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  • Govs, NASS members, others discuss party leadership

    Govs, NASS members, others discuss party leadership

    …as Ganduje, Basiru mark one year in office

    The National Progressive Hub (NPH), a support group within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), will host a symposium on Tuesday, August 13, to commemorate the first anniversary of Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and Senator Ajibola Basiru as the National Chairman and National Secretary of the party, respectively.

    Ganduje and Basiru were sworn into office on August 3, 2023, during a special National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja, following a leadership crisis that resulted in the resignations of Senator Abdullahi Adamu and Senator Iyiola Omisore, the former National Chairman and National Secretary.

    In a statement released on Sunday in Abuja, NPH national coordinator, Hon. Bukky Okangbe, announced that the symposium is designed to celebrate one year of effective leadership under Ganduje and Basiru, and to discuss the future direction of the party’s leadership.

    The event will also address the challenges faced by political party leadership in Nigeria, aiming to propose solutions that will enhance party administration and strengthen democratic practices in the country.

    The statement said: “The Dean of School of Postgraduate Studies, Baze University, Abuja and political commentator, Professor Abiodun Adeniyi will be presenting a keynote address titled ‘Political Party Leadership in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects’ at Ladi Kuwali International Conference Centre, Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja by 10 am.

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    Okangbe further stated that eminent Nigerians and leaders of the party scheduled to discuss the paper include the former Director General, Voice of Nigeria (VON) and foundation member of the party, Mr Osita Okechukwu, former National Secretary of the party, Arch. Waziri Bulama and Barrister Alphonsus Eba Ogar, APC Cross River State Chairman and the Secretary of the Forum of APC State Chairmen.

    “The Deputy President of the Senate, Distinguished Senator Jibrin Barau will be the Chairman of the occasion while Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas Ph’d, Chairman House Committee on Appropriation, Hon. Abubakar Kabir Bichi and Minister of State, Housing and Urban Development, His Excellency, Abdullahi Tijjani Gwarzo are Special Guests of Honour.

    “The National Chairman of the party, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje is the Chief Host, while Coordinating State Governors and top party leaders are expected to give goodwill messages.

    “Recommendations from the symposium will be forwarded to the party’s newly established Progressive Institute as part of the NPH contributions towards strengthening the nation’s fledging democracy,” Okangbe stated.

  • The party that lost its way

    The party that lost its way

    Nothing lasts forever. All good things must come to an end. And so must bad things too. In the tropics, things grow quickly only to expire rapidly. Applying geography to the principles of development, some developmental scientists believe that this amazing political volatility and the velocity with which institutions, systems appear only to disappear is the fundamental bane of tropical Africa and its postcolonial politics.

      As a country and a people, South Africans barely escaped the heat and torpor of the tropics by the skin of their teeth. This was why the original white settlers found its temperate, equable climate quite conducive and amenable for permanent settlement unlike the torrid hell of the tropics where mosquitoes and pipe borne diseases served as the people’s real army.

     But from all indications, it appears as if the emergent post-apartheid political class in South Africa is not completely exempt from the equatorial distemper and political volatility which afflict their counterpart classes on other parts of the continent. At the end of the day, it is beginning to look as if the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, has reverted to the status of the typical African hegemonic party: big for nothing, lacking in ideological solidity, reeking of abject cronyism and nepotism and totally bereft of a proactive vision for inclusive and emancipatory governance.

      Yet as this column never tires of affirming, you cannot plant cassava and expect to harvest yam tuber. So it is that when the mist cleared from the last general election, the ANC received a severe drubbing in the hands of the South African electorate. For many discerning observers of the South African scene, it has been long in coming and this is nothing but the chronicle of a humiliation and disgrace foretold.

      The rainbow coalition in all its multi-racial potency has been reduced to a rumbling cohabitation of disaffection and disillusionment. The party that had hitherto held South Africans spellbound with its mythical status as the revered conclave of those heroic avatars of the anti-apartheid struggle had taken such a severe shellacking from the people, losing its majority and magic at the same time.

      This is political divorce the South African way. At the end of the day and with only forty per cent of the popular vote, the ANC is reduced to groping through the electoral void and darkness and to groveling for support to sustain its slipping hold from hostile competitors.

    Waiting in the wing is the baleful and implacable Zulu supremacist, Jacob Zuma, a former president and convicted felon, who has become the biggest threat to the continued dominance of the ANC. Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa have a visceral dislike for each other and the former president has vowed never to have anything to do with ANC as long as Ramaphosa remains president.

      It will be recalled that Zuma’s party, the uMkhonto we Siswe otherwise known as MK, erupted on the political scene only last year and has chalked up a surprising fifteen percent of the total vote, making it the third biggest. It is a rampart platform of disaffected ANC bigwigs and perennial ethnic malcontents. The ANC is trapped between its monstrous Zulu hordes and the more restrained and ideologically focused DA (Democratic Alliance), the main opposition which operates under a race and class slur being a merger between former apartheid stalwarts and liberal whites who were critical of the apartheid regimen.

      At the last count, the talk was of a Government of National Unity with the ANC surrendering the legislative rein to the DA while the ruling party remains in governance. But with the Zulu Question popping up once again, and the DA vowing to impose its rightwing neoliberal worldview on how the country is governed, it is clear that South Africa is engulfed by crisis of core values which it thought it had transcended with the emergence of Nelson Mandela.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  So what has happened in the intervening thirty years for South Africa to witness this massive return of the repressed? Is it a question of sheer political boredom or ennui with convention that often overtake voters in even the most advanced and sophisticated liberal democracies the world over? The power to disrupt power can often be as intoxicating as the power to dispense power. This is why it is important to beam a searchlight on the ANC debacle in order to serve as a cautionary tale for other hegemonic party formations and ruling coalitions on the continent.

