Yahaya Bello, Ondo governorship primary and APC

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Africa press-Nigeria:

Despite its best efforts to keep up appearances, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is in far worse shape than its leaders publicly acknowledge. Party leaders fear that it will take them time to get over the ripple effects of the sack of the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC), for too many things were done before and during the sack that are certain to create their own aftershocks.

Now the perceptive among them must also entertain the premonition that the composition of the Ondo governorship primary election committee may in fact symptomise the damage already done to the soul of the party, far more than the careless handling of its NWC dissolution. A few days to the Ondo governorship primary, the Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker convention committee announced that Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, would chair the contentious Ondo primary. Mr Bello? And without any chance to object?

Yes, the selfsame Governor Bello, probably the most anti-democratic governor in Nigeria today, and the one who holds science in contempt. Many things are wrong with the decision by the APC to hand over the conduct of the Ondo primary to a governor unworthy of his office and democracy. First, he is an interested party in the primary, being a friend of one of the contestants, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.

It is inconceivable that the APC leaders are ignorant of that fact. Perhaps, it was even intentional, for the men who control the party today are the same band of politicians who fomented rebellion against Mr Oshiomhole and overthrew him with the help of the presidency and the courts. Both the rebellion and the coup were unrelated to any ideological struggles within the party. The same coterie of politicians probably stage-managed the appointment of Mr Bello to make double sure that their agenda does not miscarry.

Second, even if there was no preconceived agenda, the APC ought to be mindful of the image of their party and needed to absolutely disallow someone with dubious democratic and leadership credentials from conducting a primary, any primary election for that matter. Mr Bello does not just exhibit contempt for democracy, he loves intrigues and adores realpolitik.

He has no ideology, sneers at democratic processes, possesses very elastic conscience, believes everybody has a price which he is more than willing to pay, and has perfected the posture of a politician not averse to electoral violence. He is himself a product of the most violent and disorderly governorship election in recent years — the November 2019 Kogi governorship election, which the courts implied they needed the Hubble space telescope to confirm. It is a measure of the detachment of APC leaders, not to say the emptiness of their values and principles, that they disregarded the violent conduct of the Kogi governorship poll to make the beneficiary of that poll the chairman of the Ondo primary election.

If the APC leaders could not be dissuaded by the friendship between Mr Akeredolu and Mr Bello, nor be disturbed by the Kogi governor’s antecedents, what else might convince them that it would be damaging, if not entirely futile, to press ahead with the Ondo primary as they conceived it last week? Could their principles and ideology not prick their consciences? The party of course does not represent everything about Nigeria, certainly not the country’s culture, nor its conscience, nor its politics, nor its principles.

But because they are the ruling party, surely they must feel a little sense of shame to ride roughshod over the country by their flagrant and reckless display of political shenanigans. Perhaps not. However, they are at liberty to throw in their lot with Mr Akeredolu and to do everything to engineer his victory, regardless of oposition. In the circumstance, they have decided to do just that, to ennoble Mr Akeredolu’s candidacy and to consolidate on the game plan conceived by a group of governors in the party for the next few years.

Mr Akeredolu’s backers are more obsessed with giving him the ticket than concerned about his record or democratic and leadership credentials. Their concern is not with the 12 or so other contestants, a few of whom, though still largely untested, appear to possess far more capacity and greater leadership skills and temperament than the governor.

A party with far more principles and vision than the APC would have ensured a level playing field for the contestants, including direct primaries in a state that has become combustive because of the disappointment with the performance of the governor. Instead, the group of plotters, not to say the caretaker committee itself, has become prematurely fixated on other issues pertaining to the politics of 2023. Every pawn on the chessboard is viewed suspiciously, and is liable to be moved not with the ethical care and concern associated with politics and governance but with the rapacity and insouciance associated with sports.

These tendencies — indeed more accurately, this bifurcation — were intrinsic with the APC at birth. They have predictably worsened, and may yet trigger an explosion either before or after the November national convention, as the plots surrounding the Ondo governorship primary are presaging. But neither the splits nor the tendencies were inevitable.

It was okay to have a group of politicians coming together to snatch power from the clumsy hands of predecessors; but once that objective was achieved, the next task was to forge a common identity from the party’s disparate cultural backgrounds and ideologies. Instead, the splits have ossified, and competing ideologies and leaders have arisen to stymie the party’s future and give form and substance to its worst instincts. Unfortunately, these problems will follow the party to the convention and probably dog its future, if indeed a future can be guaranteed.

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