SIR: My intention here is not to cast aspersion on any politician in our great party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), but rather to set the records straight by educating millions of Nigerians and our teeming supporters on the parallel political manoeuvring of some governors bent on seizing the party machinery and manipulate the process for their selfish ambitions.
There is no doubt that our party is facing an existential crisis in the buildup to the 2023 general elections. These crises are not isolated to our dear APC alone or Nigeria as a country. It is an international phenomenon with a classical example in the election of Donald Trump in the US.
It is instructive for our leaders to know that crisis in many ways is endemic to parties as they battle over losing elections, retaining members and finding suitable leaders. Indeed, it is easy to mistake the everyday waxing and waning of parties’ fortunes for a more profound crisis. Crisis takes us beyond the common explanations of social factors to illuminate how political parties actively shape national stability as well as breakdown it down because the party system itself is unable to absorb an existential challenge to its power.
In 1796, President George Washington dropped a hard warning to political parties for allowing “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to “subvert the power of the people”.
Over 200 years ago, that averment by this great statesman seems brutally timely today with the action of the ‘rebellious’ governors from our great party whom even after the smooth transmission of power by Governor Mai Mala Buni before his medical trip abroad decided to unjustifiably hijack the party machinery of the APC and started ridiculing the party in the face of all patriotic Nigerians.
It’s an unarguable fact that the Buni-led caretaker committee has made giants strides which are unprecedented in the history of not just our party but to the democracy especially taking into account when and how he took over the helms of affairs of the party from his predecessor Comrade Adams Oshomole. Needless to emphasize how the APC was sinking in turbulent waters until Buni’s swift operation stabilized the party.
Within a very short time in the saddle, the APC under Governor Buni became an attractive bride that has brought in three serving governors from the opposition PDP including former governors, two ex-speakers of House of Representatives, serving and former members of the National Assembly as well as many other influential politicians across the country.
That facts are sacred speak volumes of the achievements that this consummate politician has done for the APC.
Like the legal icons will argue, ‘you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand’. Our leader President Muhammadu Buhari has spoken. Governor Buni as an unrepentant democrat is stronger than ever and solidly committed to the success of the APC both at the forthcoming National Convention and the General Elections come 2023.
- Hon. Bukar Adamu,
Chairman, Damaturu LGA, Yobe State.