
The September 19 governorship election in Edo State upset the apple’s cart. ONYEKACHI EZE writes that the election may define the direction of the 2023 general elections
Former Imo State governor, Senator Rochas Okorocha’s verdict on his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) after the September 19 Edo governorship election was damming. The senator said the ruling party is on life support and might die in 2023 if something urgent is not done to resuscitate it. “There is no more APC,” he said.
“What we have is respect for President Muhammadu Buhari, that is what is keeping us together. What we have is our respect for the person of President Buhari and we still believe that something can be done.
“That trust and respect are what we still call APC. Outside that respect for President Buhari and the trust and belief that he could wake up one day and correct all these injustices and make it fine, nothing is happening.
“If not that, I don’t think there is anything like APC, because people are beginning to get fed up. In 2023, I think people are going to vote according to their consciences. People are beginning to realise that a political platform is not the best to give you what you need.
People are beginning to be more politically aware that individuals are more important than political parties.” he said. APC has not had it so bad since 2018. From about 24 states when Adams Oshiomhole became its National Chairman in 2018 and now, the party is struggling to control 19 states.
The main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a huge beneficiary of APC’s misfortune and has reaped bountifully from the crisis that engulfed the ruling party.
In 2017 when it held its National Convention to elect the present National Working Committee (NWC), PDP had only 11 states, but it has been able to increase this number to 16, narrowing the gap between it and APC to just three states.
Thus, out of the nation’s 36 states, APC has 19, PDP 16 and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) one. At the moment, PDP has presence in all the six geopolitical zones of the country. The re-election of Governor Godwin Obaseki for another term in office has given PDP full control of all the six South-South states. In the South East, the party is in control of three out of the five states, leaving APC and the APGA to share the remaining two.
PDP has equal number of states with APC in six North-East states. Its poor performance is in South -West and North Central where it has only a state in each zone leaving the other 10 states to APC. It however won two out of the seven North -West states. Okorocha summed it up this way: “…it means we don’t have APC in the South-South and that is a bad sign.
In the South-East, literally we can say we don’t have APC; we just managed, through the ‘Ben Johnson’ way to get one state and that does not make our image good.” The Edo governorship election said so much about 2023 general elections. Prior to the election, Oshiomhole was so confident of winning the state, which incidentally is his home state that he regarded the PDP candidate, Godwin Obaseki as “political lizard.”
The former APC National Chairman had told his interviewer live on national television that Obaseki, “a political lizard” is saying that he is going to end the political relevance of a political lion and you want me to debate? “He can say it to you, because, after all, with three credits, he claimed to go to university. So, he can claim that he is going to teach me a lesson. But his admission day is on Saturday. We will find out who is the teacher.”
Former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, who many believe is nursing presidential ambition in 2023, had made a broadcast to the people of Edo State, urging them to vote for the APC candidate.
On his part, former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar sent a message to Edo people as well, for the PDP candidate. All these underscored the interest shown in the Edo poll. The outcome of the Edo election has put the APC in difficult position.
Although, it hopes to retain Ondo State where the governorship election will hold in about fortnight, but the leadership style of the governor, Rotimi Akeredolu is not making things easy for the party. The governor had been accused of poor performance, and of “running a government of wife, son and in-laws.” He was also accused of increasing tuition fees of state owned high institutions by over 200 per cent.
Jide Ojo, a public affairs analyst, is of the opinion that if APC loses in Ondo on October 10, “then that means there will be diminishing returns on APC, which is why there was a lot of scolding of Oshimhole that under his watch as a National Chairman, the party has lost ground.
They lost in Zamfara, they lost in Rivers, Bauchi, Adamawa, Oyo.” Not a few Nigerians see the outcome of the September 19 election as a sign of what to expect in the 2023.
Like Okorocha stated, people are becoming fed up with the APC. The recent increase in the pump price of fuel and hike in electricity tariff has incensed them about a government that has been inflicting pains on them since it came to power in 2015. The Buhari administration has increased the fuel price from N97 in 2015 to N160 currently. It has also increased the Value Added Tax (VAT) from five per cent to 7.5 per cent; and has imposed stamp duty on Nigerians as well.
The state of insecurity in the country since 2015 is worrisome. From North- East where the previous administration was battling the Boko Harm insurgency, insecurity in the country has escalated to other parts of the country: banditry and kidnapping in the North- West, and Fulani herdsmen attack in the North Central and parts of the southern Nigeria.
The nation’s highways are no longer safe, as kidnappers have taken advantage of the deplorable state of the roads to attack and take travellers for ransom. Even the North where the President has huge support is disappointed by his leadership style.
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) led by former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Prof. Ango Abdullahi, said Buhari has failed woefully to provide security to the citizenry.
“Northern Elders Forum (NEF) is alarmed at the rising insecurity of com munities and their properties in the North. Recent escalation of attacks by bandits, rustlers and insurgents leave the only conclusion that the people of the North are now completely at the mercy of armed gangs who roam towns and villages at will, wreaking havoc.
“It would appear that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and governors have lost control over the imperatives of protecting people of the North, a constitutional duty that they swore to uphold.