    But we must thank God for small mercies. One of the great ironies of politics is that startling defeat often has its redeeming moments. The acceptance speech and the grace and statesmanlike sobriety with which Cyril Ramaphosa accepted virtual defeat and the dismantling of his party’s majority is arguably the finest moment of Ramaphosa’s political career.

      There were no tantrums or threats. The South African president accepts the supremacy of the electorate. This tradition of accepting defeat with grace and equanimity, ironically pioneered by the disgraced old apartheid party, is a pointer to how deep the authentic ideals of liberal democracy have taken roots in South Africa.

    Ramaphosa has always been a political enigma of sorts. He was rumoured to be Nelson Mandela’s favourite to succeed him as president. That was until the ANC Nomenklatura overruled Mandela in favour of the son of their old comrade in arms Giovani Mbeki. The future president was then sent to the city to make money and to hone his acquisitive skills. He might have succeeded beyond the wildest imagination, emerging as one of the nation’s preeminent plutocrats and loaded tycoons.

      It came at a price, with Ramaphosa enmeshed in fiscal shenanigans of his own making. Tragically enough and in retrospect, it would seem that unaccustomed riches have neutered Ramaphosa and robbed him of whatever remained of his ideological potency rendering him incapable of a visionary reimagining of a more egalitarian and inclusive South African nation.

     To be sure, both Cyril Ramaphosa and Thabo Mbeki are able and competent administrators. Each has also proved his mettle as solid emancipatory warriors in the long, tortuous campaign to rid their beloved nation of the apartheid scourge.

      But from what is on ground, it is obvious that neither of them has been able to make a dent on the nation’s mammoth social contradictions particularly the staggering political inequalities and economic inequities that have hobbled the South African society since the advent of apartheid rule. Neither of them, the golden boys of anti-apartheid movement, has been able to come up with a grand vision of a great post-apartheid society, inclusive and egalitarian to boot.

      Up to a point, Nelson Mandela intuited the problem and the possibility of a looming social apocalypse. But that is only up to a point. The great man correctly surmised that the long years of the struggle and his spell in incarceration under the most inhuman of conditions had drained him almost completely. He could only stay in office by ceding power to a younger, more mentally alert and far more energetic aide. Still, this was no substitute for a grand overarching vision of a new South Africa.

      Take for example the Jacob Zuma conundrum. Like his old mentor, Mango Buthelezi, the old Zulu lion, Zuma is a controversial and divisive figure, a Zulu supremacist with a feudal sense of royal entitlement totally at variance with modern democratic norms. But he is also a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle wildly adulated and lionized by his ethnic compatriots.

      The ANC old guard reckoned rightly that to deny Zuma his shot at the pie was to invite a scabrous assault by ever battle-ready ethnic hordes which could end up upending the rainbow coalition delicately and diligently put in place. They could only wring their hands in despair and disapproving despondency hoping and praying that the system would survive his baleful scourge.

       In the event, Jacob Zuma’ s reign turned out a classic study in arrogant, wrong-headed incompetence and tantalizing malfeasance. He was totally impervious to reason and inured to decent conduct. Hopping and jumping all over the place with an ancient spear handy and in hand, Zuma was a monarchical despot straight out of Sir Rider Haggard’s fiction. Like a vengeful demon, he simply took the ANC and South Africa to the cleaners. What the ANC paterfamilias were trying to avoid is what is now starring them in the face.

      That now leaves the question to be answered. Is there a big elephant in the ANC’s sitting room? Could it be that the great party founded in 1912 and which did not come to power until 1994 after it had come to represent the federated but unified consciousness of a new nation and a new people suffers from the Ben Bella Syndrome?  Ahmed Ben Bella was arguably the greatest hero of the Algerian Revolution. He fought the French colonial masters with everything he had.

     But when he eventually came to power, he was so drained and depleted by the struggle that he was reported to have spent the time moping and staring at the ceiling until he was put out of his misery by  Mohamed Boukhrouba ,aka Colonel Houari Boumediene, who removed him and sent him on exile. It was the same man who had helped him to power by using his military clout to neutralize Ben Bella’s implacable rivals.

     This was in sharp contrast with Habib Bourguiba and Tunisia. A deep intellectual who had studied his country closely, Bourguiba, while fighting to expel the French from the country, was already dreaming of how to transform the nation by overhauling its entire education system, emancipating the women, revamping its archaic agricultural mode and expelling the Tunisian monarchy of Ottoman Turkish extraction. 

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    Highly wily and compulsively manipulative, Bourguiba, through a combination of charisma and traditional Arab autocracy, accomplished all this within a relatively short period until he was removed in 1987 on the ground of senile dementia and total loss of cognitive ability by Ben Ali, his security chief.  The political culture of each country must be taken into consideration. Already worked on by a medley of Roman, Mediterranean, Ottoman Turkish and French cultures, Tunisia boasts of a highly enlightened political elite.

    The point to note in all this is that the set of skills and competencies required to fight off tyranny may be quite different from what is required to transform a nation post-tyranny. Only rarely and exceptionally in history do you find a leader combining the two. The ANC is still by far the best and biggest party in South Africa. But it faces a date with destiny and a radical metamorphosis.

  • Legal quandary of parallel party primaries

    Legal quandary of parallel party primaries

    • By Ozioma V. Nwadike

    Sir: Primary elections stand as a crucial pillar of the political process, allowing voters to express their preferences for their party’s candidates in upcoming general elections. These primaries can vary from open, including the general public, to closed, restricted to party members. In Nigeria, closed primaries dominate the landscape. However, internal divisions within political parties frequently lead to fragmentation, resulting in the conduct of parallel primary elections by different party factions. Consequently, multiple candidates emerge, each staunchly asserting their right to the party’s nomination.

