Unlike Ambassador Umar Damagum, acting National Chairman of the highly decimated Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Barrister Julius Abure of fragmented Labour Party (LP), and retired Brig.-Gen. David Mark of the crisis-ridden African Democratic Congress (ADC), Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, the new National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is presiding over a largely united and cohesive party.
Up to now, there is no obvious faction in the ruling party, despite the frantic attempts by propagandists and social media miscreants to allude to imaginary cleavages arising from the memory of rested legacy parties that fused into a formidable platform.
The major test for the former university teacher and ex-Humanitarian, Disaster Management and Social Development Minister would come during the state party congresses and nominations for elective positions ahead of 2027 polls.
Nomination politics always drive the parties in power to the edge in Nigeria. Succession politics at the sub-national level often unleashes tension. In the past, faulty state congresses led to a huge electoral misfortune. The court did not spare the platform.
The greatest asset of the new chairman is his integrity. Either as a teacher, electoral officer, politician or minister, no baggage has been attributed to him. He narrowly lost the Plateau State governorship election in 2023. One of his assignments now may be to woo the man who defeated him, Caleb Mutfwang, and persuade him to abandon the distressed party on the Plateau for the APC.
Yilwatda’s choice was a product of wide consultation among the leaders of the party: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, members of the National Caucus, the National Working Committee (NWC), the National Executive Committee (NEC), and the Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF), the most influential bloc in the party.
To succeed, he would need the active support and cooperation of these party organs and structures.
In 11 years, APC has produced seven chairmen. The turnover is high, suggesting leadership instability, a manifestation of internal squabbles, a clash of influence and ego, lack of a shared vision, derailment from a steady mission, lack of trust and confidence-building, as well as diminishing emotional intelligence on the part of party leadership. It is worse in PDP which has produced 18 national chairmen in 27 years.
Yilwatda’s predecessors are former governors who were also party leaders at the state level. There is no party in Nigeria that jokes with the cult of governors, especially when they are jointly pushing a collective agenda. Over time, the fear of the governors has become the beginning of wisdom. Thus, when just five governors declined support for the PDP in 2023, the party lapsed into a decline. It has not recovered from the resultant fall.
Perhaps, serving and former governors were selected as national chairmen from that rank to make communications easy, with them as the intermediaries between the party and the governors’ forum. The belief might be that as serving or former governors, they fully understand the language of their colleagues. Experience has, however, shown a glaring gap between expectation and reality.
Apart from the erstwhile interim chairman and former Osun State Governor Bisi Akande, the tenures of his five successors were marked by controversies. A section of the party was fed up with the John Odigie-Oyegun leadership midway, despite supporting his emergence against the wishes of President Muhammadu Buhari’s camp. Odigie-Oyegun and Buhari appeared to have previously parted ways in the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) before the logic and urgency of mergers/fusion of legacy parties brought them together in 2014.
His successor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, also ran into turbulence. His albatross came through his former colleagues in the governors’ forum. At first, he was dancing to their cultish tune. But as he could not balance the influence of the powerful governors and the demands for equity and internal democracy, the governors removed the rug from under his feet.
In those days of the Buhari administration, some APC governors indulged in anti-party activities by sponsoring governorship and parliamentary candidates on the platform of opposition parties. An action man, Oshiomhole slammed suspension on them. But his sanctions caused his downfall. They retaliated by insisting on his ouster. The President and Party Leader, Buhari, was aloof.
Oshiomhole’s estranged godson, turned adversary at home, Godwin Obaseki, with who he had a running battle, moved against him at the ward level. The national chairman was suspended. As the crises multiplied, Oshiomhole was shoved aside for a caretaker chairman to take over.
Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni’s mandate was to restore sanity, unite the party, and reconcile aggrieved chieftains within six months. Instead of doing his job within the stipulated time and bowing out honourably, he became a sit-tight party manager for two years.
After the elongated interim period, Buhari brought in Abdullahi Adamu, who had stood by him as a senator when the Bukola Saraki-led Senate was not on good terms with his presidency. He never aspired to be chairman. What the former Nasarawa State governor could now be remembered for was that under his tenure, zoning was nearly jettisoned when Senate President Ahmad Lawan suddenly surfaced as Buhari’s anointed presidential candidate ahead of the 2023 general election. It was disputed by governors who stormed the Aso Villa to confront the former president. But Buhari disowned the plot.
