Will proposed APC convention mend breakages in the broom?

The war of attrition in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has persisted despite the claim to the contrary by its stakeholders. Senior Deputy Editor, TAIWO AMODU, examines the deft moves by the embattled national chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, to supplant the intrigues of governors and certain aggrieved chieftains. Will Oyegun and his national working committee survive the onslaught of governors?

HIS emergence as pioneer national chairman of the erstwhile main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was greeted with ecstasy and applause. Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, the first civilian governor of Edo State and strong member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in the days of Sani Abacha’s military dictatorship, was perceived by influential chieftains of the party and its ordinary faithful as having the strong character and moral strength to galvanise the APC tendencies ahead of the historic 2015 general elections.

Odigie-Oyegun was not a rookie in party management. The former Permanent Secretary was the chairman of the defunct All Nigerians Peoples Party (ANPP), a once formidable opposition party. Thus, several influential leaders of the APC had seen his emergence as national chairman as quite apt and perfect for the new party. This view was justified from the early stages of the new party, with a high level of camaraderie and direction from its leadership quickly combining to cement its place in history as the first opposition party to defeat an incumbent party at the federal level.

However, the camaraderie that once existed within the APC has taken flight since the post-election season. Few months after the election, those who believed in Oyegun and praised him to high heavens began singing a different tune. With many issues combining to rock the boat of the APC under ‘Captain Odigie-Oyegun,’ things soon became clearer that those who sang ‘hosanna to the son of David’ when Odigie-Oyegun got into the office would soon chant ‘nail him to the cross.’ But insider sources in the party told Sunday Tribune that things did not just go awry between Odigie-Oyegun and some of the stakeholders who were hitherto his allies for no just cause, citing many issues that appeared to have soured the relationship.

Saraki’s emergence as senate president

The APC national chairman’s litmus test came with the emergence of former Kwara State governor, Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President. Current Senate Majority Leader, Senator Ahmed Lawan from Yobe State had been anointed as the choice of the party and also reportedly favoured by the Presidency. But to the consternation of the Odigie-Oyegun-led APC NWC, Dr Saraki was able to rally forces within the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his loyalists in the APC to clinch the exalted position.

Attempts by the party to right the wrong of Saraki’s emergence by sending a list of nominees for principal offices in the Senate was also rebuffed, with Oyegun and his team feigning ignorance at Saraki’s intransigence, a development that made certain forces in the party to point accusing fingers at Oyegun.

While some attribute Saraki’s emergence to deft political calculations, forces within the Presidency and certain chieftains of the party scorned Oyegun for not being able to compel Saraki and his supporters to submit themselves to the party’s position.

Sunday Tribune investigations revealed that few weeks after Oyegun’s victory at the national convention held in 2014, Senator Saraki, with his eyes on the office of the Senate President, started courting the former Edo State governor. Saraki, knowing well that his return to the Senate was a done deal, Sunday Tribune gathered, was able to warm himself into the heart of the national chairman.

Though the APC national chairman attributed his incapacity to wield the big stick to certain encumbrances in the party constitution, it is clear that anti-Oyegun forces in the party will not forgive him for what they considered a not-too-convincing stance on party supremacy.

Speaking last Wednesday, while inaugurating a 10-man committee to review the party’s constitution ahead of its mid-term non-elective convention fixed for April 2017, Oyegun lamented that certain provisions of the party constitution make it impossible for his leadership to enforce discipline in the party.

He said: “Events in the last few months have made me read very carefully the provisions that we have and to my mind, they are so weighted in favour of the problematic people within the party, that it becomes extremely difficult to institute disciplinary procedures.

“I want you to take a very close look at that to make it possible for those who don’t wish the party well but dwell within the party to be speedily neutralised while the details of the cases are being looked into.”

The Kogi gov election debacle

As the stakeholders of the party complained in hushed tones about Oyegun’s style of leadership and his failure to rein Saraki in on the issue of the Senate Presidency, the Kogi State governorship election of November 21, 2015 came in and fanned the ember of anger against the national chairman.

The election in which former governor of the state, Chief Audu Abubakar contested with Honourable James Faleke as his running mate was reportedly won by the party but could not be announced before the death of the candidate.