    Most recently, this scenario unfolded in Edo State concerning the impending governorship election. Within the All Progressives Congress (APC), three contenders—Monday Okphebholo, Dennis Idahosa, and Anamero Dekeri—emerged from parallel party primaries. The national leadership of the party later deemed the exercise that propelled Dennis Idahosa inconclusive and conducted another election, ultimately declaring Monday Okphebholo as the victor.

    Similarly, within the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the deputy governor, Phillip Shaibu, and prominent corporate lawyer, Asue Ighodalo, both stake their claims to the party’s candidacy. In the Labour Party, Olumide Akpata surfaced from the Julius Abure-led faction, while Lamidi Apapa asserts the nomination of Anderson Uwadiae Asemota to INEC.

    In what appears to be settled law, the Nigerian Supreme Court has long held that it is only the primary election conducted by a party’s National Working Committee, or a body appointed by it, that is the valid and authentic primary. Where a primary election is found to have been conducted by the state chapter of a political party or any other body, same will be deemed illegal, invalid, null, void and therefore an exercise conducted without any semblance of legal justification See SHIDDI v. JIMKUTA & ORS (2023) LPELR – 60289 (SC), OGAH v. EMENIKE & ORS (2023) LPELR-60008 (SC). Furthermore, the Supreme Court recently held that merely monitoring the primary election of a political party by INEC does not confer legitimacy on such primary election which was not approved by the National Working Committee of the party. See SANI v. APC & ORS (2023) LPELR-60002 (SC). Circling back to Edo State, it is safe to say that the authentic party primary is the one conducted by the national working committee, or the electoral committee appointed by it, of the respective parties.

    In the PDP, things are a lot simple. From indications, Asue Ighodalo emerged from the primary election conducted by the PDP’s National Working Committee. In the Labour Party, the leadership tussles between Lamidi Apapa and the Obidient-backed Julius Abure is unlikely to abate soon. Though as at today, the Abure led National Working Committee which produced Olumide Akpata is recognized by INEC.

    As regards the APC, the matter is not so straightforward. The NWC appointed Hope Uzodinma-led electoral committee had initially declared Dennis Idahosa as the winner of the party’s primaries. The national leadership later announced the election to be inconclusive.

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    Previously political parties were masters of their own destinies; however Section 84 (14) of the Electoral Act 2022 has now afforded the court a narrow jurisdiction to pry into the internal affairs of a party where it has acted arbitrarily in the nomination of candidate for an election. While the actual choice of candidate is within the domestic affairs of the party, which is not justiciable, the party must adhere strictly to the provisions of the Electoral Act, and its own constitution and guidelines in carrying out the exercise. In this instance, it remains to be seen if the party’s national leadership can declare as inconclusive, a primary election by a duly appointed electoral committee after results have already been announced. Whether the matter was not already a fait accompli?

    Subject to the provisions of the APC constitution, can an election from which results have already been announced be declared inconclusive? Has the APC not shot itself in the foot by declaring the election inconclusive rather than an outright cancellation?

    Note also that the Supreme Court have held that an aspirant must first exhaust the internal dispute resolution mechanisms of his party before he can exercise a right of action over dispute arising from party primary elections. It remains to be seen how to marry that with the mandatory 14 day limitation period to file pre-election matters.

    •Ozioma V. Nwadike Esq.

    oziomanwadike23@gmail.com.

  • Party debunks allegations of conniving with police in Zamfara

    Zamfara State All Progressives Congress (APC) Publicity Secretary Malam Shehu Ahmed Isa  has debunked allegations of conniving and terrorising voters with a view to cart away electoral materials in some part of the state.

    Isa was reacting to news conference held by the National Rescue Movement governorship candidate, Senator Sa,idu Dansadau, who alleged that the APC spokesman had on election day connived with police, other security agencies by storming a polling unit at Wanaka.

    It was alleged that he went away with election materials after sporadic shooting in the air by security operatives.

    Isa said he was nowhere at the area of the incident during the time of election, stressing that anyone conversant with the road on Wanaka, would know that security personnel were ready to protect lives and property in the area because of armed robbers and lawless marauders.

    Shehu advised Dansadau to grow up in politics, especially as an elderly person and respect the laws

    On allegation  against the state governor, Abdul Aziz Yari, Isa explained that Dansadau should stop telling lies about the governor.

    Dansadau was claimed to have said, if APC  was not in the contest, election would not hold in Zamfara State.

    “Even if Yari made such statement, he was making the statement with his mind focused on the provisions of the constitution and the right of the APC to contest in the election, noting in his mind that there is a case in court, which we subsequently won,” Isa said.

  • Party educates members on voting

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State has begun sensitising members on how to vote during the elections.

    The party, at an event organised by its Youth Organising Secretariat yesterday, urged youth supporters to vote with their index finger on the ballot paper to prevent their votes from being voided.

    Youth Organising Secretary Idris Aregbe said the the party felt it was necessary to sensitise the youths on voting tips.

    He said the essence was to ensure that their votes were not voided, saying the party wanted the voters to get it right.

    According to him, the youths would mobilise people to vote for APC, hence the need to let them know voting tips that would not be voided.

    State Secretary Wale Ahmed said the programme was to create awareness on the election among the youths in the language they would understand.

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    Ahmed urged voters to use their index fingers to vote to prevent a situation where their votes would be voided, because spaces provided on the ballot paper was small because of large number of parties contesting the election.

    He said: “For us in the APC, the index finger is what we should use; it is not an INEC thing, we are advising our followers on which finger to use. Other parties may decide to use the little finger; others may decide to use all five fingers. We are uniform in APC.”