“The situation is getting worse literally by the day as bandits and insurgents appear to sense a huge vacuum in political will and capacity which they exploit with disastrous consequences on communities and individuals,” Prof. Abdullahi stated.
The North-East leaders are equally not comfortable with Buhari’s handling of the security situation in the country. Traditional ruler of Boguma, Alhaji Zanna Hassan Boguma,said northerners were being killed by terrorists and armed bandits without a solution in sight. “General Buhari, yes! We northerners voted for him.
The massive votes that came out from North were the reason he is president of this country now,” he stated. Boguma, who recalled how Northern elders lobbied the American government to support Buhari to become President because he promised to fight insecurity and corruption, regretted that “Buhari in five years hasn’t done enough to remedy the situation the previous government was accused of.”
He added that the escalation of attacks by Boko Haram on soft targets, kidnapping on highways, and the systematic dislocation of communities that were living around the metropolis, were issues of grave security concern that had continued unabated.
“As far as Nigeria is concerned, Buhari only appointed our sons into positions but they haven’t done enough in terms of development,” the traditional ruler added. This will affect voting pattern in 2023 even though Buhari will not be on the ballot.
Just like in Edo, voters might be going to the polls to do one thing, vote against any candidate APC will be fielding for the election. The greatest challenge facing APC is leadership. Director General of Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF) Salihu Lukman, said APC members need orientation and education on democratic principles.
He accused the leaders of the party of scheming to dominate one another, adding “If it is about scheming, then no need to expect internal democracy in our parties and we should be ready to accept all the crude practices of manipulating and producing fictitious membership register just ahead of party primary.
“In fact, parties don’t need members. Leaders should exercise the prerogative to assemble members based on capacity to accumulate/procure followership. Once we encourage our leaders to be intolerant, we should just be ready for every known democratic requirement to be undermined.”
Lukman said it is easier to hold general elections in Nigeria than for APC to hold its National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings, and that is why the party is unable to inaugurate its Board of Trustees (BoT), seven years after its emergence as a political party. Twelve concerned members of the party, in a letter to the National Leader, Bola Tinubu, regretted that the APC has “suffered incalculable losses since 2015, and even more crucially losses by sheer mismanagement of our affairs. We are inadvertently giving oxygen to the PDP, a failed political formation that we thought we had castrated in 2015.” In 2019, APC gifted PDP with Zamfara, Rivers and Bayelsa states, due to internal crisis. It lost Bauchi, Adamawa and Oyo states to the PDP during the election.
Sokoto and Benue returned to the party from APC just before the election and remained thereafter. All this are due to the crisis and mismanagement of the affairs of the party. Edo was the case of injustice Senator Okorocha talked about.
Obaseki was denied the APC ticket simply because of his disagreement with Oshiomhole. Few people gave PDP chance to recover so soon after it lost the 2015 presidential election. The following year, the party was dogged by leadership crisis, which lasted for more than one year. The crisis caused a great havoc to PDP’s image and structure, both at national and state levels.
There were avalanche of defections in most states. Sullivan Chime who served eight years as governor on PDP platform, declared that the party was dead and about to be buried. Former President of the Senate, Ken Nnamani also left and joined APC. Some serving national and state Assembly members equally joined the ruling party. The hope for its revival was the July 12, 2017 Supreme Court judgement.
Also, the successful conduct of National Convention five months later helped the party’s come back. Despite the number of aspirants to the chairmanship position, and the fear that the party might implode thereafter, PDP was able to mitigate the post-convention backlash and came back stronger. Prince Uche Secondus, who emerged PDP National Chairman, promised to re-brand the party and bring it to winning ways.
He quickly embarked on rebuilding process, reaching out, not only to aggrieved members, but also to the party’s founding fathers who appeared disillusioned in the management of its affairs. He told whoever that wants to listen that he would make PDP a grassroots patty. “This is the time we must be ready to go down to the grassroots, to do away with the style of gathering in Abuja, because I believe that the campaign structure will be a smart and very effective one.
“We are aware of what happened in 2015, where we gathered at Legacy House in Abuja (PDP Presidential Campaign Office) for everyday meeting but there was no result. We reject that. It will never happen again,” he assured.
Though it has 16 states already in its kitty, to consolidate on this and win the 2023 presidency, PDP should avoid complacency. Either by design or compulsion, Nigeria is practising two-party system. The alternative to the ruling party, if it fails the people, is the main opposition party.
That was how APC came to power in 2015. To win the 2023 presidency, all the organs of the party need to work together. The solidarity of the PDP governors during the Edo governorship was a morale booster.
If such could be replicated in next month’s Ondo governorship and other subsequently offseason elections, 2023 presidential election is for PDP to lose. The Edo governorship is a proof that with deployment of technology, elections in Nigeria could be credible.
The uploading of result from polling units direct to the INEC result portal did not only show the integrity of the process, it ensured that the original result was not tampered with before it gets to the collation center. PDP believed it won the 2019 presidential election based on its computation of results it obtained from INEC portal, although the commission said it did not transmit the result electronically.
If there could be electronic transmission of election results in 2023, then the prediction of Senator Okorocha about APC will surely come to pass.