The crisis rocking the Ondo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) lingers as the gladiators stick to their guns, writes HAKEEM GBADAMOSI.
Former interim national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has a Herculean task in the next new few weeks. As the head of a committee set up by the current APC national leadership to reconcile all aggrieved camps in the party, the humble but blunt politician has the arduous task of cementing the widening cracks across board in the APC. Suddenly, he has become an issue in the whole matter.
With the bitter experience of the party in Zamfara, Bauchi, Rivers, Imo and lately, Bayelsa, Akande and his team are bound to be apprehensive about the turn of events in the Edo and Ondo states chapters of the APC. Following the announcement of the date for the governorship polls in both states, the supremacy battle between warring members of the party has become intense and frightening. The raging feud in the Ondo State chapter is more curious, given the frantic efforts by concerned stakeholders to reconcile the warring factions. The factions appeared not ready to shift ground on their individual demands.
Some aggrieved party leaders have drawn a battle line against Governor Rotimi Akeredolu over the ticket of the party for the October 10, 2020 poll. However, he seems unruffled about their antics as he is keeping his plans close to the chest. The lingering crisis dates back to the 2016 governorship primaries that produced Akeredolu as candidate. Other strong contenders in the primaries, including Chief Olusola Oke; Senator Ajayi Boroffice, and Segun Abraham rejected the outcome of the intra party election.
While Oke left the party for the Alliance Democracy (AD) to contest the governorship poll proper, Abraham, who emerged as the first runner-up, headed for the court to challenge the results of the primary election, while Boroffice sat on the fence during the governorship election. However, Akeredolu eventually emerged as the governor of the state.
Three years after, the crisis lingers, with the aggrieved group distancing themselves from Akeredolu and his government without leaving the APC. In fact, they have been sitting on the fence, despite the olive branch extended to the leaders by Akeredolu. But pundits assumed that after the inauguration of Akeredolu, the APC national leadership should have initiated a process of reconciliation between the governor and the aggrieved members. Analysts opined that many of the aggrieved leaders had watched the body language of the national leader of the party, Senator Bola Tinubu for action on the crisis. The removal of the erstwhile state chairman of the party in the state, Honourable Isaacs Kekemeke and the subsequent replacement by his deputy, Honourable Ade Adetimehin, further widened the gulf in the party. The action, according to some party faithful, enabled the governor to take over the structure of the party in the state. With time, the aggrieved factions teamed up to challenge the camp loyal to Akeredolu.
In the 2019 presidential election in the state, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won four out of the nine House of Representatives’ seats and two of the three available Senate seats, while the APC lost in the presidential election. The party, however, survived the onslaught from the opposition in the state House of Assembly election by winning 23 out of the 26 seats in the Assembly.
The APC factions claimed that the loss of the party in the presidential poll was due to alleged anti-party activities by the camp loyal to Akeredolu, accusing it of working for the Action Alliance (AA). However, Akeredolu vehemently denied the allegation, which was used to suspend him from the party. He was left off the hook when there was no proof of the allegations. Disturbed by the protracted crisis, the leaders of the APC in the South-West, including Tinubu and Chief Akande organised a meeting to reconcile Akeredolu and the aggrieved party members. Tinubu, while speaking after the meeting, stressed the need for the leaders to end the infighting so that the APC could consolidate its hold on power in Ondo State.
Months after the parley, the governor called a meeting of the APC advisory committee, which compromised the leaders of the factions to find a lasting solution to the crisis. The committee, headed by Oke, was also tackle the root cause of the disunity in the party. But some aggrieved APC members soon gave two conditions that must be met for peace to return in the state chapter of the APC: dissolution of the Adetimehin-led executive and that the party must present a new candidate for the 2020 governorship poll.
The Unity Forum, led by a former deputy governor in the state, Alhaji Ali Olanusi, turned around to describe the reconciliation moves as a “charade, an aberration, contraption and complete departure from what the APC stands for.” In a statement issued at the end of a meeting, his group condemned the setting up of the advisory council in the APC in the state, claiming that the composition did not reflect the “real membership spread of the party in Ondo State but the ‘yes men’ and cabinet members of the governor of Ondo State, except in one or two local governments.” It, however, called on the national leadership of the party to “do justice to the party in Ondo State instead of searching for peace. This is because if justice is done, peace will naturally return as peace without justice is like a ‘peace of the grave yard.’”
It also kicked against the choice of Chief Akande as the chairman of the National Reconciliation Committee (NRC) of the party and protested against the reconstitution of the 12-member committee, announced by the national leadership of the party.
The development left many members of the party, who craved for an end to the crisis, at a crossroads, noting that the governor’s genuine intention to end the crisis met the brick wall from some leaders, who claimed to constitute “more than 80 per cent of the party members in the state.”
Meanwhile, the secretary of the advisory committee, Kekemeke, appealed to the leaders of the party against making inflammatory statements capable of inciting members against the leadership of the party at all levels. He said: “Those who promote disunity in this party don’t love the party; differences are normal and part of political process but to pull down the house and cause it to collapse is unpatriotic. I have always said that there is no crisis in the Ondo APC but what we have are various interest groups within the party pursing individual interests, which is legitimate. I don’t belong to any forum, the only unity forum that I know that is authentic is the Advisory Council of the APC, put together to unify all tendencies in the party. I don’t belong to any group that is anti-Akeredolu or pro-Akeredolu but I lead a movement that wants to change the future of people of this state. There is nothing like unity group and any forum called unity forum should be pursuing unity and not disunity.”
Similarly, some concerned leaders of the party in the state dissociated themselves from the call for the removal of Akande as the chairman of the reconciliation committee of the party and passed a vote of confidence in him. The leaders, who included Chief Bode Sunmonu; Olufemi Ojo and Chief Mrs Yejide Ogundipe, expressed dismay about a statement credited to the Unity Forum of the party, castigating Akande.
The statement read: “After an emergency meeting of the concerned leaders of APC Forum held on February 13, 2020, members expressed their dismay about the fake communique issued by a unity forum supposedly led by Alhaji Ali Olanusi and unanimously dissociate ourselves from the castigation of our respected elder and leader Chief BisiAkande.”
Analysts posited that Akeredolu›s achievements are enough to secure his second term bid, despite all distractions from his party and commended him for waving an olive branch to the aggrieved members. Speaking on Akeredolu’s achievement and why he deserved a second term, one of his special advisers and former Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Honourable Victor Olabimtan, said: “When he came in, workers were not happy because of the backlog of salary arrears owed by the immediate past administration. The people were lamenting because their roads were so bad. Schools were in bad shapes. Today, the state civil servants are happy; Governor Akeredolu has paid six out of their seven months’ salary arrears. Today, he is one of the governors who have started paying the new national minimum wage. When you talk about massive infrastructure, they call him Mr Road. The road construction Akeredolu has done in three years in the state, no governor has recorded such success within the same period since 1999. This man has achieved so much within a short period and scarce resources.”