As the All Progressives Congress (APC) prepares to celebrate its second anniversary by the end of the month, Osita Isunazo, the party’s national organising secretary, in this interview with KEHINDE ABDULSALAM said the determination by the party to allow internal democracy to thrive was the secret of its victory in the last general election. He spoke on other issues. Excerpts:
Can you let us into what the party is planning to mark its second year anniversary?
It’s already two years by July 31 this year, the APC was registered by INEC July 31, 2013, last year when we wanted to celebrate our one year anniversary, we got tied up with preparations towards registration of our membership, towards conducting congresses for our members across the federation, national convention as well as the party primaries for the 2015 general elections which we won by the grace of God.
This is the second year and the party wants to roll out the drums to celebrate our second year anniversary as a party. It is unprecedented that within two years of being registered as a party, we have won the general election; it is unprecedented that within two years of being registered as a party, we have twenty two (22) governors elected under the platform of the party, it is also unprecedented that within two years of our registration, we are controlling the two chambers of the National Assembly. These are the things we considered as giant stride achievements that begged for call to celebrate our great party on its second year as a political party.
The event to celebrate our party at two will hold by the end of this month (August) in Abuja and we are getting world class resource persons to speak to us on the role of a political party on emerging government and to as well talk about our change mantra, what to do to effect the change. We shall hear talks on the change our party is championing, is it change of attitude or otherwise; these are the aspects we will be looking at.
We have secured the date and the guest speakers are fine-tuning ahead of it; I can say authoritatively that one of the guest speakers will be Professor Ibrahim Gambari, Nigeria’s permanent representative to the United Nations. We are also finalising the arrangements to get speakers outside the country.
It is true the APC wants to celebrate its second year anniversary but it will not be only celebration, we also want to use the avenue for internal soul searching to let ourselves know that the task ahead is more than the one behind.
Kogi gubernatorial election is by the corner, APC has 28 aspirants jostling to be the party’s standard bearer; what has APC put in place to manage the post primary crisis that may arise?
In APC, we normally pride ourselves with our interest in internal democracy; the first ingredient that gave us victory in the last general election is the openness of our presidential primaries. It was as transparent and open to the extent that even those who could not make it, immediately congratulated the winner and they started working together.
Before the Presidential primaries, some people were thinking that APC had already anointed someone amongst the aspirants, but at the end of the day, you found out that no one was anointed, it was transparently done and the candidate emerged. That is what happened in all our gubernatorial primaries across the federation.
I, as the National Organising Secretary of the party have seen primaries conducted by our leadership without any crisis, we have done party congresses across the federation without any crisis, we had our presidential primaries without any crisis so I don’t envisage any crisis springing up after the gubernatorial primaries in Kogi and Bayelsa elections.
If you have been monitoring our activities so far, you’ll observe that we are painstaking in a manner that both the aspirants and the party leadership in Kogi State will be comfortable with the process, we just finished a training now with the State Executives in Kogi State, the National Executives and IRI to educate them on their expected roles during the primaries.
It is a public knowledge that we’ve had screening where we gave equal opportunities to all the aspirants; the screening committee has brought out its reports clearing all the 24 aspirants for the primaries and it is okay by us at the national level. There are basic things they looked at and they deem it certified that all of them are qualified so we cannot stop anyone for the sake of disqualification. In this country, we have seen cases where an incumbent governor was not even allowed to run for primaries of the party; that is not the style of APC.
We have made the aspirants to sign an undertaking which is optional but all of them have signed the undertaking to abide by the process of the primaries; what this means is that we have a responsibility as a party to ensure that the primaries are free and fair; the aspirants also have the responsibility to do the right thing to ensure that the primaries are hitch-free. Once you conduct a free and fair election, the losers will not mind to congratulate the winner. People get upset when the process is not free and transparent, if it is free and transparent, a loser will lose gallantly and a winner will also win gallantly. We have put adequate measures in place and I can assure you that there’ll be no backlash after primaries so long as we do the right thing.
The party is poised to do the right thing by publishing the list of the delegates. It is not a matter of giving the numbers of the delegates but making them known to the world. APC will publish the list of the delegates for the primaries and anyone who has questions on who is or who is not supposed to be on the list will raise the issue before the primaries and the party will address such dispassionately.
