Ben Nanaghan: APC’s Imminent Demise

Peace loving Nigerians breathed a sigh of relief on July 31st 2013 when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the official registration of the All Progressive Congress (APC).

This is because APC leaders had threatened to bring Abuja to a halt and throw the whole country into chaos if their “progressive” party was not registered by INEC. So APC was wisely registered through blackmail and open threats as one of Nigeria’s political parties to avoid another boko haram resurgence  and chaos.

The registration of more political parties is a very wise decision by INEC. More political parties enable the political space of a nation to be energized. It stretches political imagination, activities and awareness to every nook and cranny of the country for active and massive political participation. It also affords voters a wide range of choices with an unlimited field to choose from. This system of party plurality enables democratic choice and rules out uniparty oligarchy and dictatorship.

However the euphoria that greeted this registration was challenged by some notable Nigerians who did not see or perceive anything progressive about the APC.

The American progressive movement became very active from the late 19th Century  to the first decades of the 20th century. The progressives, mainly intellectuals and social reformers sought to address those economic, political and social problems arising from the industrial revolution that swept through Europe and the Americas. In the political arena the movement was associated with great minds like Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and philosophers like Herbert Croly and Charles Merriam.

The American progressive opened up the old system and introduced primary elections referendum and many more democratic inroads into governance. Woodrow Wilson concluded that “All that progressives ask or desire is recognition of the fact that a government is a living thing and not a machine” That is government dynamism.

And so who are the progressives in the APC? The All Progressive Congress Party is an assemblage of three main political parties.

The three political parties which have now subsumed their identities to form the new APC party are (i) The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) (ii) The Congress for Political Change (CPC) and (iii) All Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP). Other attachees of the new party are Governors Rochas Okorocha and Rotimi Amechi of Imo and Rivers State who have not officially resigned from their various parties. Even though the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) is not a member of APC, Governor Okorocha has succeeded in smuggling the APGA logo and flag into the APC logo.

The ACN is the senior partner in this triple alliance and the main ACN sponsor and leader was chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Chief Bisi Akande was chairman and Lai Mohammed was ACN’s spokes man.

Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a former 2-time governor of Lagos state and one of the founding leaders of APC. He is touted as the main sponsor of the alliance as he parades a very deep pocket with an endless chain of financial and business empire. Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu is even by the longest stretch of the Imagination neither a progressive nor a democratic.

This is because his former party the ACN never practised participatory democracy as the voters never really mattered in their calculations. The former ACN leader never delegated his sole prerogative of handpicking candidates for both major and minor electoral positions.

Both Chief Bisi Akande and his boss have on several occasions publicly defended ACN’s policy of candidates selection rather than going through the universally accepted democratic norm of primary elections.

ACN could best be described as a relic of an ancient traditional association which accords the elderly unquestionable loyalty and followership. Its elections are won though the Machiavellian strategy of the “end justifies the means”.

I can not contest Alhaji Bola Tinubu’s pontification as the present leader of the Yorubas because of the enormous resources at his disposal but definitely not the leader of a democratic political party of the 21st century.

The Former ACN leader is comparable to an 18th century Russian despotic czar who rules in the “best interest” of his subjects without the slightest input from the ruled. This is over 300 years ago. Democracy demands participatory citizenship, engaged and educated electorate with a mindset of dynamic reformism which knows that power resides only in their hands and definitely not in the hands of the leaders.

Chief Bisi Akande who is APC’s acting chairman does not have much credibility, either. The Chief who claims that Nigerias only problem is president Goodluck Jonathan has forgotten so soon that he is part of those who created Nigeria’s problems. Chief Akande was sent to jail for curruption as governor of Oshun State and he is still brave enough to lie to the nation that the hardworking and transformational President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is Nigeria’s only problem. Chief Akande’s nomenclature of President Goodluck Jonathan as a kindergarten president is unfortunate and regrettable. When did youthfullness become a crime in Nigeria. President Jonathan is the youngest ever elected president in Nigeria and so far he has performed creditably even beyond critics’ expectation. Chief Akande’s reference to President Goodluck Jonathan as a kindergarten President and   his reign as kindergarten governance is not only diversionary and distractive but senile and incongruous. After all the kindergarten is a learning process while Akande’s senility, and expired mentality is only waiting for “Godot” to give account of his corrupt stewardship on earth.

The most vituperative and gutters snipe personality that ever emerged from the ACN stable and now the National Publicity Secretary of APC is Lai Mohammed. Lai Mohammed, whose only qualification for the APC job is his evil tongue which targets only President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP. The “local boy” who gets a notch up in remunerations for each dastardly blast at the nation’s president is thus encouraged for the sake of lucre.

My observation is that APC is in a damn haste to contest the 2015 election. But if the hurriedly packaged party can take one of many advises: it is to shelve their plans for 2015 elections and repackage and reposition their party by a massive training programme starting with Lai Mohammed and ending with the senile and unthinking brains in APC.

A four –semester Masters Degree programme in International campaign Management or  International Relations and Strategic Studies would have repackage, redefined and refined Lai Mohammed from the “dust laden” local boy he is to a close range with great and  renowned campaign experts like David Axelrod, Stephanie Cutter, David  Plouffe, Steve Hilderbrand, Jim Messina etc.

