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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
All is now set for the March 26 much-awaited epic national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scheduled for Eagle Square, Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The conduct of the nearly elusive convention, will obviously come as a very big relief to many stakeholders, chieftains, leaders and members of the party after several postponements of the exercise.
APC has been bogged down by intense bickering, anxiety, apprehension, and rancour since the governor Mai Mala Buni-led APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) was constituted two years ago to conduct a convention that will usher in new national leadership after the sack of the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC).
In the past two years of the turbulent, but productive leadership of the Governor Buni-led Caretaker Committee, the ruling party has gone through all manner of challenges. It has been a stormy story of the good, the bad and the ugly.
It was two years of political theatrics, mutual suspicions, intriguing power play, horse-trading, unending protests and counter-protests and indeed the survival of the fittest. Added to all those are the litany of litigations, endless schemes to wrest the party structure, and an admixture of failures and successes of the ruling party.
Tomorrow’s convention will mark an end to the two years of endless struggles and supremacy battles between the founding fathers, leaders, and critical stakeholders of the party against the members of Progressive Governors.
Several physical and legal impeachment plots to terminate the tenure of the Caretaker Committee were hatched and aborted; there were situations of hopelessness, police occupation of the national secretariat and at other times total anomie in the party.
In the build-up to the convention, feathers were ruffled in the orchestrated attempts and schemes to wrest power from the Governor Buni-led Caretaker Committee over sundry allegations of administrative malfeasance, and particularly the perceived insincerity of the party’s leadership to conduct the convention.
While Governor Buni survived the recent bloodless coup, his secretary, Senator John James Akpanudoedehe, had passed through the eye of the needle to wriggle out of the unanimous and overwhelming vote of no confidence passed on him by the 10-member Governor Sani Bello-led Caretaker Committee during the recent turbulence in the party.
Gladiators laid land mines against one another and egos were bruised, even as disagreements over speculated consensus arrangement and zoning among many other factors constituted teething problems that brewed a fresh crisis so intense to threaten the convention.
There were also endless disagreements in deciding the anointed candidates from zonal stakeholders in almost all the geopolitical regions, with party chieftains from Bauchi, comprising former Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and former governor Mohammed Abubakar, former and serving lawmakers, protesting the emergence of North East candidates.
It was the same rancour in the South-south where two Ministers squared up against each other over the choice of National Vice Chairman (South-south) among two aspirants, Victor Giadom and Yekini Nabena.
In the South East, the slot of Deputy National Chairman (South) has been a subject of contestation between Senator Ken Nnamani, speculated as the presidential anointed candidate, and other detractors.
However, all these contending issues may have been relegated to the dustbin of history with the religious implementations of the timetable and schedule of activities released by the Caretaker Committee.
Already, almost all the unprecedented number of aspirants have been screened without disqualification of any of the party members that purchased the expression of interest and nomination forms, despite the stringent conditions set by the national leadership of the party.
For many political watchers, the convention is a slight departure from the party’s previous ones in terms of the geometric spike in the number of aspirants that purchased the nomination forms. The chairmanship position alone recorded a historic seven chieftains jostling for the position.
Interestingly, while consensus was smoothly adopted and used in the party’s previous conventions, the build-up for this one has shown that this current one may be the most competitive convention due to the uncertainty in the fate of the aspirants emerging as a consensus candidate.
Expectedly, names of certain aspirants were initially peddled as President Buhari’s anointed candidate, ranging from Kwara-born Mustapha Saliu, former governor of Nasarawa State, Tanko Al-Makura, Niger Senator, Sani Musa before Senator Abdullahi Adamu persisted for a long time until this week Wednesday when the APC governors conceded the ticket to President Buhari.
To confirm the seriousness of tomorrow’s exercise, different sub-committees have already given pleasant reports to confirm how sacrosanct the convention has become.
Again, that the security report ahead of the exercise is not acerbic is a confirmation that the Eagle Square venue is ready to host the thousands of delegates that will participate in the convention.
Good enough, the party leaders have also been very pragmatic, strategic, and meticulous in ordering the Screening Committee not to disqualify any aspirant. It was a deft move to checkmate the possibility of any of the aspirants instituting legal action that might scuttle the convention.
“We made recommendations that all the aspirants that did not make the unity list must get a refund of the money spent to purchase the forms. Some may think that such decision may affect funding the convention, but whoever tells you that fund is a challenge for this convention is not telling you the truth. All the governors that accepted to head the committee will automatically bankroll the needed fund for that committee.
“For instance, the governor in charge of security sub-committee should be able to finance it. I don’t think the fund required for security will be up to N100 million and what is that money to the governor heading the committee?
“We have also advised reduction in the number of delegates for this kind of confirmation convention coming up this weekend. There is no need flooding the venue with delegates for a carnival-like convention,” a chieftain of the party told Daily Sun.