  • Agonies of a party at war with itself

    Less that fifty days to the next general elections, the Ogun state chapter of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is still battling a serious intra-party crisis that pundits say is capable of affecting its chances of doing well at the polls. Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor, examines the issues and the personalities involved in the furore.

    OGUN State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, last Thursday officially flagged off his campaign for the Ogun Central Senatorial seat at a massive rally in Abeokuta, the state capital. Aside being a gathering of politicians loyal to the governor, the rally also exposed the agonies of the ruling party in the state whose chieftains have been at war with one another since the emergence of Prince Dapo Abiodun as its gubernatorial candidate.

    Present at the Abeokuta rally were APC members loyal to Amosun as well as thousands of supporters of Hon. Adejunle Akinlade, the governorship candidate of the Allies Peoples Movement (APM). Conspicuously absent at the event were Ogun central APC chieftains supporting Abiodun’s gubernatorial ambition. Observers of happenings within the ruling party the state say the lingering face off among the gladiators is capable of hurting the chances of the party if not checked.

    Amosun has been consistent in saying he will not work for Abiodun’s election. He says Akinlade remains his preferred choice of successor and he will do everything possible to see him take over from him later this year. Many chieftains of the APC are of the opinion that Akinlade cannot emerge governor on the platform of little known APM, but analysts say the governor’s anti-party activities, if not curtailed by the national leadership of APC, can change the tide on election day.

    Co-ordinator of the APC Youth Mandate Group in the state, Comrade Bola Oba, while speaking to The Nation in Ijebu Ode on new year day, says the party is currently very troubled by the activities of Governor Amosun. He said many prominent chieftains of the party across the state are unsure of what role to play as the election approaches largely due to the unfavourable body language of the governor.

    “APC must do something about the governor’s anti-party activities. While thousands of our members across the state are being encouraged to disregard the directives of the party and engage in similar anti-party activities, a good number of our prominent leaders too are currently seating on the fence, unsure of what to do as the election approaches. Many of them are hoping the governor will have a rethink.

    “Sadly, the camp of Prince Dapo Abiodun is not helping matters. It is either his handlers don’t have the right ideas about what to do in the current situation or they are just being politically incorrect. Many of those they need to move close to and cajole to remain with them are being ignored. What I see each time around our gubernatorial candidate is band of inexperienced politicians and some social media noise makers.

    “Somebody needs to urgently tell him and the national leadership of the party that we need to find a way of moving ahead of Amosun and his people if we truly intend to win this election. We are today a party at war with itself and we must go extra miles to retain the confidence of our supporters and win news ones,’ the APC chieftain, who was also a House of Representatives aspirant, said.

    Angry at the difficulties with which the APC is now carrying out its campaigns in places where the party should be enjoying open support, Oba lamented that the governor and his people are playing spoiler roles ahead of the next general elections. “The governor knows that Akinlade and the APM cannot win the next election. Both the candidate and the party are unknown to the people of Ogun State.

    “But they are just doing all these to ensure the APC also loses in Ogun State. Forget their professed love and support for President Muhammadu Buhari. They don’t care if he loses too. Amosun and his people are bad losers. It is now left for the national leadership of our great party and the presidency to do something drastic to end all these anti-party charades that are now embarrassing our party and confusing our people,” he said.

    Similarly, a chieftan of the APC in the state, Dr. Femi Majekodunmi, had appealed to Governor Amosun to play the role of a statesman in resolving the controversy that trailed the party’s governorship primary in the state, urging him not to make the mistake of taking a political decision that will consign his name into political oblivion.

    “Nobody would dispute the fact that Governor Ibikunle Amosun has become the architect of modern day Ogun State with many landmark achievements scattered all over the state. Indeed, whenever the history of the state would be written, his name cannot but be in gold. And as the sitting governor, he is a major stakeholder whose views and interest must be important and paramount.

    “But as a politician who has always been committed to the APC, I want to sincerely appeal to the governor to see the present issue concerning the gubernatorial candidate of the party as a test of his statesmanship in which the interest of the party must be supreme, not only because of the entire members of the party in the state but of President Muhammadu Buhari, whom the governor always holds in high esteem,” he said.

     

    Raging war

    But it appears the pieces of advice are not being heeded just yet even as the 2019 general elections draw closer. The gladiators, rather than sheathe their swords, seem to be sharpening the blades in preparation for more onslaughts. At the Abeokuta rally, Amosun threw caution to the winds and openly boasted that Akinlade of the APM, and not Abiodun of the APC, will win this year’s governorship election in the state.

    He also, for the first time, took on President Buhari in public, when he warned the federal government against deploying soldiers to the state for the polls, while speaking at the New Year cross-over fanfare held at Oke-Ilewo in Abeokuta, a few days later. He repeated his boast that his protege, Akinlade, will beat Abiodun and other contestants and emerge as the next governor to take over from him in May.

    “Let us prove to the world that Ogun State is known for peace and a state which has produced a number of eminent personalities in the country. Let us tell them that we don’t need the service of the military and police for the conduct of election because we are going to comport ourselves as peaceful people. And for the youths, don’t allow yourself to be used as political thugs. Anybody who approaches you for such, tell them to bring out their children to join in the thuggery,” he said.

    At the rally, Amosun stated that regardless of the crisis, the APM members in the state still remained true members of APC. “We know that this (APM) is a child of necessity. They are APC, everybody knows and I am happy that they’ve adopted President Muhammadu Buhari. Even I’ve been told that they’ve adopted me as well (for Senate), which is good news. But you know what I know that has happened.

    “If they remove those that are the mainstream of APC from APC, of course, you don’t even have 10 percent left. If they say APC, it is APC that we are pushing. It is APC that belongs to us. So, for me, APC is APC and that is what we want. For me, this is not what we prayed for. If anybody had told me that it is going to be like this, I would say no. But clearly as human, God will show his way at any time to all we ordinary mortals,” he explained.