Following Audu’s death, however, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the election inconclusive, setting a new date to complete an election, which Faleke believed had already been won, maintaining that he should be declared as the governor since the candidate, with whom he was on a joint ticket, died in-between the election.

But the APC had a different plan, as it picked the first runner-up in the governorship primary, Alhaji Yahaya Bello as the governorship candidate for the rerun election, citing constitutional reasons.

With former Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Tinubu as Faleke’s main backer, it became clear that the party’s decision directly affected the Lagos politician who had earlier been piqued by Saraki’s election as Senate President six months earlier. Tinubu had, however, decided to keep silent, as he refused to show open deprecation for the party’s decision to field Bello instead of Faleke. But at a meeting held with the national leadership of the party, which ended in a stalemate in Abuja, the APC chieftain was said to have insisted on Faleke candidature. The party, however, went ahead to pick Bello, who eventually won the rerun election.

Another battle was to ensue over the choice of who to represent Kogi State as minister, with Tinubu reportedly rooting for Faleke, while other forces in the party wanted and eventually got someone else appointed for the position. With these developments that continued to hurt the party’s national leader’s interests, it became abundantly clear how the hitherto cordial relationship between him and Odigie-Oyegun soured over time.

Ondo gov election as final straw?

While the duo of Tinubu and Odigie-Oyegun continued to keep their reported animosity under wraps, informed political observers maintained that sooner than later, things would come to a head and the crisis would become unmanageable. That prognosis was to come to pass in September 2016, following the conduct of the APC governorship primary in Ondo State.

The controversial APC primary, which produced the Ondo State governor –elect, Rotimi Akeredolu, as the party’s standard-bearer was to set Tinubu on war path with Odigie-Oyegun, as Dr Olusegun Abraham, who is believed to be the anointed candidate of the national leader of the party, came third at the primary while Olusola Oke, who later defected to the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and emerged as its candidate came second.

Abraham and many other contenders in the primary had alleged foul play, noting that the delegates list with which the primary was conducted had been doctored in favour of Akeredolu. Accordingly, they had lodged complaints with the party’s Election Appeal Committee chaired by Mrs. Helen Bendega, which called for the cancellation of the primary.

Odigie-Oyegun’s leadership, however, discountenanced the submission of the committee and went ahead to submit Akeredolu’s name to INEC, a development that proved to be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back in his relationship with Tinubu, who was believed to have been instrumental to his emergence as national chairman.

The former Lagos State governor had, this time, picked up a challenge with the party leadership, openly calling for the removal of Odigie-Oyegun based on what he described as the party chairman’s “high handedness and shoddy manner of handling the outcome of Ondo primary.”

While Tinubu, in a strongly worded treatise, accused Odigie-Oyegun of shoddy handling of the petition arising from the controversial primary of the party won by Akeredolu, saying he had to be removed, the Odigie-Oyegun, responding in an equally scathing manner, gave Tinubu a piece of his mind, a development that showed how badly things had degenerated between the duo.

Tinubu in a scathing statement entitled “Oyegun’s Ondo fraud: The violation of democracy in the APC,” demanded for Oyegun’s resignation. The former Lagos State governor said the APC’s democratic credentials had been dealt a big blow by Odigie-Oyegun’s conduct, especially with his handling of the outcome of the Ondo State governorship primary.

He said the APC was a party borne out of the quest for democratic good governance, arguing that the ideology was currently under a critical threat “by those who managed to be in the party but were never part of it. If the party cannot justly govern it, it will find it difficult to establish and maintain just government throughout the nation,” he said.

But Tinubu was not alone in the criticism of Odigie-Oyegun, as former vice-president and chieftain of the APC, Atiku Abubakar, also declared that it was wrong for the party to have set aside a resolution it had reached aimed at resolving the crisis in the party in Ondo State. He noted that since the APC found veritable reasons to review the outcome of the gubernatorial primary election it conducted in the state, and was able to establish valid grounds to cancel that primary election and call for a fresh one, the decision to deviate from its own resolution “is a negation of due process and an unfashionable hollow in democratic best practices.

“It was wrong for the APC to have set aside a resolution it had reached aimed at resolving the crisis in our party in Ondo State. It is a recipe for acrimony and division,” the former vice-president said, adding that “pretending a problem does not exist won’t make that problem go away,” and therefore, advised the leadership of the party to do soul-searching and address why the problem arose and escalated.

