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Ismaeel Ahmed is the youngest member of the Board of Trustees of the All Progressives Congress and the Chairman of All Progressives Youth Forum (APYF). He is also the SSA to the President on Social Investment Programme. During an interview on sunrise programme of Channel Television on Friday, 19th June, 2020, he was asked whether he was surprised about the turn of events in APC. He replied, “I am not surprised, I am absolutely embarrassed”. He revealed that since inception about 6 years ago, APC Board of Trustees has been appointed but has not been inaugurated. The National Executive Committee, which constitutionally ought to meet at least once in three months, has met only twice in two years. He said other damming things about the leadership struggle that beset APC and concluded that “we all have failed, myself included”.
In 2015, APC made history by becoming the first opposition party in Nigeria to win an incumbent President and ensured the smooth transfer of power from one party to the other at the federal level. This was one of the high points of our democracy. It obtained a healthy majority in the National Assembly and nearly emasculated the opposition PDP in the gubernatorial election. It had 24 Governors to PDP’s 11. During the 2019 elections, APC made history also. It became the first party in Nigeria that was disallowed to contest a general election in an entire state due to internal crisis. It also entered the ignominious book of records to be the first party that won the entire elections in a state only for the entire elected officers in that state to be sacked by the Supreme Court due to internal squabbles in the party. These happened in Rivers and Zamfara states respectively. In Bayelsa, APC became the first party to win a gubernatorial election but had the losing party sworn in during the swearing-in ceremony because the Supreme Court disqualified the candidates of the APC due to some irreconcilable differences in the Deputy Governor elect’s filed certificates, an issue which many believed was a result of poor screening by the party before presentation of the candidates for elections. It lost other states like Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, etc to the opposition due to incessant internal crises.
A look at the Constitution of the APC reveals that the founders of the party identified factors that breed discontent and crisis in a party to include lack of internal democracy, imposition of candidates and reckless suing of the party to court by members of the party. It provided sufficient bulwarks to shield the party from these maladies. To ensure that there is no imposition of candidates, the Constitution provided that even a concensus candidate must go for election to secure majority of yes votes of the voters. To ensure internal democracy, the Constitution gave the power to set up primary election screening and selection committees to the National Executive Committee. Even the rules and regulations made by the National Working Committee for the nomination of candidates for primary election must be approved by the National Executive Committee before they have the force of law. Any member that tampers with the processes of internal democracy or takes the party to court without first exhausting internal conflict resolution mechanism is liable to be expelled and prosecuted by the party. The power to punish any member resides with the Executive Committees at different levels of the party. Even the policies and programmes initiated by the National Working Committee have to be approved by the NEC before they can be carried out. A breach of any provision of the Constitution of APC is a major offence, indeed the first offence. These provisions were geared towards providing checks and balances on all the organs and offices of the party to avoid the emergence of dictators in the party. Please see Articles 7(viii); 18(i); 19(iii); 20(i)(a),(v); 21(A)(i),(D)(v); 25(B)(i) etc of the APC Constitution.
A look at the above provisions shows that the NWC breached all the APC provisions and usurped the powers of the NEC in respect of the disqualification of Gov. Godwin Obaseki and the other two aspirants. They made rules and regulations guiding the primary election and set up screening and selection committees without the approval or input of the NEC. They expelled some members without the disciplinary input of the NEC. In Management, we were taught that when there is confusion in the highest echelon of an organisation, the confusion spreads throughout the organisation. The National Chairman of APC changed hands four times within a week with two contradictory court orders of coordinate jurisdiction to back up the frivolous claims of both parties.
In our article on this column titled “One party, two systems” on the 15th day of March, 2020, we traced the origin of the confusion in the party to the insistence of the party in adopting both indirect and direct modes of primaries. The party gave each state the freedom to adopt whichever mode it wants. Most of the states that were factionalized adopted different modes of primary elections and fought themselves to destruction in the resultant confusion. Unfortunately, in Edo State, the party is factionalized between the National Chairman and the State Governor. It is sad that both parties resorted to the same tactic that destroyed APC chances in the earlier primary elections. Each side chose different mode of primary election. The state chapter opted for the indirect primary while the national chapter opted for the direct primary and the NEC was not summoned to take definite decision on the appropriate mode to adopt. You do not do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. APC has already made another history before the election. It is the first party in Nigeria to disqualify its sitting governor due to purported certificate manipulation. The same governor that the same party said was the best thing that could happen to Edo people in 2015.
The disqualification of Gov. Godwin Obaseki has exposed the APC leadership as even deficient in political strategy. INEC has already made it clear that the National Chairman of the political party is the only authority that will submit the names of the gubernatorial candidates to it. Oshiomhole would have qualified all of them to go for the primary election and strategically submitted the names of his preferred candidates to INEC at the eleventh hour after being sure that all the parties have submitted theirs thereby closing the window of opportunity for Obaseki to do any maneuvering. But the sense of absolute power will not allow a godfather consult and take an informed reasoned position in a problem. Absolute power has no place in a democracy. At the wake of the disqualification of Godwin Obaseki, Adams asserted that it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Within 48 hours, Adams was suspended as the National Chairman. Osita Okechukwu, an APC chieftain and the DG of Voice of Nigeria, dubbed it good riddance to bad rubbish. The truth is that when it comes to the disqualification of an incumbent Governor by the same party that earlier qualified him, the adage should be “bad riddance to good rubbish”. No matter how bad a sitting governor is, he has something good to bring to the table because he is in charge of the purse and some ardent loyalists. PDP has become a scavenger that is preying on the good rubbish of APC and so far they have been feeding fat on it. Today, APC is a minority party in the whole of the South, with only 6 governors compared to 10 of the PDP not because of the strength of the PDP but because of the weakness of the APC. It’s obvious that APC is on a fast track of retreat and by the assessment of Oshiomhole’s predecessor, John Oyegun, Adams may be the undertaker of APC if nothing is done now. The signs are ominous but the dangers are not insurmountable. The diagnosis and prognosis demand urgent actions to be taken to salvage the situation. In the words of Ismaeel, we cannot allow this to go on, we need to make a change of course immediately.