    But the Ogun State chapter of the APC, responding, said Governor Amosun deserves to be pitied and prayed for. The party said the governor’s recent comments against its governorship candidate, Prince Dapo Abiodun, borders on “outgoing syndrome, emanating from political amnesia and loss of touch with reality.” This was contained in a statement issued in Abeokuta and signed by the party’s Publicity Secretary in the State, Comrade Tunde Oladunjoye.

    The statement said, “But for the fact that the reported outbursts of the governor was reported by a credible online medium, we would not have taken him serious; and for the fact that friends in the media have been asking for response, we would not have reacted. However, rather than exchange words with the governor, we would call on members of the public to please sympathise with the governor and pray for him, as he is obviously manifesting outgoing syndrome resulting from political amnesia, loss of touch with reality and fear of life after office.

    “For an individual to attempt to play God, and assault the collective intelligence of the well informed people of Ogun State by telling them who the next governor of Ogun State will be, as if he has already written the results, shows that such person deserves our pity; we don’t need to exchange words with him, but to actually sympathise with him on his present state of paranoia on Prince Dapo Abiodun.

    “The constant, unceasing and monotonous attacks on Dapo Abiodun by the governor and his minions show that our candidate is the leading contestant and his imminent victory is only a matter of weeks. We challenge the governor to publish the recent survey he commissioned and which he read to some leaders in his house last week, wherein it was revealed that his preferred governorship candidate will not only lose the election, but also lose in the governor’s hitherto strongholds of Ifo, Ewekoro and Ado Odo Ota local governments.”

     

    One party, two leaderships

    And while it is battling with alleged anti-party activities of Governor Amosun and his supporters, the Ogun APC is also currently struggling to extricate itself from an obvious leadership tussle. Two groups are laying claims to being the authentic state leadership of the party following last month’s dissolution of the Chief Derin Adebiyi-led state executive committee by its National Working Committee (NWC).

    The ruling party had based its decision to dissolve state executives in Ogun and Imo states on the alleged anti-party activities involving Amosun and Rochas Okorocha (Imo State governor). A caretaker committee was appointed to run the affairs of the party in the state with Chief Yemi Sanusi while Ayobami Olubori is to serve as Secretary. Tunde Oladunjoye emerged as the spokesperson of the party.

    But Amosun, while addressing members of the APC at the party’s secretariat in Abeokuta recently, declared that nothing would happen to the state executive body. The governor, who was with the embattled exco members led by Adebiyi, said the body was created by God through the efforts of the members of the party. He insisted that the state executive members would spend four years in office despite the purported inauguration of a caretaker committee by the NWC.

    “You know me by now. For me, I fear God and I respect people. So, it won’t be because we are afraid or we don’t want to talk. Where we are now, what we should concentrate on is to let them know that Ogun State is the home of President Buhari and we must vote massively for him. I want to assure you that this executive that God has used you to put together will be there for the next four years. They will serve their term,” he said.

    Reacting swiftly to Amosun’s threat against his own party, Oladunjoye in a statement said the APC remains one big family, noting that they would work on bringing all aggrieved members together. He urged the governor and others in his camp to promptly respect the decisions of the national leadership of the party.

    “There is only one party according to the electoral law and in line with the party constitution; that party is the national headquarters of any political party. Our committee was set up by the APC National Working Committee (NWC), an organ of the party vested with the constitutional power to do so. We are not going to join issues with anyone, including the governor, but to breathe new life into the party, promote peace and cohesion and renew the hope of our members in all the nooks and crannies of the state.

    “We are on the same page with the national body. Our mandate is to bring everybody together and reenergise their commitment to the party and its electoral victory at all levels. We will be fair and equitable to all. We are all members of the same house under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, we will renew, realign, and rebuild our party for total victory at the 2019 polls, by God’s grace,” he said.

    But the dissolved Derin Adebiyi-led exec described members of the Care Taker Committee of Ogun APC as interlopers and confusionists. A press release issued by the Wole Elegbede said: “Tunde Oladunjoye lacks the integrity and does not possess the pedigree to castigate the governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun. If he is truly a member of APC in Ogun State as he wants us to believe, then he should not have spoken thoughtlessly to the leader of our party in Ogun State the way he did.

    “It could be recalled that Oladunjoye was recently disgraced out of Ogun APC after which he wrote an epilogue that he was quitting politics for good. How such an ingrate now turns around to speak for Ogun APC should baffle the understanding of every reasonable men. For the avoidance of doubt, the State Executive Committee of Ogun APC is currently and effectively discharging its responsibilities under the constitution of our great party, hence the supreme law of Nigeria.

    “Any other body which pretends to carry out those functions is a contrived body unknown to the constitution, the Ecxo of our party and the generality of our dedicated members across the state. Some people came to join or rejoin the party through the back door, so they may not appreciate what it takes for Senator Amosun to build the party and make it strong. These are the elements that are painting the governor in bad light and bent on destroying the party in Ogun State.”

  • When is a party?

    Party dissonance in post-military Nigeria

    We must thank the almighty for his mercies. In a question of weeks when this eventful year takes its final leave and 2019 shows its inscrutable face, Nigeria would have had twenty years of uninterrupted civil rule. This is some cause for some national celebration. It is quite a record in the history of post-independence Nigeria. It has not always been a smooth sail.

    There have been some monstrous icebergs on the route, enough to sink the Titanic itself. But the nation’s legendary luck has prevailed even in the scariest of circumstances. There is cause for some cautious optimism. After all, it has been famously observed that democracy is not a destination, but a process; a journey riddled with banana peels.