We have guidelines on who qualifies to be a delegate and who does not, but for the avoidance of doubt, we’ll go ahead to publish the list to ensure transparency. I don’t think we are expecting any post primary issues as it never happened during our presidential election primaries. Only a few of APC-controlled states are in court over primary election conflict but if you check our opponent in the other political party, there’s hardly any state that they are not in court after their primaries.
Just last week, your party received many defectors and it is rumoured in some quarters that the former first lady wants one of the defectors to become the next governor of the state; could you confirm if there is an alliance between the party and the former first lady in the coming election in Bayelsa State?
Don’t even go far; I’m not aware of what you are talking about. She (Patience Jonathan) is not even a member of our party and she has not indicated interest to support any member of our party, if there are things like that, you can just say they are media speculations.
There’s this concern about the spate of defections into the party; there are reports about big names who in the past had wanted to become governor of Bayelsa State now crossing over to the party. There’s this assumption that some of them are coming to get the party’s gubernatorial ticket; in the event that they eventually come, what will be their fate and that of those they met who are also interested in flying the party’s flag. Won’t that lead to crisis?
There won’t be any crisis, a political party is just like a church, you don’t stop anyone from coming in to worship. We can’t stop anyone from coming in to join APC; we are even looking for more people to join our fold. If there are so many bigwigs in Bayelsa or any other state coming to join our party, what that means is that our party is doing well. If you are not doing well those bigwigs will not join you. How do we manage their entrance into the party? That is where we have code of conducts and guidelines for primaries. If anybody is coming in now he’s qualified to contest for the primaries, you can’t stop them from running for the primaries, it is the delegates that will decide who becomes the candidate of the party.
If you look at the delegates electoral college, those who constitute the APC delegates, they are more inclusive than the other political party, the other political party will do a special congress to elect three people per ward, in our case, virtually all executive members of our party are delegates. If you have a large number of delegates, the tendency is that people cannot buy them over because the number is large. People cannot camp them overnight, how do you even do that when you have over four thousand delegates? If you are qualified to run for an election, you can run; we cannot stop any new person coming into the party from contesting; it is the delegates that will determine their fate. Mind you, we are not doing a new delegate list. It is the other political party that does a special congress to elect ad-hoc delegates that will elect the candidates. The scenario in APC is different from that. Our own is to ensure that the existing executives from the wards to local and state government levels constitute the list of the delegates. That is our guideline, it is them (delegates) that will know whether an aspirant has worked for the party or not. I wouldn’t want to stress on this point but the bottom line is that everybody will be given a level playing ground to operate on whether you are a new entrant to the party or not, you are qualified.
Your party, the APC has set the precedent with the coming election in Kogi State by giving the gubernatorial form to the women for free, but some of the women in the party still feels they have not been fully accommodated like their male counterparts, is there any other thing the party is doing to get the women more involved especially in the aspect of getting into elective positions?
Anything that has to do with gender is somewhat of agitation, when you are agitating for something, you will surely become an Oliver Twist. If you get this, you’ll still agitate for another one. If you say our women are complaining then I’ll say it is not true, they are not complaining.
If there is any party in Nigeria that is more human-friendly then I’ll say it is our party. For the first time, no major political party in Nigeria has given a woman a governorship ticket before, APC gave its governorship ticket to a woman in Taraba State, she would have emerged as a governor, even at that, it is never too late because her case is still in court. What does that mean? It means APC as a party doesn’t do lip service to the issue of gender; if we do, we wouldn’t have given our governorship ticket to a woman but we did it.
The same APC elected a woman as the chairman of our party in Adamawa State; we elected her as chairman of our party. Today, the same person is now an elected senator from the same state.
During the interim administration of our party, a woman in Enugu State was also appointed as the chairman of our party in the state. Within the last two years when the APC was formed, we’ve had two women as chairmen of our party in the state, has that happened anywhere before? Even our major opponent, you can go and check, have they produced a woman chairman before, have they produced woman governorship candidate before? Even in the appointment that we are doing, you wouldn’t say women are relegated; a woman is currently the chairman of INEC, the most sensitive electoral body in the country. Mr President has not appointed his ministers, I believe when he does so, women will be there, even special advisers, women will be there.
We didn’t joke with the issues of our women; the APC is the only party that takes the issue of her women seriously. It is public knowledge that we don’t charge money for nomination form from any of our women who wishes to vie for elective positions; the Kogi primary is a clear example. One of the contestants is a woman and the party didn’t collect a dime from her to obtain the form. If a woman is qualified to contest for any elective position under the platform of this party, she’s free to do so.
