Unfinished business of reconciliation

The All Progressives Congress (APC) is battling with internal wrangling in many state chapters. Observers believe the factional crisis may undermine the party’s resolve to hold on to power beyond 2023 when President Muhammadu Buhari will complete his second. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI examines the challenge of reconciliation in the party

 

The All Progressives Congress (APC), which marked seven years of its existence as a political party last week, may have boxed itself into a corner by not doing things differently; even though it rode to power on the mantra of change. The party has been undermined by the kind of internal wrangling that was the undoing of the former ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

The ongoing membership revalidation and registration exercise has exacerbated the division and internal wrangling within many state chapters of the party. A pointer to the importance of the revalidation and registration manifested last Wednesday in Ilorin, Kwara State, where the membership exercise turned violent as members of two factions of the party clashed violently. The violence erupted at the Banquet Hall of Government House where a meeting was holding ahead of the registration exercise, with stakeholders, said to be loyal to different factions hurling chairs at each other.

The development is a reflection of the rift between Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq and a group led by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed. The factional crisis in Kwara worsened recently after the removal of Bashir Bolarinwa as chairman by the Mai Mala Buni-led interim management committee. He was replaced with Abdullahi Samari. This led to fears that the two factions may conduct parallel registration exercises.

The crisis in Kwara does not come as a surprise to observers. The victory of the party in the state during the last governorship election could be attributed to the coming together of a motley group of politicians who were disenchanted with the political hegemony of the Saraki dynasty. But, since they were strange bedfellows who were united at the time only by the quest to see the end of the Saraki dynasty, it is not surprising that the war of supremacy began while they were still savouring their victory at the polls.

 

Discordant tunes:

The situation in Kwara State is not an isolated one. A similar confrontation prevailed in Gboko, Benue State and several other chapters across the country where the party is deeply polarised into factions. For instance, in Benue, the party’s Gboko South chairman, Tersoo Ahu was murdered at the venue of the ongoing revalidation and registration exercise on Sunday. Trouble started, according to reports, when hoodlums stormed a hotel within the GRA in the town during the training of adhoc staff for the exercise, demanding the criteria used for selecting the adhoc officials. Before long, the situation escalated into violence during the deceased was killed. The late Ahu and other party officials were reportedly engaged in the training when the incident happened.

The APC has urged security agencies to investigate the killing in Gboko, the ancestral home of the Tiv people. But, observers say it may not be unconnected with the factional rivalry within the party ahead of 2023 general elections. Apart from Kwara and Benue, the ruling party has not been able to reconcile the crisis in states like Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Lagos, Edo, Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Anambra, Imo, Benue, Kogi, Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Sokoto and Zamfara.

The ruling party has not been able to put its house in order. Its multiple crises underscore its inherent contradictions, lack of effective leadership and inability to manage its achievements. There is no semblance of unity, cohesion and harmony in the party. For example, there is a deep gulf between the camp of governors-the dominant, influential and powerful state executives who lean on state resources-and other stalwarts, particularly committed founding leaders, who laboured for the success of the merger that gave rise to the platform.

In many states, governors and other chieftains are at war over the unresolved conflicts triggered by last year’s governorship and parliamentary nominations. The intra-party struggle for supremacy has deepened the mutual suspicion and division. Instead of focusing on governance in the spirit of 2019 electoral mandate, leading lights in the crisis-ridden party are locked in scheming ahead of next general elections. Although all the contending forces claim to defer to the party leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, he is not perceived as a symbol of unity and understanding. The President’s aloofness in promptly addressing matters of urgent concern to the party and the country at large has not helped matters.

The lack of party supremacy and discipline has become the hallmark of the ruling party that has refused to be a role model for other platforms. It was in the wake of the leadership crisis that rocked the party last year that the Buni-led National Caretaker Committee was set up June last year at the emergency meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) presided over by President Buhari.

The core mandate handed out to the Buni-led committee is the reconciliation of various factions in the party. The committee was also saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that all litigations by party members either against the party or any of its organs should be withdrawn. Today, the Buni led committee has not recorded much appreciable success in a number of the crisis-ridden chapters. For instance, peace still eludes the Zamfara State chapter, where the party is polarised into factions loyal to former Governor AbdulAziz Yari and Senator Kabiru Marafa. The suit filed against the party by the dismissed former National Vice Chairman (South-South), Hillard Eta, for example, and several other cases are yet to be withdrawn as demanded by the Buni-led interim national management committee.

Observers believe the membership revalidation and registration exercise, which sparked the latest round of dispute within the party, is connected to 2023 general elections when President Muhammadu Buhari’s second and final tenure will end. Such observers some stakeholders want to utilise the membership revalidation and registration exercise to take control of the structures of the party, as it prepares for the general elections. They believe that whosoever controls the membership list would be in a position to determine who gets what in the fold ahead of the elections. In other words, it confers some advantage on the faction of the party managing the exercise.

