The question that concentrated my mind throughout last week as the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) got enmeshed in one crisis after another, particularly in the National Assembly (NASS), was whether the party was unravelling so soon after winning the general election.
On the night of Thursday, June 25 when I was a guest at Television Continental’s (TVC) News at 10, the newscaster asked me if I had envisaged this crisis of confidence threatening to consume the party. My answer was yes and no.
Yes, because every discerning political observer knew that the union that gave birth to the APC was a marriage of convenience. The glue that held the disparate tendencies in the APC together was the consuming passion to give the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a bloody nose at the polls and send Goodluck Jonathan back to his Otuoke village in Bayelsa.
No sacrifice was considered too big to achieve this overriding goal.
I remember having a discussion with one APC governor late last year who complained about the overbearing attitude of the self-acclaimed national leader of the party, Bola Tinubu. He swore that some of them would have dared Tinubu, even if that would mean the end of the party, if not for their determination to ensure that Jonathan’s mandate would never be renewed.
So, it was obvious that there were many problems within the APC. Most of the cracks were papered over and Tinubu’s excesses merely tolerated to achieve an overarching goal.
It was to be expected, therefore, that the moment the party achieved its primary goal, which it did in a grand style on March 28 when it defeated the PDP in the presidential and National Assembly polls, and consolidated the victory on April 11 when it won the governorship poll the governship poll in most states, the pockets of grievances would rear their heads – and if not handled well, may become hydra-headed.
That is exactly what has happened.
My answer to the newscaster’s question was also no, because even in my wildest imagination, I neither expected the schism to burst out in the open so soon nor its ferocity. Today, to say the APC, a party that rode to power on the wings of change, is at the crossroads is to say the obvious.
It is not an exaggeration to say that three months after winning a historic election and one month after taken over the reins of power that it has unravelled so much so that the centre can no longer hold.
The disparate tendencies that coalesced into a mega party, having defeated their common enemy, have now turned around to wage the battle within; a battle that had only been deferred. And it is a ferocious battle where the combatants are throwing in every weapon in their arsenal.
So, while I knew it was a battle bound to take place, having only been postponed until after the elections, I didn’t know it would happen so soon and be this vicious.
Many have wondered what the APC didn’t do right. My answer is simple. Its leaders failed to build the consensus critical in party politics. Politics is a game of contending interests, which may be group or individual interests.
Political parties that achieve significant milestones aggregate these interests into an overarching common interest with the buy-in of the majority of the stakeholders. That has not happened in the APC. And that makes the cry for party supremacy hollow.
In a democracy where political parties are the vehicles that convey individuals to political destinations, particularly where there is no room for independent candidacy, political parties should be supreme.
The mandate elected political office holders exercise belong to political parties. That is why, when a lawmaker defects from the party on which platform he won election to another, he or she is expected to relinquish the mandate.
That was why Chibuike Amaechi became Governor of Rivers State without contesting the governorship election in 2007.
He contested and won the PDP primaries but former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his characteristic impunity, took the ticket from him and gave it to Celestine Omehia who won the election. But the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate belongs to the political party and since Amaechi was the authentic candidate of the PDP, he was the rightful owner of the mandate.
But to assert its authority and supremacy, the leadership of a political party must be fair to all and not be seen to be pandering to the whims and caprices of particular individuals or groups in the party.
This is unfortunately what has happened to the John Oyegun leadership of the APC.
It is perceived to be tied to the apron strings of Tinubu, whom APC National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, described as the “national leader” while Buhari is only a “product of the party”.
The scary implication of this convoluted arrangement is that the leadership of the APC, which should embody its supremacy, has been reduced to a ridiculous toothless bulldog, issuing ultimatums and giving orders which are ignored at will because the party is perceived as not being fair to all.
The sad thing is that the dogfight in the APC will not end soon. The eighth NASS will never be stable no matter who occupies the Senate presidency and the House of Representatives speakership.
If Bukola Saraki remains Senate President, the Tinubu faction of the party will never rest until he is ousted. It will continue to place the proverbial banana peels around the seat, hoping and waiting for the day Saraki will step on them and fall.
In the meantime, Tinubu loyalists will ensure that Saraki never enjoys a good working relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari. The same goes for the Yakubu Dogara-led House of Representatives.
The daggers are dangerously drawn. The dilemma is that even if those who desperately want Saraki and Dogara out succeed, that will not bring peace because roles will simply be reversed. The dogfight in the NASS has become an ego war and the combatants are not known for taking prisoners.
Whichever way this battle goes, good governance will suffer and Nigerians who have yearned for it over the years will be worse off.
This cannot be the change the APC promised Nigerians and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be the change Nigerians voted for.