If we say that the party is passing through crisis, we shall not be far from the truth. Yet, this is the same party which, a few months ago, stood at the threshold of running the ruling Peoples Democratic Party out of town. It nearly seized control of the National Assembly. It had as many state governors as PDP and rode the crest of popular acclamation across the land. The people, fed up with an under-performing Federal Government, were encouraged by the alternative platform that the new mega party offered. Were snap elections called about a year ago, the likelihood is that APC would have run away with victory. Historians would call that high point in the history of APC its apogee; but like all institutions human, the opposition party After its whirlwind gains in which many PDP giants defected into it, APC has had the tables turned upon it such that it, too, has lost many heavyweights to PDP. The traffic of defections is such that it is difficult as of yet to say who has gained more; but granted that it is APC that has more need to put on more muscles to be able to confront the behemoth called PDP, then, each loss suffered by it must be disconcerting indeed. The first evidence of APC’s vulnerability came when two of the seven PDP governors hobnobbing with it developed cold feet when push became shoving. Had it been able to reap all seven at a go at the time, the likelihood is that this would have not only made APC unquestionably the leading party in the country, it also could have triggered a bandwagon effect that PDP would have found harder to recover from. But the volte-face of the duo of Jigawa’s Sule Lamido and Niger’s Muazu Babangida Aliyu revealed the vulnerability of the so-called Group of Seven rebel PDP governors and exposed an underbelly that PDP had ruthlessly exploited to advantage, first, to stem the gale of defections, and, next, turn the tables on APC. Next was the inability of the PDP defectors to drag all party structures along with them into their new party (APC). So, we have instances where governors defected but their deputies and state legislators refused to go along with them. It is like leaving fire on the rooftop and going to bed. The reasons for these disjointed re-alignments are not too difficult to fathom. Politics is a game of interests; the defection of someone leaves a vacancy for another to fill, creating vistas of opportunities hitherto lacking. Political permutations and equations changed with the defections and smart politicians cashed in to feather their nests. One of the after-effects is the crisis rocking the APC in Adamawa state whose governor, Murtala Nyako, is fighting to retain his seat. Then, it is one thing to make big ceremonies of welcoming defectors into a party but another to make them welcomed by those they met on ground. That has been a major headache for APC. Those on ground, the so-called legacy members, could not mesh with the defectors. It was like asking cats and dogs or pigeons and chickens to co-habit. The result had been legacy members leaving APC for PDP in droves, citing as excuse the handing over of party structures to the new-comers. Defections that were meant to strengthen APC and which, in fact, did strengthen it initially, thus returned to haunt it. Politicians being who they are, it is doubtful if APC could have totally escaped this backlash, but there are those who argued than a more adroit political engineering instead of the wholesale, winner-takes-all approach of sacrificing legacy members on the altar of the power of incumbency would have helped mitigate the worst effects of the crisis of confidence between the old and the new. Why, for instance, was the APC not able to get the minority parties i.e. Labour, Accord, APGA on its side? Those parties have rather chosen to align with PDP to the chagrin of APC. With politicians, power sharing will always be a delicate and difficult issue – especially so with an opposition party that has limited largesse to spread around. If it is to upturn the apple cart and upstage the party in power, what APC lacks in patronage it must amply make up for in political sagacity and astute horse-trading. Sadly, that has not been the case as clearly attested to by its recent election (or is it selection?) of party leaders. That exercise has further polarised the party. Borno state, for example, is reportedly reeling as a result of that election. It bears repeating here that I believe the choice of John Oyegun-Odigie as APC national chairman is the best ever as, by all standards, he stands head and shoulders above the likes of Tom Ikimi and Timipre Sylva. The process, however, is another thing entirely. But nowhere is the law of diminishing returns badly affecting APC as the South-west, the nation’s bastion of opposition politics. Starting from the ACN’s failure to capture Ondo state in 2012; going forward to the loss of Ekiti state in last month’s election with similar defeat staring it in the face in next month’s election in Osun state, all of it due to faults of its own, APC is fast losing a key stronghold to a rampaging PDP. In other states in the zone, the prognosis for APC is no less scary: The party is in turmoil in Ogun and Oyo states. In Lagos, opposition to it is mounting by the day. In all of this, APC has been its own worst enemy. It has gifted its opponents much of their successes by the unforced errors it has made. It is dangerous for a party that hopes to win the 2015 general elections to lose its strongholds the way APC is doing. I counsel the following: One: APC must make haste slowly. If Nigeria survives, there will be more elections after those of 2015. Two: Big-name politics is on the wane; people-power is on the ascendancy. APC should key into this by painstakingly building a mass-oriented, people-based party. Three: Credibility issue is seriously working against APC. “He who comes to equity”, it is said, “must come with clean hands”. As far as people can see, the difference between PDP and APC is like that between six and half a dozen. By and large, the experience of people with PDP and APC governments is that of a people squeezed in-between a rock and a hard place. When both trade accusations, it is like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As things are at the moment and except something serious happens that makes the people decide to vote against PDP, APC is less likely to win any election on its own merit. It has done so little to present itself to the long-suffering people of Nigeria as a clear alternative to PDP. Yet, for democracy to thrive, vibrant opposition is sine qua non. https://facebook/groups/paff.789/ Paffcomm paffcomm WHERE IS THE SOKOTO STATE CONSTITUENCY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT FUND? PART 2 TO PUBLISHED SOON.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 09:48:22 +0000
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