The battle between the All Progressives Congress (APC) state chairmen and their national secretariat may get nastier if both the party’s national chairman and the presidency do not find a coordinated way to resolve the misunderstanding tearing them apart.
Unfortunately, despite putting a brave face on the budding crisis, the ruling party’s national secretariat and the presidency have maintained a stiff and awkward relationship that does not bode well for the party’s ambitious scheme of national political dominance.
On September 23, the state chairmen had written the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) led by Adams Oshiomhole to urgently address the concerns raised about vacant leadership positions in the party and disaffected members complaining about their unrewarded campaign contributions.
The state chairmen gave the national leadership a two-week ultimatum to find a resolution. That date expired without nothing more than a whimper from the national secretariat.
To underscore the seriousness of the complaints and disaffection in the party, APC governors have lent their collective voice to the disquiet and embryonic conflict building up among party faithful, warning that except those complaints were addressed, the party could fracture irreparably or punch below its weight in future elections.
No state chairman put the disaffection better than the party’s Enugu State chairman, Ben Nwoye, a youthful, charismatic and articulate leader thought to be one of the party’s rising stars. Said Dr Nwoye: “The situation is getting critical and our members are becoming disenchanted and losing faith in us for something that is not our fault. We don’t know what to tell them again because it is getting to a stage they can no longer understand the direction of the party. There is no response yet, but when it is time you will hear from us. You will hear from the party faithful; those who believe they worked hard for the party and have been left behind and out of the system while those who worked against the government and the party have been rewarded. You will hear from those who participated in putting the government in place in various states and have been abandoned.”
Though he acknowledged that discussions were going on, he nonetheless sounded a note of warning: “We are planning and we are organising ourselves,” he said cryptically. “Whatever that will be done will be a collective decision of all of us and it will be made public; it won’t be in isolation.
The chairmen are speaking the minds of the people, those who sacrificed, worked hard and promoted the cause of the party but have been left behind. We are speaking the minds of the contestants who have promoted the image of the party and have been neglected; the minds of the people who nurtured the party in the non-APC states but have been left behind while the PDP people are rewarded.”
But the party seems preternaturally sanguine about the troubles coursing through its ranks, notwithstanding the severity of its crisis. Some party officials, while not dismissing members’ complaints, suggested that conflicts were a natural consequence of any party organisation, and are meant to be always eventually resolved.
Indeed, the APC National Vice Chairman( South-South), Hilliard Eta, volunteered that party members’ complaints were already being addressed. Neither the party chairman nor its spokesman has said anything to substantially address the problems. It is, however, not impossible that the party leadership view the problems with the seriousness they deserve.
The APC is lucky that the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is also at sixes and sevens, and at odds with not only its members, some of whom are even more deeply and intransigently disaffected than APC members, but also with its soul and ideology.
The PDP defines itself as somewhat conservative, but it has been unable to really match that ideology, when it is able to accurately define it, with its actions in and out of office. Such a party, which has so far been unable to chart a vigorous direction for the future or summon the resolve and confidence needed to give battle to the ruling party, may be hard put to navigate its way out of the quagmire which electoral defeat had confined it. In short, the PDP can only present itself a better alternative to the APC after it has smothered its own demons.
Except it is living in denial, the APC must acknowledge that its members’ complaints are genuine, and their demands moderate. The APC won the last elections despite their escalating unpopularity, in fact more probably because of the disarray to which the PDP had fallen after it unprecedentedly lost the 2015 elections by a very appalling margin.
That the APC won in 2019 by the skin of their teeth — though they deny this because of the margin of their victory — should lead them to recognise the yeoman efforts made by their rank and file. That recognition has been sadly tame. This flickering recognition has in turn led party leaders to take their members for granted, starting with the presidency which has not managed in more than four years to form the character of rewarding party faithful with appointments. In addition, as party members indicated with sound logic, the last ministerial appointments were made largely regardless of party loyalty and contributions. They cite the example of Ogun State where the former governor who worked against the party in the state successfully nominated ministers.
The complaints registered by APC members in the states, and underscored by the party’s governors, indicate that the party may be heading for trouble. The complaints are genuine and weighty. If they are not addressed, they will severely hurt the party once the PDP gets its act together. The ministerial list is expended and cannot be revived; but there are still enough attractions left in the bowels of Nigeria’s vast and labyrinthine government to satisfy the hunger of party faithful, enough to encourage them to develop a sense of belonging.
Party loyalists cannot but agitate vigorously, as they have begun to do to impress it on the minds of party leaders in the presidency that a change of attitude is needed to service the party and keep its organs lubricated. That change of attitude will be difficult to engineer, given the exigencies of the moment; but in the coming years, the kind of change that recognises and rewards the contributions of members must manifest if the APC is to survive and flourish.
In addition to the needed attitudinal change, the party has more than three years left to react to the resurgence of the PDP, probably enough time to prevail on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency to bequeath a sound party structure and philosophy to the APC going forward. The APC, despite the best efforts of Mr Oshiomhole, is still not run professionally, nor is it imbued with the uplifting ideas capable of rallying its troops and vanquishing its enemies.
There is little hope that the president himself will become converted to the universal principles of organising political party; but regardless of whether the president transforms himself and/or his politics, the party must still go ahead to build itself up and imbibe the requisite ideas and strategies. Hopefully, they can summon the unity and strength needed to deliver these changes.
But underlying the complaints state chairmen have made, and which are corroborated and even given impetus by the governors, is the fear that rather than unite against the enemy in the coming years, the APC might instead exacerbate their fault lines, renew the battles that sundered them during the primaries, and fatefully ignore their reinvigorated enemy as they fight to the death among themselves.
The choice before the APC is frighteningly stark. While there is nothing to indicate that they will make the right call, they must be keenly aware that should they make the wrong choice, as they seem poised to do, they will be brutally massacred in a manner that makes any hope of revival impossible.