When the bell tolled in 2013 for the formation of a formidable opposition to wrest power from the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), all manner of characters were invited to come on board.
They all gathered from the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), and part of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Again, following the gale of defections from the PDP initiated by the G-7 governors who staged a walkout with Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, a former national chairman of the PDP and Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former Osun State governor and former PDP secretary, from the party’s special convention at Eagle Square on August 31, 2013, the stage was set for the influx of “mixed multitude” into the APC.
Some others who were not invited, willingly joined the broom party to escape the “high-handedness and lack of internal democracy” in PDP.
While two of the former governors went back to the PDP, five moved into the APC. Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers); Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano); Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto); Abdulfatai Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) were those who defected to the broom party.
A few months to the general election, the tsunami that hit the PDP further swelled the APC bank. Most of those who left the umbrella party did so on account of the rancorous primaries that preceded the general election. Although they left the party bodily, their heart is still with the PDP.
Having won the elections into various offices contested, the “strangers” in the APC may have begun to assert themselves by insisting on doing things their own way. These are those who had left the PDP because they were averse to imposition of any form; now coming to the APC to see the party insisting on riding rough shod over elected officers on its platform, they are ready to resist it.
Speaking on the negative impact of the “mixed multitude” in the APC in relation to the crisis going on at the National Assembly over the choice of leadership and the seemingly inability of the leadership of the APC to have its way, Liborous Oshoma, a legal practitioner, said there was likelihood for those who crossed from the PDP to see themselves as not being part of the APC in the real sense of it.
“If you look at the visit of Saraki to former President Olusegun Obasanjo last weekend, those who accompanied him were not core members of the APC. They are mainly from other parties that moved into the APC,” Oshoma said.
According to him, it is obvious that many of the federal lawmakers are not reading from the same page with the party on the platform of which they rode to power.
The legal practitioner, who also is a public affairs analyst, pointed out that APC might be waging a futile war against the likes of Saraki because of the influence of some groups that may be backing them.
“We now have a Senate that has become a retirement home for past governors. Today, they have association of former governors or Ex-Governors’ forum. It is natural for members of this group to protect one of their own when the need arises. So, it is difficult to deal with all these. What the APC should do at this time is to allow reason prevail; this is not the right time to fight within and without,” he said.
A political economist who spoke on condition of anonymity told BusinessDay that the crisis in the APC over the election of the National Assembly leadership was a manifestation of the desperation to wrest power from the PDP without sufficiently preparing to provide a better alternative.
According to him, “A situation where different strands came together to form APC, with time, they may find their way back to wherever they came from. What we are seeing is the beginning of a big fight that may lead to, ‘to your tent O Israel’.
“If you have been following the antecedents of most of those who jumped from their parties into the APC, you would not be surprised at what is happening now. Last Tuesday, the APC legislators nearly exchanged blows over selection of National Assembly leaders. The senators’ caucus of the party in the Senate is overruling the party on the selection of the principal officers in the Senate. The same thing is happening in the lower House. We saw the fight last Thursday. In all of this, my concern is that it is too early in the day for the APC to be showing signs of incapability. People are now telling them, ‘physician, heal thyself.’”
But Itse Sagay, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who recently spoke with BusinessDay decried the crisis arising from election of the leadership of the 8th National Assembly.
Emphasising the supremacy of party over its members, he said: “You cannot win an election on a party platform and then decide to go on a wild goose chase, or become a misguided missile. No, it does not happen that way. Any disciplined party member must abide by the rules of that party. There are leadership decisions that must be carried out, otherwise the party will collapse.”
A camp of strange bed fellows?
With what is going on in the camp of the APC, the description of the party by many people as a colony of strange bed fellows may have been justifies. Starting from the day the party was formed; critics have continued to predict that it would not be able to lead Nigeria.
Speaking with BD SUNDAY, a former presidential aspirant said there was never a time APC was a party, but a gathering of strange bed fellows with the single aim of wresting power from the PDP.
“You see, when you say party, APC is never a political party, but PDP is. APC is at best an amalgam of people who came together to use a platform to contest election. Their aim is to get hold of power at the centre. But what to do with the power is a different thing altogether. The greatest tragedy for them is that part of the PDP that left to join the APC. They are never a party and can never be. They think and act differently. They cannot properly mix to form an entity. What we are seeing now is that the party is going through a period of metamorphosis and anything can happen in the process,” the politician, who is of Northern extraction, said.
It would be recalled that Jonah Jang, Plateau State, was among the first set of people who did not see the party amounting to anything. Throwing a verbal jab at the APC, Jang said it may not stand the test of time as the people involved were strange bed fellows.
“All Progressives Congress is made up of strange bed fellows who never slept together with most of them having their roots in the PDP,” Jang was quoted as saying.
Olatunji Shelle, the recently sacked chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the PDP, had also described the leaders of APC, as strange bedfellows who did not share common ideology.
Shelle drew his conclusion when asked if he thinks APC leaders can successfully manage power.
“I wouldn’t be able to predict that but I know that they are strange bedfellows. They don’t share common ideology, they don’t have similar character and they don’t have anything in common.
“Somehow, one person or the other will feel short-changed or threatened by the overbearing attitude of one against the other. Both characters are of extreme tendencies; so, I don’t see how they can work together,” he said.
But Bisi Akande who was the interim national chairman of the party dismissed such an appellation. Speaking during the inauguration of members of the party’s new national executive committee, Akande said: “…the anti-democratic forces did not give the APC a chance to survive. In fact, they did not believe that the new child called the APC would be born at all…The enemies of progress jeered at us, deriding us as strange bed fellows who could not work together. Today, we are no longer a party of strange bedfellows. We are a truly pan-Nigerian political party that is giving our people hope.”
APC’s baptism of fire
Analysts have wondered why the APC allows itself to be a laughing stock in the country, by showing sign of an association that lacks direction and whose interest is not service or good governance but self-serving. Many Nigerians have wondered why a party that went to town with the “sins” of the PDP is now adding iniquity onto iniquity.
A commentator said: “I have always known that the politics of sharing the spoils of victory was always going to pose the severest test of the APC’s coherence in its new role as the ruling party. Having never held national power, it is going to have to do a lot of learning in terms of the ways and means of managing internal competition. I am afraid; they are going to make the job of governing this country very difficult for President Muhammadu Buhari.
“The row over National Assembly leadership positions is the first crash course in this regard. Simply letting the Assembly pick its own leadership would have been simpler and far less acrimonious.
“As a coalition of mixed multitudes with no real overarching ideological bond (just like the PDP), the APC was always going to run into this sort of storm once the euphoria of victory had dissipated. The admittedly short term objective of getting Jonathan out may have fostered a remarkable unity of purpose and discipline but that has now expired.
“Having joyfully accepted defectors who could not abide by party supremacy in the PDP, it makes little sense to expect them to now comply with any rules other than those which coincide with their self-interest.”
The last line
It is a consensus opinion that the earlier the APC resolves the crisis currently bedeviling it, the better for its image that is daily being dragged in the mud, particularly against the backdrop of its virulent attack against the PDP and the grandstanding to end the country’s woes in a jiffy if given the opportunity to handle the reins of power.
To the APC, analysts say, “The taste of the pudding is in the…”
