IN recent weeks, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has been enmeshed in an internal civil war. Grappling with, among other things, questions regarding the legal validity of actions taken by its Caretaker Committee led by Yobe State governor, Mai Mala Buni, following the ouster of the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee in June last year, especially in light of the judgment of the Supreme Court which recently affirmed the election of the Ondo State governor, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) but nevertheless frowned on the party’s leadership arrangement, members of the party have embraced a binary dichotomy, with each group taking no prisoners. The interim arrangement was initially scheduled to run for six months, ending in December last year, but was extended by President Muhammadu Buhari, the leader of the party, for another six months, and then again extended till December this year. With 2023 undercurrents, leaders of the party are fighting over the propriety of administering the ruling party on an ad-hoc basis, and over the committee chairman and the president being both from the North, as against the party’s convention. This was the prevailing climate of dissent as the party organised ward congresses last week.
Like the ruling APC, the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is also ensconced in an intra-party war. Last week, as part of the frenetic efforts to douse the tension enveloping the party, especially against the backdrop of its recent political haemorrhage, with the ruling party steadily harvesting dissidents from its fold, its Board of Trustees (BoT) set up a committee to interface with internal contending forces with a view to heading into its scheduled national convention as a united platform. The board, which describes itself as the “conscience of the party,” harped on the need to have a free and fair elective convention where a new set of national leaders would emerge. The committee made up of members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), BoT, state governors, former governors, members of the National Assembly and former ministers, has the job of mediating between those seeking the ouster of the party’s national chairman, Uche Secondus, and those in favour of the status quo.
To be sure, crisis, whether at intra-party, inter-party or even governance levels, is a regular, if uncomfortable, feature of democracy. The point, however, is that whatever the fissures and contentions within them, political parties as organisations commanding the levers of political power have a bounden duty to preserve national interest and work for growth and development. They must keep the engine of governance running and avoid hobbling state progress. They must not equate their narrow, partisan interests with the interest of the State at large. Truth be told, since the onset of the crisis within the ruling party, governance in real terms has been all but kept in abeyance. Most of the governors on its platform, seemingly overpowered by emotions regarding the crisis in which they are also implicated as major stakeholders, are no longer governing: they are either almost permanently lodged at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, attending to political matters, or touring certain states for the same purpose. This situation is, to say the very least, unfortunate. It is drastically affecting governance.
Nearly every passing day, the state chief executives give themselves over to party issues and party interests, seeking audience with President Muhammadu Buhari, who himself faces an uphill task with the deadly afflictions that assail the country, from widespread insecurity to economic miasma. Amidst other statistical tragedies, Nigeria is the third most terrorised country in the world, the global capital of poverty, the global capital of out-of-school children, and the worst country in global electricity access. It therefore behooves the governors and the president to focus squarely on addressing the ills that imperil the Nigerian state and make life in the country increasingly short, nasty and brutish. In particular, the APC will do well not to compound issues for Buhari as he grapples with the country’s mounting woes. On his own part, Buhari himself must wake up from slumber and come to grips with the fact that his electoral promises have not been delivered to the populace. Ideally, he should not even have to be alerted to a situation like this.
The fissures within APC are stalling the country’s progress. Party discipline, internal democracy, cohesion and stability are absent. The leadership of the party should restore peace so that it can percolate to the rest of the country. Of course, the PDP offers Nigerians no respite. It is conducting its affairs exactly like the ruling party is doing, and Nigerians are the worse for it. Surely, if there is stability within the major parties, it is likely that the polity and the country as a whole will be stable. The parties have internal mechanisms which aggrieved members can explore. They should exhaust those mechanisms. There must be governance: running around over 2023 is not what the situation in the country calls for. Violence and drumbeats of war, and the placing of party affairs over governance must stop. Whatever disagreements are within the parties should be resolved amicably. Nigeria faces serious existential, internal and external threats and cannot afford to be hard done by a laid-back and distracted political leadership.
Truth be told, this is not what Nigerians bargained for when they opted for the democratic system of governance and threw off the yoke of military rule. Nigerians want peace and progress, and are regretting the indiscipline of the political class. The gladiators should apply the brakes now. The majority of Nigerians have nowhere to run to in case of full-blown war.
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