 

Incumbency factor:

Hitherto, when the party was in the opposition, they were united by the desire to dislodge the former ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and it did not matter who conducted the registration exercise. Nevertheless, everyone has seen the advantage of what they did in recent times when the party utilised the direct mode of primary where all members were expected to vote in determining who emerged as its flag bearers in various elective positions.

A civil society activist, Comrade Mashood Erubami has warned members of the APC to jettison the “business as usual” attitude which has retarded the implementation of the lofty programmes that propelled it to power in 2015. He said the party, which is currently preparing for its national convention to select key officials to man the party’s executive positions, as well as to adopt a statement of party principles and goals and the rules for the party’s activities must re-strategise to regain the support of the people that voted for it in 2015 and 2019 “because its support base is currently weak”.

Erubami, who is the president and convener of the Nigeria Voters’ Assembly (VOTAS), added: “The ongoing registration and revalidation exercise and the party’s convention should be used to bounce back to reckoning. The Interim caretaker committee must adopt a total approach that should be seen to be fair and nonselective, by reaching out immediately to all aggrieved parties. It must maintain the posture of an unbiased umpire.

“Step must be taken to avoid a disintegration of the party. The convention is a key process through which the National Chairman and other executives will emerge to run the affairs of the party during the next election cycle and beyond. The party must seize that opportunity to elect personalities that are capable of leading it and win elections for it.”

The civil society activist said it is obvious that attempts to reconcile disputing factions in the party have not succeeded before it commenced its registration of new members and revalidation of its old members. His words: “There is still evidence of unresolved disputes in Zamfara, Ogun, Ekiti, Kaduna, Sokoto, Borno, Kogi, Kwara,  Ondo, Oyo states to mention a few.

“The case of the recent physical assault that took place during the membership registration in Kwara state, where many members sustained serious injuries and later hospitalised as a result of violent attacks from divisions created already in the party, ahead of the elective election at the June convention is a testimony that the whole processes might not be free from fear.”

Erubami said the high hopes of Nigerians in the last six years may not go unfulfilled because there are still possibilities that things might change, if the party succeeds in getting a better leadership that will propel it towards 2023 and beyond.

A chieftain of the APC in Abia State, Chief Chekwas Okorie has equally warned the party to take the issue of reconciliation and internal party democracy seriously, if it wants to avert what happened to the PDP in 2015. He, however, hailed the move by Buni-led committee to clean up the party’s membership register and canvass for new members. He said: “When the time comes for the party congresses that will ultimately lead to the national convention, the membership register will be the only lawful document containing names of party members, and that would be the basis for congresses from wards, local governments, states, geo-political zones and then delegates to the national convention.”

Okorie, who is the founding National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) added that membership registration ought to be the basis for any dispute “because nobody is being excluded from registering and nobody can say the exercise is being cornered because there is no room for exclusion”. He said considering what happened prior to the last general elections, when some members of the party returned to their original parties (the PDP) because they had lost ground within the ruling party, the revalidation exercise is justified.

The APC chieftain said: “Prior to the 2019 general elections there were a lot of movements; realignment of forces. Some other persons who also found the APC attractive as a political platform also joined the party. So, there is a need for updating or cleaning up the membership register to make it more relevant for the 2023 general elections. So, the idea of revalidation of existing members and registration of new ones is a welcome development that any good party leadership would undertake. The issue of registration of new members is a continuous one and I don’t see how it would constitute a problem for anybody.”

 

Avoiding past mistakes:

Elder statesman and Second Republic politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai was more severe in his warning. He said the APC is likely to suffer the fate of the PDP in 2015, if it does not take steps to address the current challenges facing it. He said the political culture in Nigeria is such that whenever a political party becomes big and dominant, the struggle to control it will become a matter of life and death.

Yakasai said: “This is because politics in Nigeria has killed professionalism and business. Politics is the main business now and people are in it just to make money. So, whichever party that emerged as a strong and domineering political platform, it will experience the same problem that the PDP had before it was voted out of power. People believe that once they can gain control of the party, they will achieve their aim of acquiring material wealth. So, I am not surprised about what we are witnessing in the APC today.”

Similarly, a lecturer and head of the Political Science Department, Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State, Dr. Godwin Dappa said the APC needs to re-strategise “by looking back to where it is coming from and by reigniting the momentum it generated at the outset in building a formidable and solid party”. He added: “The Buni-led committee has not succeeded in its mandate to reconcile aggrieved members of the party in different state chapters. There is a lot of internal wrangling within the party; a number of litigations are still ongoing in court in different state chapters. For instance, in Rivers State, there is a number of court cases between the Magnus Abe-led APC and the one led by Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi. Until all these internal wranglings are sorted out, the party will not be able to get its acts together.

“As it is, there is a problem of disunity and credibility crisis in the mind of the average Nigerian. The APC became disconnected with the populace because of the arrogance of power. Its leaders have become intoxicated with power. It is said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That was what happened to the APC. The party leaders created this lacuna because they saw themselves as Leviathans and no man can question their authority, as John Locke postulated. The Leviathan sees himself as a demigod, but you cannot be a demigod while serving humanity.”