The All Progressives Congress (APC) Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Lawal Shuaibu, recently asked the national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, to resign, alleging that he was responsible for the defeat of the ruling party in some states during the last governorship polls. In this interview, the National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa Onilu, disputes the claims and gives Oshiomhole a clean bill of health. TONY AKOWE reports.
Your party appears to have lost some grounds to the opposition in the 2019 elections. This must be a serious cause for concern.
I do not know the yardstick you are using. Perhaps, you are referring to the painful loss of states like Oyo, Imo, Bauchi, Adamawa, and Zamfara, which were APC-led states before the election. There is no denying the fact that we should not have lost those states. But, let me say clearly that while it is true we may have yielded grounds to PDP in these states, it would be wrong to think that those states were simply won by PDP. I would rather say the states were lost by APC. In other words, if you take each of the states one by one, you would discover there were peculiar issues in those respective states that accounted for how our party lost them rather than the voters preferring the PDP.
I would put the painful outcomes broadly under two reasons. One is indiscipline on the part of some members of our party in most of the states. The second reason is that the party leadership did not do much between 2015 and 2018 to move the party from being an amalgam of different political parties to become a truly blended progressive political party.
The period you described fell under Chief John Oyegun as National Chairman. Are you saying the party suffered the losses because there is absence of discipline within the party during this period and because APC found it difficult to align the varying interests of the legacy parties that came together in 2014?
There is a difference between absence of discipline in a party and lack of discipline of certain members of the party. Let me agree that the NWC that led the party into the 2015 elections and continued till June 2018 did nothing different from what you would find in PDP. It was a period the party was seen as a mere vehicle to attain political office. The system accommodated impunity as certain members appeared to be superior to the party. Their interests were far more important than the collective interests of the APC, even when most times such interests are at variance with the ideals the party stand for.
You would recall that it was under that leadership that some impudent members of APC called the bluff of the party by imposing themselves on the National Assembly as leaders contrary to the position of the party. Where was the party? Where was the discipline when this happened? It would be difficult to calculate what lack of courage to assert the party supremacy cost APC over that period. The consequences of the inaction of the party were unimaginable. We all saw the consequences on governance as the National assembly practically held our government to ransom. The impunity, which President Muhammadu Buhari has rightly described as lack of patriotism, constituted an unfortunate hindrance to the smooth running of government.
The leadership under Chief Oyegun, with due respect to him, condoned all sorts of acts of indiscipline from certain members. It is not surprising that the current National Working Committee inherited such a huge mess, where the party was struggling to differentiate itself from the delinquent PDP. We all know that PDP was practically dead following the devastating defeat of 2015. The PDP bounced back not because the party has changed its insidious way or did anything different, but because APC did not live up to expectations.
It goes without saying that when an organisation is unable to enforce its own rules, it would suffer the consequences sooner than later. We should not be ashamed to say that our party’s leadership under Chief Oyegun lacked the courage required to confront the pockets of political despots who could not operate by the party’s rules.
Would you say the party’s loss in the 2019 elections were due to leadership failure under Chief Oyegun?
I have utmost respect for Chief John Oyegun, so I am not in a position to pass a verdict on his leadership. More so, I can attest to his sterling records of service, in my capacity as a student of politics and national development.
Meanwhile, we can simply relate with facts. We were barred by the Supreme Court from contesting state elections in Rivers State because of the issues with the congresses that produced the party executives in that state. Do not forget that we adopted indirect primary system to elect our candidates in Rivers State. Once the court faulted the process that produced the executives, who constituted the bulk of the delegates under the indirect primary, the candidates that were produced could not stand. Do not forget that the congress in Rivers State that produced the executives predated this NWC. This was one of the booby traps we inherited from the outgone National Working Committee.
But, your party was similarly barred in Zamfara State, leading to the invalidation of the victory of your elected members. Would you also blame the Oyegun-led NWC for it?
I am not blaming anyone for whatever is happening or has happened to the party. I am just examining the facts. And I believe some of these facts are pretty obvious. Zamfara issue has nothing to do with the state executives or the congresses. The Supreme Court agreed with INEC that we did not conduct primaries in Zamfara and therefore we could not have presented candidates for the general election. What happened with our primaries in Zamfara is public knowledge. The party did its best to ensure we conducted primaries according to our own rules, but local players in Zamfara APC didn’t rise up to this. And if you look at both Rivers and Zamfara states, you would see that we found ourselves in this situation because certain local players found it difficult to subsume their personal interests under that of the party. Our members instituted the cases in courts in outright disobedience to the position of the party. I am sure most of the players in both states would be regretting not towing the party’s line with the outcomes we have seen.
There are no two ways to this issue. We cannot build a party that works for all without obeying our own rules. When we begin to seek other means to achieving our individual ambitions, we would have to compromise the party. When that happens, the situation in Rivers and Zamfara would be inevitable.
The National Deputy Chairman (North), Senator Lawal Shuaib, wrote a letter to the National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, blaming him for the losses incurred by the party in the elections, especially in Zamfara and Rivers states. He asked the National Chairman to step down. What is the position of the party on this?
