OpinionOPINION: APC AND DEFICIT OF INTERNAL DEMOCRACY

OPINION: APC AND DEFICIT OF INTERNAL DEMOCRACY

THEWILL APP ADS 2

Just when the All Progressives Congress was trying to come to terms with the departure of Nuhu Ribadu, its presidential candidate in the 2011 elections, another of the party’s chieftains pulled out. In announcing that he was dumping the party too, Chief Tom Ikimi threw up gory details of what went for internal democracy in the APC: the domineering influence of former Lagos Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was suffocating.

For a man who played a central role in the formation of the APC by managing the tricky merger of those four legacy parties, Ikimi should know what he was saying. The revelations that the party lacked internal democracy and was run on the whims and caprices of one man, was weighty but they were not entirely new. We have heard it all before and Tinubu himself hardly bothers to deny that he plays the sole king-maker in the party, ramming his choice candidates down everyone’s throats. When he replied Ikimi, he took his pound of flesh, saying the Igueben high chief was simply a mole planted by Peoples Democratic Party to hijack and/or destabilize the APC. It was also an opportunity to rationalise his role in the crisis rocking the party.

The issue here is not about the bitter altercation that followed Ikimi’s ‘revelation’ that Tinubu was running the organization like a fiefdom. How he is able to run rings around other major stakeholders in the party is a topic for another day. My concern here is the manner in which the opposition party which held so much promise at the outset is gradually bleeding to death, and weakening its chance to give the behemoth a good run in next year’s national elections.

Glo

Though there have always been concerns with the manner in which strange bedfellows in the four main opposition parties were cobbled together into the APC, few expected the implosion it has begot so soon. Cracks are not just appearing on its wall, whole partitions are falling off already. The pulling out of two of its founding leaders, Ibrahim Shekarau and Attahiru Bafarawa, former Governors of Kano and Sokoto states, respectively, had started the exodus, followed shortly after by the former military governor of Lagos State, Brig-Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd.), his Borno counterpart Ali Modu Sheriff and former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode. Though their stories may be different from ikimi’s, however, the situation in a party must be of the worst kind to make its presidential torch-bearer in as recent as the 2011 elections, Nuhu Ribadu, to also jump ship.

As we approach the processes that will herald the 2015 general elections, the APC, sadly, no longer holds to Nigerians the promise it once did. The much it could boast about internal democracy was rubbished by the shenanigans that pervaded its last national convention. That charade made the PDP look like a congregation of Saints and it is no credit to Tinubu that such anti-democratic dispositions are consistently linked to him. If he is that ambitious to become a presidential running mate, even under a Muslim-Muslim agenda, he is entitled to that but rather than deploying cold exclusionist politicking he should submit to the larger interests of his party.

That agenda being built around Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu, stands on a myth that both men are politically impregnable in the North West and South West political zones, respectively, from where they will muster the electoral muscle to win the 2015 presidential election. Of course, this is not true if the results of Buhari’s performance in the last three presidential elections as well as Tinubu’s party’s electoral performance in Ekiti and Ondo states, are considered. That calculation, as unrealistic as it is, has already triggered a process that undermines democratic practices within the APC by silencing those opposed to the proposal.

This is the cause of the exodus. Besides, to railroad the party into that pre-arranged agenda that serves the personal ambitions of a few, does violence to democracy. As it is, it has become the topic within the APC so much that unconsciously, alternative choices appear to have been foreclosed. Definitely the party cannot be a credible alternative to the PDP if it consistently panders to the dictates of one man. And if the party does not reinvent itself, disaffection within its ranks will sooner than later, render it electorally impotent.

I can understand Buhari’s desperation after three failed attempts at the presidency, but must he also play the puppet and acquiesce to this short-cut to nowhere? And to believe that Tinubu will deliver the party’s presidential ticket to him on a platter of gold is at best delusional.

Written by Femi Ayelabowo.

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