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Horses, chicken, kangaroos

Members of Reconciliation Committees set up by the All Progressives Congress (APC) are receiving earfuls of grievances, threats and ultimatums all over the country. The…

Members of Reconciliation Committees set up by the All Progressives Congress (APC) are receiving earfuls of grievances, threats and ultimatums all over the country. The Daily Trust on Sunday undertook a sweeping survey of the nature of the challenges which these high-powered committees have been asked to deal with. The language in which they are expressed is quite picturesque: horses that have bolted kangaroo primaries and chicken coming home to roost. Even if you are in that class of optimists who believe that anything is possible in Nigerian politics, you may sigh and offer a little prayer after reading the kaleidoscope of deeply complex issues that have prompted the party to dispatch governors to fix problems created by other governors. A cynic will shake his head and see irreversible tragedy facing a ruling party. As it is in the nature of incurable optimism and irredeemable pessimism, reality does not hug them. APC’s last-ditch salvage operation may pull a bit of ground towards it, but it may also turn out to be one of those solutions that make problems worse.

For a start, consider the peacemakers. Governors, the most powerful clan in our political parties, have wrought more damage to the APC than any other interests in a free-for-all that the party has become. Some ran all the internal processes for candidate selection exactly as they will their households, particularly if they have no wives that will draw firm lines. Others ran into trouble and resistance as they attempted to wield powers which they take for granted as perks of the office. Many of the peacemakers will be attempting to settle raging quarrels in other states which bear uncanny resemblance with those they left behind at home. They will be hard put to recommend to colleagues (and a party leadership barely holding on), solutions they will not accept themselves. If conflict resolution skills and/or huge amounts of public funds could resolve most of the problems they will deal with, the peacemakers would have solved their own problems. Sending a thief to catch a thief does not always work: sometimes you just bring two thieves together.

The natures of the grievances which reconciliation committees are expected to address are not amenable to resolution either. Most relate to complaints of subversion of rules and processes, high-handedness, corruption, impunity and a dozen more infringements of rights of members who hoped to fly the party’s flag at next year’s elections. We are way past the date allowed for substitution of candidates by parties, except for positions of Governors, so reliefs in the form of replacement of candidates to address injustices are not on the cards. Many of the legions of the aggrieved have gone to court, and are likely to see more possibilities of getting justice from expensive and only marginally more reliable judiciary than a party that now needs their forgiveness so that others can win elections. These aspirants risk exposing themselves to double jeopardy because their party does not allow members to seek judicial redress over its decisions. It is unlikely that there will be a stampede to withdraw cases from courts at this hour, even if the party swears with all the holy books that it will be fair. Aspirants who have emerged through disputed processes have since settled down to the task of preparing for the elections, towing a retinue of supporters who may had  been indifferent or even hostile to them before they became candidates. Replacing them, even if it is allowable by the law, will create a host of new problems, many of them similar in effect to those being addressed.

So what leverage can the party’s peacemakers offer to the aggrieved to heal gaping wounds? Well, a huge amount of money could be paid to many of the aggrieved who spent fortunes to purchase forms and support, print posters and erect billboards and do everything in and outside the books to out-maneuver other aspirants. There are at least two problems here. The party will need to spend a huge amount from the billions it raised from sale of expensive forms, funds it dearly needs for the elections. Then there is the fact that many of the grievances are being fueled by a lot of wealth and power, in some instances far bigger than those the party can plug holes with. So doling out money to the problem is not really a solution. What about promises of appointments when the party wins elections and forms governments? This leverage is crippled by treacherous history and unreliability of the promises of party leaders. National leadership of a party fighting for air from damaging assaults from powerful interests within the party are hardly in a position to provide undertakings to prevail on newly-elected people to embrace opponents and sundry enemies.

Should the party deploy a more potent peacemaking instrument than governors whose hands are dripping with responsibility for bringing their party to this sorry state? The question to ask this question is, does this exist? President Buhari is the last card a party whose leaders are its principal liability owing to their thin moral and political credentials could play. The problem here is that President Buhari does not have a strong record of getting his hands soiled with his party’s problems. He had thrown Tinubu at its multi-faceted problems earlier. The wilier Jagaban remained aloof when he realized that weak political will behind the offer could burn his fingers beyond the damage he had made himself in creating the problems. National chairman Oshiomhole is at the receiving end of a distant president and vicious internal opposition that has read the president better than him.

The APC’s opposition may draw conclusions that the ruling party has shot itself all over itself, and it will only limp into defeat in 2019.That may very well be so, but it will be wrong to assume that its internal problems alone will drown it. From the gruesome mass suicide of Zamfara State to the damaging rifts in a delicate area of the South East, to the shifting sands of the South West and then  to the battle grounds of the North, the APC is showing signs that it is incapable of recovering enough to win the elections. The opposition PDP itself is not exactly a model of cohesion and tranquility, and it is behaving as if its victory is assured by the disarray in the ruling party. Not all of the APC’s losses are gains of the PDP, and three months is enough time to turn fortunes around, or fritter them away. At this stage, however, APC loyalists should worry over the possibility that its damage control measures will cause more damage because they are poorly-timed provocations.

 

Jamila Abubakar wrote this piece from Abuja

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