Ordinarily, the party would not have responded to the letter Senator Lawal Shuaib wrote to the National Chairman. The letter was directed at the Comrade Oshiomhole, who is capable of responding on behalf of himself. However, there are certain assertions in the letter that tend to portray the NWC in bad lights. Or, if you like, there are assertions that insinuate that the NWC as presently constituted consists of buffoons who merely go by their titles but do not understand the responsibilities that go with them.
When he alleged that the National Chairman is running the party like a sole administrator, does that mean the rest of us are incompetent? I doubt if he would have many members of the NWC supporting him in this. The ability to face up to the challenges and to take responsibility for mistakes are important qualities of a leader. If the NWC had taken any action that did not produce the desired result, it would be plain cowardice to look for a scapegoat or pass on the blame to another person.
In any case, what exactly has the NWC done wrong? Our party campaigned and came to power on the mantra of change and it is obvious some members do not understand that this means we have taken a solemn pledge to do things differently. The change mantra means we would be a responsible party and run a responsible government, abiding by the best principles of progressive politics and good governance. Since the Comrade Oshiomhole led NWC came to office, we have been doing our best to institutionalise the best ideals of progressive politics. We understand that we must bring everyone under the fold of the party, where all of us would be subject to our party’s rules and conventions. We understand that impunity can provide temporary advantage and even successes. But ultimately, those successes would be short-lived. PDP is a living example of the inherent calamity of impunity. The PDP era brought calamity to the country and ultimately led to the loss of power. What I read from that letter is a call to continue along that trend. With due respect, that is not what APC stands for.
You seem to disagree with his allegations that the Chairman is responsible for the loss the party suffered in the elections? APC has fewer states that 2015 and judgements from the courts Are these not obvious and avoidable losses?
They are avoidable losses, no doubt. But how did we get here? Take a look at it. Since we are comparing 2015 to what has happened now, we should remember that our President was elected in 2015 with over 15 million votes as against the PDP’s 13 million plus. There was about 2.5 million votes difference. Under Oshiomhole, we have over 15 million votes as against PDP’s 11 million plus. There you have nearly four million votes difference. So for the Presidential election, our party has improved significantly on the result of 2015.
The situation was expectedly different at the state level. The state players have the foremost responsibility to win elections in their states. What we can do at the national level is to provide the necessary support. The support starts from conducting transparent primaries that ensure the party produces popular candidates. Of course, certain state players in our party expected business as usual where other players are subjugated for them so that their wishes are imposed on other APC members in their states. This we could not do and I don’t think we need to apologise for doing the right thing. By now, the states that failed to follow the party’s directives are the ones that may be regretting. We have examples of Governors who are true progressives who worked with the NWC to ensure things were done right. Look at Kaduna, Plateau, Niger, Kano, Nassarawa, Katsina, Jigawa, Borno, Yobe, etc. The Governors and leaders of APC in these states worked according to the rules in conjunction with the NWC and we all can see that the sweetest victory is the one achieved under a free and fair engagement with the opposition. Imagine what looked like humongous challenge faced by Governor el Rufai in Kaduna. You saw him having to face what was a clear mutiny from certain prominent members of the party. You saw his daring move when he ignored those who were merchandising on religious divides, trying to use that to incite a section of the state against him. He does not lack the courage to stand by what is right and the outcome vindicated him. This is what our party wants to showcase. This is the example President Buhari has shown by ensuring that we had a presidential election in this country without seeking to award himself any advantage over his opponents. The President has the instruments to use under him, but he rather subjected himself to the rules of the contest. If the President did not expect the party to manipulate his own election, why should anyone else expect that from the party?
You believe the Deputy Chairman (North) is unhappy that the party did not manipulate the process to achieve victory in those states?
What I am saying is that no one can blame the NWC for insisting we must live up to our promise of conducting ourselves in a decent manner. If Oshiomhole is being singled out for leading the charge for ensuring that we all operate by the rules in line with our change agenda and in fulfilment of the promises we made to Nigerians, then such individual has a lot of adjustment to make.
We all must understand that there are consequences to bear when you want to change people who have been used to deploying highhandedness to start behaving decently. PDP spent 16 years nurturing our politics, unfortunately, on manipulation and coercion. Some who came along to APC could not understand why APC won’t benefit from such. So the fault is not that of President Buhari who insists on fair deal for all Nigerians or for Comrade Oshiomhole who is driving the change agenda with conviction. Neither is it for the NWC that has taken on the responsibility to do it right, even with attendant temporary consequences.
In other words, the APC considers these losses as temporary set back in those states. Is that what you mean?
They are actually necessary consequences of our change agenda. We actually have a mix bag of outcomes in the last elections. States where the actors abide by the rules and work in harmony with the NWC, we achieved success, while those states where the local players found it difficult to adjust to the reality of change in the ways the party has decided to operate, we got the negatives. This is without prejudice to other local issues that might have influenced the outcomes of state elections.