    Yet despite the deserved celebration, even the most cautious optimist must concede that party formation in Nigeria remains a tricky and problematic issue. The saying abroad is that the black person simply does not do political parties. In most of Africa, stable and organic parties remain a rarity, with the possible exception of the ANC which was founded in 1912 as a protest movement against the apartheid system, and which did not come to power until the nineties.

    A hood does not make a monk. It is now obvious that the South African miracle —if it is indeed a miracle and not a reward for discipline and hard work— is proving hard to replicate elsewhere in Africa, particularly in post-military Nigeria. Parties proliferate and die quickly, like everything else in the tropics. Such is the alarming rate of infant mortality that the sick babies of opportunism do not even get the chance to be properly named before they are interred in shallow graves.

    Those who believe that these things do not greatly affect the nation and that it does not matter what you call a dog as long as it brings home rabbits are in for a great shocker. Party proliferation is a symptom of a political elite fundamentally at war with itself and the nation. This war of all against all has already cost the nation the possibility of a virile, vibrant and visionary Third Force with the potential of shattering the deadlock of what is essentially a one-party system in disguise.

    It has forced our ambitious but politically inept youngsters to a political cul de sac, just as it has compelled the old political gamers to return to their vomit.  Any talk about political liberation or a programme of accelerated economic development of the nation outside of the current framework is dead on arrival.

    For the time being, nothing will happen, or can happen, outside of the old framework bequeathed by the departing military patriarchs. We are back to the old hegemonic party formation and any report about the death of the old order is based on exaggerated but futile ill-will.

    In the circumstances, any talk about taking Nigeria to the next level, within the context of weak party formations and a clear absence of a coherent and comprehensive ideology of national development is an assault on logic and common sense. Nigeria can only be taken to the next level when we refine and redefine the current party structure and when full electoral sovereignty is returned to the electorate.

    In the thick fog of national disorientation, let us acknowledge the presence of an old institutional bug bear lurking in the shadows. Military intervention represents a radical rupture of the political process. Political order is terminated. Legislative procedure is abridged. The judiciary is hobbled and civil society comes under a hammer.

    It is civil and social death by any other name. The struggle to push back an anti-democratic post-military state in all its authoritarian and unitarist excesses cannot be restricted to periodic elections but to the cumulative and collective efforts of the people in their bid for emancipation. Elections merely serve to routinize this arduous and complicated process of national redemption but that is only if and when they reflect the true national will.

    We have come a long way since 1999 and hopefully we have left behind us the brazen rigging and sheer electoral banditry which characterized the first phase of post-military transition. There has been a qualitative improvement in electoral transparency. This is not due to the benevolence and goodwill of the state but the result of human struggle and a battle of will and wits to force the state onto the path of rectitude and restitution.

    When the history of this period is recorded the sagas of the Aregbesolas in Osun, Adams Oshiomholes in Edo, Peter Obis in Anambra , Kayode Fayemis in Ekiti and Segun Mimikos in Ondo will be given pride of place as the defining moments of people’s power aided by patriotic judicial activism. A persecuted judge like Ayo Salami will be accorded his rightful place as a hero of post-military democracy in Nigeria in the fullness of time.

    Yet as it ever so happens in the bitter crucible of politics and the zero-sum game of power in contemporary Nigeria, a democratic victim of yesterday can easily transform into an anti-democratic villain of today. Nothing last for long in the tropics, not even mass adulation. Most of those who have gone down as political scoundrels in contemporary Yoruba political imagination started out as popular heroes of the emancipatory politics of the old Action Group.

    Enoch Powell, the dyspeptic old Tory hell-raiser from the West Midlands and a precocious professor of Classics in an earlier incarnation, put it with brilliant epigrammatic brevity when he noted that all political careers end in failure. When the road bifurcates between the collective aspirations of a people and inordinate personal ambition, the wise person not driven by the dark furies of personal insecurities knows which road to take.

    This is why it is now imperative to strengthen the existing party formation in Nigeria with a view to instilling party discipline and infusing the parties with a transcendental sense of mission for which they will be remembered by posterity rather than mere electoral jobbery. Such was the discipline and sense of mission of the old Action Group that it was willing to lose the 1954 federal elections in the old West until its radical, innovative and emancipatory policies properly kicked in.

    When then is a political party? A political party is usually an association or gathering of like-minded people of the same ideological orientation with a view to capturing state power or modulating its direction and the outcome of national power struggles as the case may be.

    It is the collective ideology based on a broadly similar worldview that unifies the party, fosters group cohesion, solidifies identity and engenders unanimity of action based on a shared vision of the nation.  Without this unanimity of vision based on shared values, the political party becomes an atomized and atomistic collection of warring political warlords.

    Now, it is possible that in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious polity wracked by centrifugal forces and unbridgeable cultural habitus groups with dissimilar ideologies and incompatible worldviews may come together in a party with a view to forging or forcing a national consensus.

    Such a coalition of contraries will have to forge an ideological consensus based on streamlined values  and harmonized ideals if it is not to disintegrate into its particularistic components held loosely together by power and its privileges. It is a tough template to will into existence requiring extraordinary skills of conciliations and cohabitation. Such has been the traumatic fate of the APC ruling party.

    On the other hand, it is also possible that in the course of a lifetime, a person’s worldview and political ideology may undergo gradual changes or sharp alteration consequent upon major political developments. If such people belong to a political party based on shared values and ideology, personal honour and integrity ought to compel them to throw in the towel. There must be no equivocation about this.

    President Mohammadu Buhari’s swift countermand of the directive of the Adams Oshiomhole’s led NWC of the APC to aggrieved stakeholders to withdraw all pending legal suits against the party and embrace the process of reconciliation initiated by the feisty former Labour stalwart throws this national quandary into sharp relief. Based on the perception that this violates the fundamental rights of party members to legal succour, Buhari’s heart is surely in the right place.

