Yes, APC Is Ready For Leadership -By Ethelbert Okere

If we go by the fact that Nigerians overwhelmingly gave the All Progressives Congress (APC) the mandate to preside over their affairs as a result of disenchantment with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), then it would be unfair to the same Nigerians to insinuate that just in five (5) months, they are reverting to the same PDP “because nature abhors a vacuum”. I am referring to Olusegun Adeniyi’s back page column in Thisday of Thursday, November 5, 2015, wherein the author earlier opined that because the APC has failed to forge its own distinct identity, “the PDP is gradually but steadily imposing itself in the people”.

Haba! Nigerians are not that daft. Minus a few restless members of the political elite, the intelligentsia and their agents in the media, Nigerians, generally, are known for their uncommon comportment even under very harsh circumstances. The claim that the PDP is “imposing” itself on Nigerians connotes that Nigerians are so timid, gullible and undiscerning that they would revert back to the same PDP they rejected just in five (5) months. But, of course, there is no such thing happening. What Adeniyi and a few other commentators who are painting the “missing the PDP” picture are mistaking for resurgence and reacceptance of the PDP is the avowal of the leadership of the APC to save the polity of the brazen impunity that characterized it for sixteen (16) years.

Interestingly, Adeniyi employs the goings-on in the National Assembly in illustrating his takeover theory. Adeniyi is worried that in the House of Representatives, “virtually all committees that are important for reforms of certain areas of our national life have been handed to the opposition PDP members by the Speaker, Hon Yakubu Dogara…”. The same thing, he says, “is happening in the upper chambers… and the spokesman (chair of information committee) happens to be a member of the opposition”. From a purely partisan point of view, these are genuine observations about which leaders of the party, APC, may worry. But even so, these appointments and committee compositions do not in any way demonstrate a lack luster attitude of the leadership of the ruling party. To be sure, the leadership of the two chambers, being of the ruling party, might not altogether have acted wisely from a strict partisan point of view but a further interrogation would show that the APC, even if inadvertently, has come up with a new way of doing things.

Were it not so, by now we would have witnessed a greater upheaval within the National Assembly and indeed the entire polity following the events of July 9, 2015 when the leadership of the two chambers were constituted.

What might have compounded the problem of some analysts is that they are unable to distinguish between the current National Assembly from that of the PDP dominated between 1999 and April 2015. The National Assembly of those days was domineering and tended to pursue an agenda different of that of the party and the president. We saw this play out in 2011 when the House of Representatives threw up a leadership of a composition different from what both the presidency and the leadership of the party had mind. Conversely, the APC wants the National Assembly whose agenda would be in tandem with that of the president. Whether this expectation is achievable or not is for time to tell but there can be no doubt that the leadership of the party means well in setting such a target for itself.

That the National Assembly has remained functional ever since, and in spite of the several prodding, from within and without, on the APC leadership to wield the big stick is a huge credit to the leadership of the party. There can be no doubt that Nigerians have taken good note of the new approach by a ruling party to the affairs of the national legislature. If nothing else, regardless of the internal discomfiture that the goings-on in the National Assembly might be causing the ruling party, it has succeeded in letting the world see that the era of undue interference with the affairs of the legislative arm of government, by either the ruling party hierarchs or the executive arm, is over. In my view, it is to the eternal credit of both the leadership of the APC and the presidency that it realized that there was no need stampeding the party into early internal crisis. Like any other human endeavor, there could be no doubt that there would be teething challenges; but for a party that wrested power from “Africa’s biggest political party”, which had ruled for sixteen (16) years, there is need for utmost caution, the pervasive goodwill from the electorate notwithstanding. Still, contrary to Adeniyi’s claim, there is no evidence to show that the president of the Senate is “daily being fought by the leadership of his own party”. It is at once an over generalization and an exaggeration, regardless of the belief in several quarters that there is a link between the Senate President’s prosecution at the Code of Conduct Tribunal and the displeasure of the leadership of the party over his (Saraki’s) initial conduct.

As a matter of fact, one can state without any fear of contradictions that if indeed Saraki’s is being fought by the leadership of the APC, there is no way he would be in office by now. Differently put, Adeniyi is wrong in asserting that the “APC seems intent on subverting its own hold on power by the way and manner it has encouraged the crisis in the National Assembly”. It is an overstatement that seems to draw inspiration only from things like, some party men intent on removing Saraki from power because of his perceived presidential ambition (in 2009); that President Buhari is visiting a certain grudge against Bukola Saraki’s late father, Olusola Saraki, over events in the second republic. Such things. Agreed, there is a lot a fable in politics but I also believe that it (politics) is more like mathematics wherein to solve any problem, you have to go from the known to the unknown.

From the look of things, it is not the wish of Nigerians (within and outside the APC) that a fight ensues between the leadership of the ruling party and that of the National Assembly. Methinks, therefore, that it is only fair to give credit to the party (APC) leadership for being both discerning and mature enough to understand both the feelings of the people and the nuisances of the very peculiar nature of the party’s mandate, vis-à-vis the all-time high vulnerability of the Nigerian nation in sundry dimensions.

Happily, nearly every commentator has acknowledged the heterogeneity of the APC, on the basis that it is made up of people and, indeed, interests of the diverse tendencies; to the extent that even the best optimists never gave it a chance of working on one page and eventually wrestling power from a party which had been entrenched for sixteen (16) years. Personally, I have seen nothing to suggest that the party has lost its bearing. And I believe I am not alone. Let us take a few national issues.

Okere wrote in from Abuja