There might be a nexus between that episode and the hidden circumstances that led to his departure from the national secretariat of the party.
However, the circumstances that led to Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje’s sudden resignation appear to be in the realm of conjecture, although he said he stepped down on health grounds.
In contemporary Nigeria, the emergence of party leadership at the national and state levels is being linked with the preferences of presidents and governors to the extent that party conventions and processes are no longer competitive but mere coronation ceremonies.
Unlike the processes that threw up Chief Adisa Akinloye as chairman of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe and Chief Tony Anenih as chairmen of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Tom Ikimi and Dr. Hammed Kusamotu as chairmen of National Republic Convention (NRC) in the Third Republic, and Chief Solomon Lar of the PDP at the beginning of this dispensation, the selection of party chairmen from the Olusegun Obasanjo days has been the sole affair of the President. Also, state chairmen are candidates of the governors.
Ruling parties, from 2002, never had the opportunity of customary, internal healthy rivalry; the wheeling and dealings, the rigorous mobilisation and campaigns by chairmanship aspirants, the debate on issues, the critical media portrayals, the enunciation of their manifestos at the convention, and the attendant shared conviviality.
The old element of selection that is visible in the current guided process is the wide consultation and strategic scrutiny that heralded the choice of Yilwatda, a candidate without blemish. The approach is built on zoning of the slot to a particular region. Yilwatda’s choice fulfilled the ethnic, zonal and religious balance.
The onus is on the professor to justify the trust reposed in him and remain loyal to the party. Yilwatda should be a man of progressive intentions and ideas for him to make an impact as chairman of the biggest party in Nigeria. APC should migrate from being a mere vehicle for seeking power to the pedestal of ideology so that it can fulfil the criteria of identity, form, content and predictability.
He has promised to unite the party. In states where there are crises, he should not delay reconciliation. Concessions should be given, and consensus should be built. Complaints by aggrieved members should not be brought to the court until the internal mechanism for conflict resolution has been fully explore.
Yilwatda, who is expected to work with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other party stalwarts, should try to keep the party united and avert defections that may be blown out of proportion by the adversarial media.
Whenever there was a defection from the APC, no matter how insignificant, it was usually blown out of proportion by a section of the media. It is typically referred to as an implosion.But even the gale of defections from the opposition to the ruling party has never received due attention from such media outlets. Instead, it was condemned by the same biased section of the media, with the defectors to the ruling party being label as polticians without principle.
As observed by the ‘man of timber and calibre,’ Dr. Ozumba Mbadiwe, in Nigeria, politicians like to gravitate towards winning parties. Defections can throw up concerns about the harmonisation of party structures. The party’s membership register should be updated.
The chairman should ensure that newcomers into the fold are accommodated and accorded a sense of belonging. A governor who defects automatically becomes the leader of the state chapter. There is also a need for the old members to adjust to the leadership change. Collaboration should triumph over exclusion or marginalisation.
The chairman needs to make the zonal chapters very strong so that regional matters within the party can be easily settled at that level. The two deputy chairmen and six vice chairmen should be active as coordinators at the regional levels. It may not be a bad idea for Yilwatda to embark on the tour of the six regions to feel the pulse of the chapters.
Next year, there will be a major test for the APC leadership during the Ekiti and Osun State governorship polls. While the party should consolidate on its profile in Ekiti, it needs to support the bid of the Osun State chapter to bounce back. The greatest task before the party chairman is the re-election of President Tinubu.
Under Yilwatda, the party should be supreme, and the leadership should show discipline. Exemplariness must trickle down from the top.
The scramble for the limited elective slots by many qualified, competent and loyal party chieftains often spark stiff competition, antagonism and protracted conflict. Post-primary crisis should always be addressed with speed.
Also, accommodation should be found for those who lost elections within the larger, collective interest of the party.
State chapters should be allowed by the party leadership to choose from the options of consensus, direct and indirect primaries, based on their peculiar circumstances.
APC governorments at the state level would do the part a lot of service if they consistently perform to expectation. The state chapters should constantly assess the policies and programmes of the state governments to ensure that they reflect their campaign promises, party programmes and public expectation.