On the flip side, the build-up to the convention also attracted some comic relief with many jokingly alluding to a possible takeover of the ruling party’s leadership by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when former members of the opposition party, take charge of the leadership of the party.
“It is nauseating that the joiners from PDP have now taken over the APC after founding members sacrificed so much to build the party. Where were Adamu, Nnamani among other names in the proposed unity list when we took bullets from them at the formative stage of the APC?
“What it means is that the progressive ideals of the APC will certainly be sacrificed to the dogs with these joiners in charge and I can confirm to you that many founding members of the APC are not happy with the decision of Mr President to anoint and adopt Abdullahi Adamu as the national chairman of our party and Senator Nnamani as Deputy National Chairman, almost the second in command of our party, let alone Iyiola Omisore touted as the incoming National Secretary,” a chieftain of APC complained to Daily Sun in confidence.
Apparently, the pre-convention activities have not been all smooth sailing. Apart from the governors hijacking the nomination of those that emerged as members of the National Working Committee (NWC) and even zonal leaders, scarcity of accommodation equally posed serious challenges following the booking of almost all the hotel spaces within the city centre.
Again, the seeming misunderstanding and divisions in the ranks of the APC governors, the near-collapse and complaints trailing the consensus, endorsements, and zoning arrangements initially, equally posed a serious threat until they were sorted out during this week’s meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and members of the Progressive Governors.
Although some aspirants, like the former governor of Borno State, Senator Ali-Modu Sheriff (SAS) voluntarily withdrew from the race, citing zoning arrangements as their reasons, others either changed their initial desire for lower position or continued like the former governor of Zamfara State, Abdullaziz Yari, who threw his hat into the ring, claiming that he is not an apostle of micro-zoning the chairmanship position to the North Central geopolitical zone.
However, the outcome of the meeting between the governors and President Buhari, may have provided light at the end of the tunnel with the agreement to refund the aspirants that purchased nomination forms their expenses, regardless of the pains of sacrificing their ambition and other commitments they have made.
Speaking after the meeting with President Buhari, chairman of the Governors Forum and Kebbi State governor, Atiku Bagudu, revealed the decision to pledge total support for President Buhari’s consensus option especially on who becomes the national chairman of the party.
“Our party is a democratic party, we will always urge consensus, we will urge respect for the decisions of the party because the distribution of political party offices here has been approved by the highest organ of the party, the Caretaker Committee because they were acting in their capacity as the National Executive Committee of the party.
“But where people still choose to go against the grain, whatever the party constitution allows them, we wouldn’t do anything undemocratic. Mr President has always urged consensus for all positions because consensus is in accordance with the democratic tenets once you have leaders who are established, who are working towards the same goal.
“Yes, we might have our individual differences, like once carefully explained by Governor El-Rufai, but on the principle of ensuring that we get leadership that will hit the ground running, we are united, and to that extent, we will support any process that will lead to consensus and the emergence of leaders without the need for an election,” he said.
He equally reassured of the unlikelihood of any disagreement on the choice of candidates during the convention, stressing that, “the governors are united. The governors are unanimous in support of Mr President. The governors are unanimous in the support of the Caretaker Committee, we commend their efforts.
“Naturally, there will be hiccups, but we have overcome them and we are a human organization, which is bound sometimes to generate emotions and anxiety, but we are united and unanimous and by God’s grace, we will have a very successful and peaceful national convention,” he promised.
Interestingly, regardless of whatever impression one may be harbouring against the Governor Buni-led Caretaker Committee, it will not vitiate the fact that they made valuable progress in repositioning the ruling party and putting it in the proper stead to consolidate power beyond 2023.
In the words of Salisu Na’inna, APC’s National Director of Publicity; “unknown to the distractors, the APC Caretaker Committee had operated as a single team. “It shrewdly lined up activities that paved way to the big day: party leaders were elected at congresses at ward, local government and state levels. The congresses were followed by intensified preparations which were preceded by implementing initiatives that strengthened the party.
“The initiatives include the revalidation of the register of party members which was followed by the registration of new members. The APC now has 41.7 million registered members nationwide. This membership size is second only to that of the Chinese Communist Party, which had 95,148,000 registered members in 2021. The Mai Mala Buni-led CECPC and other committed party members have turned the barely nine-year old political party into the largest in Nigeria, some say, in Africa.
“The several other important initiatives of the Caretaker Committee were paying debts owed by the party; procurement of decent office accommodation; ending litigations caused by intra-party jostling; amending and expanding the party’s constitution; attracting new leading lights into the party, including two state governors, numerous lawmakers and other big shots that are both popular and an asset to the party.
“The party re-engineering work done by the Caretaker Committee enhanced the resilience and bolstered the confidence of the party. The APC has been transformed into the most awesome political machine that is capable of easily winning future general elections in Nigeria. Its manifesto is reformative. And its habitual inclusiveness in the social, political, and economic spheres gives the APC the distinctiveness of the only truly progressive, people-oriented, party in Nigeria,” he said.
