APC: A thorny road to national convention

By Emmanuel Oladesu

The All Progressives  Congress (APC) is afraid of its shadow. Twice, it has postponed its national convention. Feelers suggest that the third postponement is imminent. When will the ruling party hold the mandatory national congress?

There is division about preparation for the convention. The National Caretaker Committee is pushing for postponement. It is also plotting tenure elongation. But, the state chapters are disillusioned and disenchanted. The state caretaker chairmen are disposed to an early and speedy process that will culminate in the inauguration of a substantive democratic National Executive Committee.

If the exercise is not organised in June, as previously announced by the national caretaker committee, led by Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni, the party may now target December.

It therefore, means that throughout this year, the convention would be a bone of contention. Rationalising further postponement would become problematic. The suspense and suspicion will deepen the division and tension in the fold. Accusations and counter-accusations about real or imagined hidden agenda will be rife and trust and confidence may diminish.

When the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) set up an interim leadership committe chaired by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, former governor of Kaduna State, it was mocked by the APC throughout that one year. PDP never denied the reality of the crisis that had assailed it. But, little did APC guess that a similar crisis would threaten to tear it apart, despite being the ruling party. It is because it failed to learn from the tragedy that befell the main opposition party.

Judging by it’s current composition, the APC National Caretaker Committee is an imposition. It is erected on a shaky pillar of legitimacy. It is not a product of consensus. Although its tenure should be brief, the inclination towards a sight tight culture has motivated an ill-advised elongation, based on what observers describe as political prevarication.

If the idea of a caretaker committee was not initiated by the presidency, it was the presidency that was responsible for its actualisation.

Ruling parties in Africa often delude themselves into thinking that the presidents they had produced, and not a convention of democratically elected or selected delegates, should have supremacy or the last say in party affairs. It is typical of a weak political culture that encourages power-loaded presidents under a presidential system to personalise power and inadvertently set themselves above the parties.

Ultimately, whether the convention would hold in June or December is up to the president.

As the “tenureless” caretaker entrenches itself, party administration is systematically centralised. Elected state executive committees that were suddenly derobed and tyrannically converted into an interim executive will continue to coordinate the affairs of state chapters, many of which are crisis ridden.

The road to convention may be laced with thorns as intra-party battles have to be fought to make it a reality. The scheming for positions will become intense. The convention also becomes the key to intra-party preparations for 2023 electioneering. The distribution of party offices based on zoning or rotation will point to whether the presidential slot of the party will be zoned or thrown open to all regions.

The generality of party members received the news about the inauguration of the caretaker committee with shock. But, party chieftains had to defer to the president, who was said to have embraced the idea as suggested by a clique very close to him.

The terms of reference include reconciliation, party membership registration and validation.

How has the caretaker committee accomplished these tasks? Efforts at reconciliation have not yielded full results as many state chapters are still polarised and many chieftains still at war. The membership registration has even deepened the crisis in many chapters. Now, it has been extended by three weeks. Ordinarily, without the resort to ceremonies, party registration  should be a silent, peaceful and continuous exercise.

But, curiously, despite the problems confronting the APC, the party has been receiving defectors on weekly basis from the PDP, until the PDP moved to stop the defections, following the setting up of the Bukola Saraki Reconciliation Panel.

The National Convention is the most powerful organ of the party. It is the acclaimed final authority saddled with the ratification of party policies and programmes. At the national congress, party officers can be elected and removed and constitution amendment is approved by delegates. It can delegate its powers to the National Executive Committee(NEC) and Board of Trustees (BoT), which the party currently lacks.

According to the APC Constitution, the National Convention of the party shall be held once in two years at a date, venue and time to be recommended by the National Working Committee and approved by the National Executive Committee, subject to the giving of the statutory notices to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The constitution also states that the National Executive Committee may summon an emergency National Convention at any time, provided, at least, seven days notice of the meeting shall be given to all members eligible to attend.

The national convention is not held in isolation of coordinate activities, which must pave the way for it. It contrasts sharply with the mid-term convention, which appears to have been jettisoned.

Ahead of the national convention, the party is expected to be democratised from bottom to top. In other words, there should be transformation of the current ad hoc or temporary leadership structures to democratic executive committees at the ward, local government, state and zonal levels. The more the caretaker committee remains in office, the more the impression that the crisis that had hit the party is not over.

If 36 chapters of the ruling party can discredit the desirability of tenure elongation and postponement of the convention, it is akin to a subtle vote of no confidence.

APC National Caretaker Committee should not become the undertaker. Sincerity of purpose is required. A split party deprives itself of cohesion and peace. It may bring a monumental electoral disaster upon itself, which the so-called overwhelming presidential influence, or what is described as power of incumbency, cannot avert. Power of incumbency, as experience has shown, also has limitations.