    But this is ultimately unhelpful and a clear invitation to party anarchy. As we have argued above, a party is either a coherent, organic party or a loose conglomeration of political warlords. Court cases may lead to fearsome complications for the APC. There is absolutely nothing stopping a party stalwart from developing a sudden hostility for the political aspirations and the ideological momentum of his party.

    Once a political party has exhausted all the internal mechanisms for reconciliation and redress, those who still feel aggrieved, rather than being encouraged to seek court justice, should be encouraged to leave the party so as not to become pollutants and contaminants of the common pool.

    This may sound harsh and unforgiving. But we are either going to have authentic political parties or we are not.  The deleterious effects of patch-patch parties and politics on the nation’s political transformation and economic developments are here for everyone to see. It is the habit of treating a grave political development with kids’ gloves that is responsible for the Saraki tragedy and the subsequent inability of the ruling party to make a major dent on the nation’s problems for three and a half years.

    In the First and Second Republics, neither the Action Group nor the UPN could be said to be held down by Awolowo and his top lieutenants. Party decisions often went against their personal wishes and innermost desires. But they took it all in the chin. This was the subsisting culture in the First Republic until the divergence between the Republican ethos and the royalist tendencies uneasily cohabiting in the Action Group became unwieldy and unmanageable within the framework of a single party.

    For example, it is a well-documented fact that Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola was not Chief Awolowo’s first choice to succeed him as premier of the old Western region. But he was swiftly reversed by party grandees and oligarchs. In the Second Republic, Awolowo saw his personal preference first for Canon Emmanuel Alayande in old Oyo State and later for Josiah Olawoyin in Kwara State briskly overwhelmed by popular revolt. Despite defeat and apparent humiliation, not one of these sterling personages saw it fit to abandon their party.

    The havoc that military intervention has caused to party formations and party consciousness in Nigeria is obvious enough. But twenty years after their departure, we cannot continue to blame the military for our political woes. The question whether the Black person does political parties will be answered in Nigeria and its Fourth Republic in the coming months. As the dominant party, the onus is on the APC to show the way.

     

  • EU: No preferred candidate, party for 2019

    The European Union (EU) has committed over €100 million to the conduct of elections in Nigeria since 1999.

    Its electoral administration and communications expert, Manji Wilson, stressed that the EU, despite the huge investment, has no preferred candidate or party for the forthcoming general elections.

    Speaking yesterday at a capacity building for journalists in Abuja, Wilson also said that EU provides technical and other form of supports to the electoral body.

    He, however, said that the support was not because of any personal gains but part of the global agreement to support partners.

    According to him: “Beginning from 1999 till this time that we speak, the EU has contributed over €100 million to support election processes in Nigeria through various donations.

    “However, despite the donations, the EU does not have any special interest in any candidate or any political party.”

    Speaking on involvement of youths at the recent concluded party primaries, he said: “Over 1000 of them across the country indicated interest to contest the 2019 general elections.

    “As many that indicated interests were encouraged but unfortunately, the exorbitant price of the Expression of Interest and Nomination form could not afford it.

    He also added the readiness of INEC to engage all stakeholders have helped in bringing a lot of steady improvement.

     

  • Return of the party?

    The Akinwunmi Ambode saga, of a conceited governor duelling with party forces and losing all, may yet strengthen party discipline and supremacy, in Nigerian politics.

    That would appear the first time, as similar past bids had led to, first: intra-party elite feuding; then, messy party fissures, and finally, catastrophic consequences for the polity.

    The classic, of that ruinous trend, was the Obafemi Awolowo-Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) Western Region bust-up, that first tore apart the Action Group (AG); and later tore to pieces the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

    But before using history to put the present in proper perspectives; and projecting, other things being equal, the probable future of party supremacy, a brief comment on Governor Ambode and Jide Sanwoolu, the new Lagos All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate.

    Contrary to gushing emotions, Ambode is no devil any more than Sanwoolu is a saint.

    The Lagos governor just stumbled where other governors — and even 4th Republic presidents, if not most chief executives of state since independence — had made hay: making themselves imperial lords over the organ that fetched them power.

    As president, Olusegun Obasanjo did it.  The present Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) angst issues partly from his willy-nilly re-sculpturing of PDP, in his own grim image.

    As we speak, Ibikunle Amosun, the Ogun governor, seems lost in that same imperialist fancy, vis-a-vis abject party conquest.  His Excellency thunders down his own Hobson’s choice as Ogun APC gubernatorial candidate, the party’s official candidate be damned!

    But before you roast Amosun as Judas-in-chief to the party cause, most of his fellow governors, across the party aisle, are steeped in similar imperious fancies.

    So, what Ambode had done — but got brutally clipped — would appear standard 4th Republic gubernatorial megalomania: an all-too-common chronic executive disorder.

    Sanwoolu would do well to learn from Ambode’s fall, though there is no guarantee, that  as governor, Sanwoolu himself won’t tread that route; if he feels he could get away with it.

    But the party also owes itself — and the people — a duty to always wield the big stick on the errant, executive or legislative.  Still, there must first be a party, in the real sense of the word; and a deliberate and sustained culture of discipline, among its hierarchs, and rank-and-file.

    No less vital: the Lagos APC must realize, and factor into its Sanwoolu gubernatorial sales pitch, that Ambode, on the performance lane, wasn’t a ringing failure.

    Though the refuse leprosy plagues his government, for its costly conceit of trying to fix what wasn’t bust, rural Lagos — witness Epe and rural Alimoso — would remember  Ambode with especial fondness.

    Perhaps since the Lateef Jakande governorship (1979-1983), no governor had treated rural Lagos as royalty, as Ambode.

