With about 5 days to the proposed National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), it is almost certain that the February 26 date is no longer feasible. The earlier schedule of activities released by the Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) has been largely held in the breach. Forms that were supposed to be sold to aspirants from February 14 has been nowhere to be found; sub-committees due for inauguration on February 19 is non-existent, instead subterranean plots and inordinate ambition of Gov Mai Mala Buni and his tiny clique of backers have overshadowed preparations for the party’s Congress.
The CECPC, essentially established as an ad-hoc arrangement based on the doctrine of necessity to manage the affairs of the party and organise a convention within 6 months suddenly got blighted by personal interests, exalting devious machinations of a few Governors, and started shifting the goal posts in the middle of the game. 20 months after the CECPC replaced the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC), internal schism within the party has exacerbated, key party organs that give rise to robust debates and aid critical decisions at the national level like the National Caucus has been discarded while Gov. Buni and his band of marauders have carried on as undertakers, hell-bent on burying the party on the altar of inordinate ambitions fueled by 2023 permutations.
After several prevarications, sometime in January, the CECPC aligned with the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) and picked February 26 date for the convention. It went ahead to release a time-table of events, but as the days rolled by, turning to weeks, the insincerity of the Caretaker Committee came to the fore. It had to be pressured to send the statutory 21-day notice of convention to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and when it did, the “undertakers” surreptitiously omitted the venue of the Convention, which it later sent, after much hullabaloo.
While the CECPC claims to have conducted a revalidation exercise that purportedly gave rise to about 41 m members, the Congresses it conducted from Ward to State level have left many States in crisis, with not less than 14 States affected. The reconciliation committee it established, chaired by Sen. Abdullahi Adamu has been largely ineffective and dogged by its own internal contradictions as Sen. Adamu has lately abandoned his mandate to scheme to be annointed as National Chairman.
With the primaries for the general elections less than five months away, the ruling party has been rendered totally comatose, and held hostage by a few renegade Governors backed by an overly partisan Chief Law Officer of the Federation that does their bidding, providing legal cover for their shenanigans by consistently misleading President Muhammadu Buhari.
These vicious power mongers are not united by the need to entrench the progressive ideology of the APC, neither do they care a hoot about President Buhari’s legacy. All they care about is desperation to control the party and determine who gets what, and ultimately, its Presidential ticket for the 2023 polls. Indeed, their plan is to keep the “Caretaker Undertakers” perpetually in office to conduct the party primaries, not minding the legal conundrum that an intra-party election organised by a contraption, unknown to law will pose to the APC. We are all aware of what transpired in Zamfara, Rivers and lately Anambra. The APC is headed towards a monumental loss in 2023, if not at the polls, but at the courts, if these “undertakers” are not stopped in their tracks!
President Buhari has a major role to play to save the party. Sustaining his legacy of progressive governance will be possible if the APC retains power in 2023, but as it stands, the ruling party is caving In from within, it is about imploding. The house is about to collapse if he doesn’t intervene decisively.
Buhari should take charge by giving a firm directive to the CECPC to organise a convention within the next two weeks or risk immediate dissolution. He should shun whatever excuses to be adduced by CECPC, or its tiny clique of sympathetic Governors, all blinded by vested interests and 2023 ambitions. Surrendering to the antics of Mai Mala and the renegades is akin to gifting Nigeria to anti-democratic forces, and rolling back the gains of the past 7 years.
Aside from standing firm behind the immediate conducting of a National Convention, the President should insist on summoning of a National Caucus meeting to address inherent issues and forge a common front, in the run-up to the convention.
We must save the APC from those that have seized its soul, and are capitalising on the democratic ideals of the President. This House is crumbling, Mr President. Just as you intervened when it seemed the APC crisis was intractable under the former NWC, we look forward to your intervention, once again. Save your legacy from going down the drains, Mr President. Act Now!!!
- Salisu Gukari wrote from Kaduna