Ogun APC crisis: It’s about 2023

ANY informed observer of the crisis that has engulfed the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State since the conduct of the gubernatorial primaries would have come to the inevitable conclusion that it is about the jostling for the soul of the party in the South-West of the country ahead of the 2023 presidential election. Why 2023 when 2019 is not yet sorted? That is the question anyone who is not familiar with the way of politicians will ask. Politicians believe that the evening starts from the morning and they prepare as such. The Minister for Works, Housing and Power, Raji Fasola, let the cat out of the bag during the week when he counselled in Ibadan that the Yoruba should vote Buhari in 2019 so that power can return to the South-West in 2023. Only politicians think this way. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic society with an estimated 250 ethnic nationalities. In 20 years of present dispensation, the South West had produced the president for eight years and by 2023 would have produced the Vice President for another eight years. How do you promote a united and safe country if the South-West produce the president so soon? But that is the way of politicians.

This is the explanation for the farcical war that is shredding the APC in Ogun State and threatens the chances of the party of winning the presidency in 2019.A wise man would have thought that the APC leaders would focus on winning in 2019 to make 2023 a possibility. If the APC loses in 2019 to Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, it would be foolhardy to think the party will have one in a million chance of returning to power in 2023. The APC,by its conduct in the last four years, has clearly shown that it is unlikely to remain as a party if it loses the 2023 election with what it is experiencing across the country. The party has crisis in 22 states, only three months to a presidential election. Three of its governors, those of Kwara, Sokoto and Benue have exited. Only two short of the five whose exit in the build-up to the 2015 elections cost the PDP the presidential election. Yet, the party is pursuing a hardline posture that is putting the governors of Ogun, Imo, Zamfara and to a lesser extent Ondo, Yobe, Nassarawa, Niger and Plateau at the verge of exiting the party. This is not counting the number of senators, members of the House of Representatives and State Assemblies as well as notable party members who have exited the party.

The drama is Ogun State is daunting because a reconstruction of the controversy clearly shows that something is amiss.While the governorship primary is in dispute,the national leadership of the party unilaterally replaced the names of four winners in the National Assembly primaries. The argument of returning some members to the National Assembly is untenable because the party has wilfully replaced many legislators who stood by the party at the moment of crisis.The arbitrariness in the decision of which legislator to retain and which one to replace has only confirmed that there is no pretext to democracy and fair play in the APC.

In the most bizarre of the arbitrariness, a sitting member of the House of Representative, Mikhail Kazzim, was replaced by the son of Chief Olusegun Osoba. The legislator had defeated Osoba’s son at the primaries. He had earlier defeated Osoba’s son at the general election in 2015 when Osoba’s son contested on the platform of the Social Democratic Party(SDP).These are coincidences that should not be ignored by the public. When a party insists on not putting its popular candidates forward for a general election and insists that it will win the election, the party must be banking on rigging the election, which is the concern I have about the arrogance with which the APC under Comrade Adams Oshiomole has been handling the affairs of the party.

The APC in the South-West has indeed become a shadow of its old self so much that the unfolding drama in Ogun State should give the handlers of the party at the national level serious concern. Unlike in the 2011 and 2015 round of elections, when the party was the darling of the people, the performance of the party in recent elections are indicative of how much those credited as having control of the South West in the party have lost ground. The party won with barely 4,000 votes in the gubernatorial election in Ekiti State. It won with barely 400 votes in Osun State even after entering into alliance with an old foe like Senator Iyiola Omisore. In both instances, the party faced serious allegations of election rigging and vote buying.

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This is why anyone conversant with the politics of the South West will marvel at the logic in the APC in which the governor that is assumed of capable of giving it  the most assured votes is targeted for elimination in 2019- all  in the parochial quest for 2023.  The politics of Ogun State stands on a tripod. The Ogun Central senatorial zone which has the largest concentration of votes clearly identified with Senator Ibikunle Amosun whose infrastructure development of the state capital remains unparalleled by any other state in the South West. Ogun West that has the second concentration of votes is enamoured with Amosun because he has fanatically supported their fight to produce the state governor for the first time in the 42 year history of the state

It is this same sentiment that those supporting Senator Adeola Yayi sought to exploit when they urged him to cross over from Lagos State to become the governor of Ogun State. The Ogun East from where Dapo Abiodun who is been promoted to become the governor is the den of the PDP. The trio of Senator Buruji Kashamu, former Governor Gbenga Daniel and  theAdebutu family has so locked up the zone that APC does not stand a fair chance of winning even if it picks its candidate from there. Between Kashamu and Adebutu who distribute transformers and cars to communities and politicians in the area like pure water, it is a sheer waste of time for APC to place its hope on a candidate that lost the senatorial election in the zone, including his local government in 2015.

It is therefore strange that the APC leadership at the national level is cutting its nose to spite its face. A DapoAbiodun does not offer the party a fair chance in the state unless it is supported by Amosun. To think otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking. It is therefore only logical to think that promoters of Dapo Abiodun like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will rather the APC lose Ogun State than have Amosun have his way which could keep him in line for the 2023 contest or at least, make him a voice that could injure their presidential ambition in 2023.But I think APC needs to win 2019 before such aspirations can remain alive. The loss of Ogun State and its reverberation across the South West and the nation may mean the presidential aspirants for 2023 may lose the battle as early as 2019.

• Ogunpola writes from Ilaro, Ogun State.