    But urban Lagos too, sans the refuse plague, won’t forget him in a hurry, if he fully delivers on his legacy projects, especially the Lagos Airport access road and the Oshodi mart interchange, both now under construction.

    So, the Lagos APC must brace itself for some pro-Ambode sympathy votes, even if the governor himself seems to have embraced fealty to his party, despite his personal loss of a second term that, otherwise, he could have richly deserved.

    That tracks the discourse back to the Awolowo-SLA titanic feud, for the soul of the old AG.

    Put that side-by-side with the Bola Tinubu-Ambode-Lagos APC stand-off, and you could well trace some parallel. suzerainty

    Still, as West Regional Premier, SLA called his party’s bluff; and tried to impose, on it, executive suzerainty.  Since then, such executive conceit has plagued Nigerian politics.

    However, as defeated aspirant though sitting Lagos governor, Ambode’s submission — if it holds all through — could well re-birth the supremacy of the party, over its nominees, executive or legislative.

    Incidentally, legislators’ scorn for party platforms has also cruelly flared in the free-for-all treachery and anti-party contempt of Bukola’s Saraki’s 8th National Assembly.

    But back to the SLA-Awo-AG 1962 party imbroglio — the AG diktat to SLA, as captured  by Prof. Akin Osuntokun, in his 2010 work, S. Ladoke Akintola: His Life and Times, published by Mosuro Publishers:

    “…that this joint meeting of the Western region and Mid-Western Executive Committees of the Action Group requests the Deputy Leader, Chief S. L. Akintola, to resign forthwith the offices of Premier and Deputy Leader of the Party, failing which appropriate steps would be taken to relieve him of both posts, but, that if he resigns, the leader should give consideration to the continued availability of his services to the Party in another sphere.”

    Now, the Tinubu directive to party stalwarts, on the virtual eve of the Lagos APC gubernatorial primaries, was far less sweeping or total.  But the message was unambiguous: the governor should move or be moved, for he had derailed from the party gubernatorial masterplan.

    Yet, events leading to the AG-SLA crisis were far different from what triggered the Lagos APC Ambode ultimatum.

    The one was a party split, almost right through the middle, between the Awo and SLA tendencies.

    The other was an alleged Ambode nastiness, to party members whose sweat romped him into office; among these, irate powers and principalities, determined to force a rebellion, were their object of vile hate not summarily removed.

    But the reaction, from the media and the public, would appear similar to 1962: split between the two camps, though not in equal measures.

    Back then, according to findings in Osuntokun’s book, some newspapers, notably West African Pilot and Daily Service were gung-ho on the SLA cause; while Nigerian Tribune and Daily Express tilted to the Awo cause.

    Though Daily Times was adjudged neutral, many swore it tilted towards SLA, courtesy of the Great Babatunde Jose’s personal sympathies for SLA, while Daily Sketch would join the fray in 1964, as a domestic answer to Tribune, Awo’s personal paper.

    The public, then as now, are also divided between both camps, with not a few even fingering personality clashes (which indeed, could be part of the problem), instead of the more rigorous location of contrasting tendencies in a party collective.

    That is why, just as many posited the AG crisis emanated from Awo’s refusal to hand over real power to SLA, a rather shallow thinking also arose that Ambode’s troubles issued from Tinubu’s alleged over-bearing attitude towards the governor.

    But whatever the crisis’ reading or misreading, according to fixed biases, the Ambode response has been markedly different from SLA’s.

    Instead of playing Samson, as SLA did; and risking the roof to fall and bury the collective, Ambode seems to have embraced his sad fate with stoic grace.

    If that holds, and his party goes on to triumph at the polls, Ambode’s personal tragedy could well turn renewed hope for party discipline and supremacy.

    That could mean the return of the party to boss the Nigerian political process.  That surely, cannot be bad for Nigerian democracy, despite Ambode’s personal angst?

  • ‘Spray’ naira and go to jail from party

    •Mobile court to try currency hawkers

    Those who “spray” naira notes at parties risk going to jail, the Bankers Committee warned yesterday.

    Mobile courts are to try those bastardising the national currency, it said.

    Issuing the warning after its meeting in Lagos, the Bankers Committee said the mobile courts would be deployed nationwide to try those mishandling the currency.

    Cantral Bank of Nigeria (CBN) spokesman Isaac Okorafor said the police and the Ministry of Justice would be involved in the operation, adding:

    “If a celebrant is dancing and you spray him/her, you may go to jail from the party venue because the law enforcement agents will be there, waiting to arrest you.

    “It is the duty of law enforcement agencies to catch offenders and take them to court. Our collaboration with the police will intensify as we move to implement the mobile court for offenders.”

    Admonishing Nigerians on how to use cash as gift, Okorafor said: “If you want to give, put the money in an envelop, and give it the celebrant. Let’s know that anybody hawking and writing on the naira will face six months in jail or N50,000 or both.”

    Managing Director of First Securities Discount House (FSDH) Merchant Bank   Mrs. Handa Ambah said people selling naira notes would be punished.

    She said: “We need to let them know that this is money. The fact that you cannot spray money at parties does not mean that you cannot put money in an envelope and pass it to the celebrants.”

    Access Bank Managing Director Herbert Wigwe said the committee also agreed to channel a large part of the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) to agriculture and manufacturing to promote agricultural value-chain and manufacturing.

    Union Bank Managing Director Emeka Emuwa said the committee agreed to deepen access to financial services adding that there is a draft framework being designed to ensure that more people have access to banking services.

    Emu said access to financial services remains a big incentive to the economy and empowerment tool for the citizenry.

    CBN Director Banking Supervision Ahmad Abdullahi said there is still relative confidence in the economy, in view of the rise in the prices of crude oil and the level of external reserve.

    He said all hands must be on the deck to sustain the momentum.