According to Atiku, the party leadership should always be guided by respect for the rules, fairness, equity, neutrality and respect for democratic consensus.

But on October 8, 2016, few days after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, the APC national chairman released a full response to the allegations levelled against him by Tinubu over the outcome of the Ondo State governorship primary election.

Oyegun, in a rejoinder he personally signed, entitled “The Facts – 2016 Ondo State APC Governorship Election Primaries,” described the content of the widely publicised statement by the media office of Tinubu as “reckless and baseless.”

Reacting to Tinubu’s statement, Oyegun said he was angered by the false accusation of corruption, rigging the outcome of the primary and overruling the party’s NWC “vote” on the Election Appeal Committee Report.

He noted that: “This reckless and baseless corruption allegation levelled against me is unfortunate and an insult to my person and my hard-earned reputation, which I have strongly maintained. Nobody has the kind of money that can buy my conscience or make me do injury to an innocent man.

“In all the primaries conducted under my watch as national chairman, I have strived to ensure a free, fair, transparent and credible process. The 2016 Ondo State APC Governorship Primary Election was not an exception. There must be internal democracy in the Party and our constitution must be respected by all.”

Oyegun further maintained  that he did not overrule any NWC’s vote of “six against five” in favour of cancelling the primary election results and conducting another primary during the 18th emergency meeting of the APC NWC held from Monday, September 19, 2016 to Thursday, September 22, 2016 in Abuja as alleged by Tinubu.

Mid- term convention

Having survived the onslaught of some of the aggrieved stakeholders and with the perceived backing of the Presidency, the Odigie-Oyegun-led NWC got a respite to manage the party’s national secretariat according to its terms and dictates. With no board of trustees to checkmate it, those uncomfortable with its administrative style could only complain in hushed tones. This was because of the fact that aggrieved chieftains, smarting for a showdown with the chairman, have no avenue to ventilate their feelings, as meetings of the National Executive Committee (NEC) were not convened while inauguration of Board of Trustees (BoT) had been stalemated. The national convention, which was supposed to hold once in two years, was also not convened.

However, anxious party faithful were informed through a press statement penultimate week that a non-elective convention to fill existing vacancies in the party’s national working committee had been fixed for April.

According to the statement signed by the APC’s national publicity secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, the processes leading to the National Convention would commence with the congress to fill vacancies in the state party structures across the country.

“The vacancies to be filled occurred principally from political appointments, deaths and resignations. The congress to fill the vacancies would be followed closely by another congress to nominate delegates into the mid-term non-elective convention of the party.

“The congresses will be followed by the National Caucus meeting and finalised with the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the party, which will consider and set the dates for the National Convention, which is expected to hold not later than April of 2017.”

Sunday Tribune gathered that the scheduled convention will also avail the party the opportunity to amend its constitution and simultaneously ratify the amended sections. Odigie-Oyegun confirmed the move to amend the party’s constitution, as he has since set up a committee headed by the party’s National Legal Adviser, Muiz Banire (SAN) to kickstart the process.

The national chairman specifically directed the Banire Committee to look at the size of the APC Board of Trustees with a view to pruning it and the party membership requirement.

Odigie-Oyegun: Cat with nine lives?

Sunday Tribune gathered that the announcement of a date for the convention was a pre-emptive move by the chairman to ward off likely onslaught by governors, who are already reportedly ganging up to unseat him.

According to a party source, the governors have anointed the immediate past governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole as successor and were already pulling the strings for a national executive committee meeting to be convened where they would demand for the conduct of a national convention.

According to the provision of the APC constitution, a national convention must be convened once in two years; but this provision has since been observed in the breach.  Further checks by Sunday Tribune revealed that even with Odigie-Oyegun’s pronouncement, the governors were still smarting to turn the table against him, as they are determined to pass a vote of no confidence against in him at the scheduled April convention.

But having survived Tinubu’s agitation for his removal and the open disdain for his leadership style by Atiku, will the former Edo State governor supplant the gang-up by the governors?  The answer to the poser will be unraveled in two months’ time.

— Additional reports from MOSES ALAO.