A former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has urged the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party to urgently meet and institute a caretaker committee to arrange for a special national convention.
Chief Odigie-Oyegun, in a statement titled; “Before it is too late”, called on leaders of the party, particularly President Muhammadu Buhari and the governors, to stop what he called the “disgraceful and humiliating charade” occurring within the National Secretariat of the party.
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“The APC was built on the blood and sweat of Nigerians, young and old, too numerous to count, who were willing to give everything in the service of progressive politics.
“We must not allow their great sacrifices to go in vain.
“Today, almost every member of the party feels a deep sense of alienation and dissatisfaction with the state of the party.
“It hurts deeply to see how hollow it now rings to mention our party and ‘change’ together.
“The time to act is now, before it is too late,” he said.
He said the APC is fast becoming the single most dangerous threat to the legacy of the government and President Buhari.
“As former national chairman of the party, I remain proud of the great strides of our government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“However, I am afraid to note that the legacy of a government is defined mostly by its politics rather than its achievements in other areas, no matter how lofty those achievements are.
“Our recent history bears enough testimony to this reality.
“The military government of President Ibrahim Babangida is today remembered mainly for the June 12, 1993 elections and its aftermath,” he added.
Odigie-Oyegun said he had come to realise that those who felt more entitled to the party were no longer capable of hearing alternative viewpoints other than those counseled by their ego and their self-serving interests, which, he said, they had promoted over all other considerations, including that of common decency.
He said no political party unwilling to accommodate competing ideas and provide the space for healthy debates would survive for long.
He said: “In the last few months we have watched how the party has brazenly subverted its own principles of internal democracy and flagrant violation of every rule of decent political engagement in a manner that makes everyone associated with its promise of change liable to be accused of either hypocrisy or apostasy.
“We must therefore remember that our victory in the 2015 presidential elections and the peaceful transfer of power that followed was a major testament of progress in our nation’s journey towards real democracy.
“This unprecedented democratic achievement has since inspired progressive forces all over Africa and has become a standard by which democracy is measured in the rest of the continent.
“Unfortunately, it appears that while other countries around us have marched ahead in the democratic journey, we have largely regressed.
“Unfortunately, what we have witnessed from our party is the steady erosion of even the very basic tenets of democratic principles in a manner that could turn our watershed victory of 2015 to the waterloo of our hard won democracy,” he said.
Party has failed Nigerians – Buhari’s aide
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Investment, Barrister Isma’il Ahmed, says the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has failed Nigerians.
Barrister Ahmed, who spoke on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme monitored by our correspondent in Abuja on Saturday, attributed the current crisis in the party to the extreme loyalty to “godfathers” at various levels instead of adhering to the provisions of party’s constitution.
When contacted for his reaction, the APC National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu, declined comments on the remarks by Ahmed.
However, the member of the APC Board of Trustees (BoT) and an influential leader in the party’s youth league further stressed the need to convene a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and subsequently organize a mini convention in order to solve the current crisis rocking the party.
He said youths would write letters to all the caucuses of the party, including President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, national leaders of the party, NEC, the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), and the leadership of National Assembly that they had failed Nigerians and there was a “need to make a change of course immediately”.
He said the warring parties in the administration that had three years left out of an eight-year mandate were “focusing on pettiness that is bringing down the structure that has brought us into government” in the face of “a lethal combination of security and health crisis”.
He described the development as an absolute embarrassment, saying the youth would meet and contribute to the effort to resolve the crisis.
He said: “We can’t call for basic meetings because of pettiness and self-ego and whatever it is that is going on. We can’t allow that to go on.
“If nobody is going to talk with the voice of reason, we will have to because we are ultimately either the beneficiaries or the losers of whatever it is.
“In the next five, 10, 12, 15 years, most of these people that are parading themselves as leaders today will not be in the field again.”
Ahmed, who was asked whether he was surprised surprised by the development in the APC with the court decision on Victor Giadom, said: “No, I’m not surprised.
“I’m embarrassed by the way the people that we have saddled with the responsibility of running a political party have messed it up to this level.
“This party this year is only six years in existence and five of which we have been in government.
“Nigerians have done their own part.
“They have given us an overwhelming majority in all the tiers of government, from the federal level, National Assembly to almost most of the states that we have won in 2015 and a repeat of it in 2019.
“But in five short years or in six short years, in its entirety, we, the younger people, have contributed our sweat, little time and resources that we have on our own side to help in building this party.
“And you would remember the role that all of us as young people played and which we are still playing.
“Some of our foot soldiers are still out there in the social media given their own best part to build a structure that will outlast or live us.
“But yet, we have given responsibilities to people who are former this former that.
“People who have come and have bastardised this institution that was built with good intentions, sweat and hard resources of so many people that have come to the table to build this party in five short years.
“So, no, I’m not surprised.
“I’m absolutely embarrassed with what is going on.
“And everybody now goes to court suing the party or being sued by the party on these issues claiming the Constitution of the party.
“Yet, most of the solutions to our perennial problems are yet found in this constitution that is observed more in breach than in compliance.
“So, I’m absolutely embarrassed.
“Now, we have a problem in this country.
“The problem is a lethal combination of a health crisis and a security crisis.
“And yet, we have a political party that Nigerians have entrusted with the responsibility to run the affairs.
“And yet, we are focusing on: who is doing what, what is doing this, who is going to court, who is the chairman of the party, who is this, who is that.
“We have all failed, including me. You know we have all failed.”
Youth lack resources, organization to bring change in APC – Expert
A political analyst, Dr Abubakar Kari, in an interview with Daily Trust on Sunday yesterday, however said the youth lack the resources and organization to effect a change in the APC.
Dr Kari attributed the current leadership crisis in the APC to lack of internal democracy and the struggle for power ahead of the 2023 general elections. He said the party might disintegrate if the ongoing implosion was not arrested.
Speaking on the reasons for the APC’s challenge and the implications of the crisis in view of the remarks by an influential youth in the party, he said: “There is a groundswell of frustration and anger gathering within and among the ranks of members and leaders of the APC.
“There are many of them who are disenchanted with the present crop of leadership.
“And the party is gradually and systematically implosive.
“There is some kind of implosion going on.
“2023, I think, is the major cause even though I will blame lack of internal party democracy as the major problem.
“So, people like Ismael Ahmed are frustrated.
“How will they end up with this kind of thing.
“If this implosion is not arrested, the party will simply disintegrate. That is one.
“Two, the young turks or the young people have made all sorts of promises to their friends, society, that their party will do this, will do that.
“I mean we will fight corruption.
“We will eliminate insecurity.
“We will revamp the economy.
“We will fix the country and so on and so forth.
“But the opposite is the case.
“And the reality is staring at them in the face.
“Number one, they are embarrassed.
“Two, there is nothing they can do about it.
“Three, their leaders are only thinking of elections and 2023.
“So, they are frustrated.
“That is why I said there is a groundswell of frustration and anger.
“It’s like a volcano building up underneath and it is erupting.
“Or it will soon erupt.
“They are actually frustrated.
“And if the party continues this way, I mean Nigeria’s political history is replete with how the parties in crisis get completely worse end in elections right from the first republic.
“If the APC continues the way it is going, it is a sure way to destruction.”
Dr Kari, while reacting to a question that sought to know whether the youth could bring any meaningful change to the way the party was being managed, said: “Unfortunately, I don’t think the youth have the resources to do anything.
“They may have the number.
“But they lack the resources and the organization.
“Even the youth within and outside the party are in disarray.
“The youth also, in most instances, allow themselves to be conscripted into the ongoing crisis.
“The youth are part of the tangential squabbles.”