In the 2008 American Election, David Axelrod and his assistant, Stephanie Cutter almost recreated Barack Obama, with Gods permission from a “nobody” to become America’s first black President. And in 2012 David Plouffe, Hilderbrand and  Messina did the magic even though President Obama messed up the Presidential debates.

My advice is for APC to train and retrain the very rustic and outmoded national publicity secretary as it is only a drowning man that grabs any available straw. After good training under the world’s best campaign managers, Lai Mohammed would be taught to tap his latent potentials instead of seeking the unreasonable and easy way out of every problem by guttersnipping.

General Muhammedu Buhari is the founder and chairman of the now defunct CPC in the APC merger. General Buhari has never pretended to be a democrat even when his strange bedfellow and acting Chairman of the APC lied that the inflexible and austere general is now a democrat and progressive too. Most of the APC leaders do not even understand what Democrat and progressive mean if not they wouldn’t have called Gen. Buhari a Democrat and Progressive.

Gen. Buhari who is a dyed-in-the-wool Islamic fundamentalist was categorized as “perpetually unelectable” in 2010 by Mallam Nasir El-Rufai because “he is an ethnic irredentist and a religious fanatic”. On Monday, May 14, 2012 Gen Buhari in his usually pugnacious and garrulous style threatened that “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015, by the grace of Allah the monkey and the baboon would all be soaked in blood”

Three days later the President of Arewa Youth Forum, one Abdulkareem Tijani, Condemned Buharis “Monkey & baboon threat” by saying “Buhari by the statement he made before the  election in 2011 precipitated the (boko haram) violence  that followed the 2011 Presidential election and till now Nigeria has not recovered from the same”.

Truly, the metamorphosis of boko haram from a provincial machete-wielding, bare-footed, rag-tag army to a sophisticated bomb throwing modern force did not surprise those who observe Nigeria’s political landscape with a microscope.

The crating of Alhaji Umaru Dikko in a “Diplomatic Coffin” by Gen. Buhari in 1984 is one of the greatest diplomatic blunders of the General till date. This blunder revealed Gen. Buhari’s mental network, capacity and life style. A militaristic life of violence, of chaotic and disorderly impatience, a chronic inability to observe a natural sequence of unfolding events, an un-intellectual  urge to solve problems by force without observing the natural current of events.

My humble advice to the APC family is to shelve their plans for the 2015 election as it will be a monumental disaster for the party because less than 18 months to the election APC has no structures on the ground and even plans to elect party officials in December 2013 about 12 months to the elections proper.

APC must heed this one good advice because Gen. Buhari will make good his monkey and baboon bloodbath threat if they partake at this shoddy pace and lose in the end. Gen. Buhari’s well chosen metaphor which implies that the south and the north will be soaked in blood if he loses  his 4th presidential election came 2015, is another pointer to the fact that the General is neither a democrat nor a progressive. In fact his life style in totality is parallel to both:

If the aim of APC is to win the People’s Democratic Party in 2015 after so short and shoddy a preparation, let them rather divert their enormous resources to charity to better the lots of beggars and destitute instead of sending them to their  states of origin with  unpalatable ripple effects  that can   tear this country into shreds.

The PDP surely is not prefect in any way and they have never pretended to be. The party is riddled presently with life-threatening problems. But PDP with their characteristic fence-mending records will surely swim out of this murkey waters. The PDP problem was orchestrated by the 5 Rebellious Northern Governors” all of who want to be presidents of Nigeria as if it is their birthright.

Whether Nigerians like it or not PDP is more democratic and even progressive than APC.

Primary election is one of the basic and authentic   litmus tests for democracy in the developed world. PDP can not be faulted in the execution of their primary elections. APC does not believe in primary elections. The selection method in ACN and CPC confirms this. APC is undeniably an Islamic party as all the 15 Executive members to be sworn-in, in Dec. 2013 are Muslims. The PDP on the other hand is a very good blend of Christians and Muslims. While APC believes that only the North can govern Nigeria, the PDP is flexible in its policy on Presidential candidates.

While leadership of APC has militarist and authoritarian tendencies, that of the PDP is very humble, humanitarian and democratic.

There is good reason to believe that education will be out of reach for the common man if APC takes over at the centre. For instance in all ACN states, education is now a very rare and unaffordable commodity for the common man. In Lagos State University fees were hiked from N25,000.00 to N250,000 per session. University Administrators and lecturers do not benefit from this wicked increase as all “excess resources” are channeled to expanding ACN’s  political  base in other  geo political zones.

Contrarily the Federal Government Universities still pay a paltry fee of about N20,000.00  per session.

The APC already carries the seeds of its internal destruction which will encapsulate the party at the appropriate time because of irresolvable contradictions and differences among the merged parties.
APC as it is, is a conglomeration of anachronistic incongruities as Buhari’s immanent characteristic violence, chaos, Islamic fundamentalism, inflexibility etc will doubtlessly cascade the much anticipated process of APC’s dismemberment and imminent demise.

Written By Ben Nanaghan
E-mail: [email protected]

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