APC DILEMMA IN ANAMBRA ELECTIONS By Osuagwu Kingsley, Abuja For months if not years, Nigerians, partisan and passive political analysts, waited patiently for the outcome of the manoeuvrings involved in registering the new party, APC. The outcome anyway turned out to be rather hilarious than confusing. In the wake of the announcement of three parties, All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to merge into a single larger party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), two other parties, the African People Congress and the All People Congress (all APCs) emerged. The rest is of course, history. Amidst the confusion that this development generated however, the Independent National Electoral Commission, after what could pass as a protracted wait to ensure fairness, registered the All Progressives Congress as the original claimant to the APC acronym. For many Nigerians, that changed everything. Those days of unnecessary politicking attending the acronym seemed to be over as everyone now has to channel their minds to the probability of the country operating the American type of democracy where two big political parties are the major power blocks from which the electorates may chose. Besides, for many like Ada Idowu, a current affairs analyst in Lagos, the coming into being of the new party, APC, is an in-road into an end to the Peoples Democracy Party’s (PDP) 14 years of “maladministration.” It beggars therefore for understanding that the interim national chairman of the INEC-recognized APC, Chief Bisi Akanbi, would say at the meeting of the party’s 35 member interim national leadership at its secretariat in Abuja, “the birth of APC has not only contributed to the deepening of the roots of democracy in the system but has championed the possibility of giving Nigerians a two party system in this democracy.” Hence, it conjures concern to wonder if indeed a two party system is good enough, not for politicians who will always be on the look-out to oil their interests with the goodwill, or perhaps the blood of Nigerians; but for the generality of the people. In any case, against popular insinuations that APC will immediately marshal men and resources to unseat the PDP in the 2015 Presidential elections, the party’s recently held interim National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting threw up a new argument into the system. For many media men at the meeting, the proposal of the NEC to concentrate on putting the party’s structures in place, at the national, states, local governments and wards levels, was a shocker. Given the fire-brand opposition tactics of the merging political parties, especially the ACN and the CPC that always attack representatives of the PDP, sometimes in rather unprintable languages, expectations were high that the party’s NEC will read out rules of engagement designed to unseat the ruling party, at its meeting, However, common sense and well thought political tactics seemed to have prevailed as it “emphasised that its priority was not to contest the presidential elections in 2015 but to setup the structures of our party.” Even more, it became apparent if at all comments by the interim national chairman, Bisi Akanbi, is anything to go by, that for now, the party’s body language will centre around “mobilizing people into APC, registration of membership and to stage congresses from ward, local government, state and national levels and as well as holding the party’s convention and establishing a proper structure for the APC.” Against this background, it setup an advisory committee headed by former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Deputy National Chairman of the APC, Aminu Maisari to advise it on how to establish structures and activities below the level of the interim national executives. By this, it means that further activities as far as electioneering campaigns are concerned will have to wait until the report of the committee is out and it announces its structures at the national, ward, local government and state levels in order to as Akanbi says “ensure the flow of authority from the national to the state, local government and to the ward levels which will discourage the current practice where some people abrogate chairmanship positions to themselves as well as print forms and call for rallies on behalf of the party in some states across the country.” Still on this, the report of the committee which will be released before the end of August will herald its national convention in November or December, 2013 from where “its national executives will be elected, after which we will know who becomes president, governor or anything.” Before this however and in preparation for forthcoming elections in Anambra, Delta, Kwara, among other states were elections are bid to hold soon, the party plans to start registering people into it in the about 8000 wards all over the country in order to harmonize and integrate card carrying members of the merging parties into the new party as it plans to elect its executives at ward levels after its convention.” To this end, “the harmonization process ‘will be’ completed by October or November, 2013.” In any case, it is without saying that for many Nigerians, the bane of the country’s democracy is the absence of an identifiable ideology among political parties in the country. For example, it is practically impossible to tell accurately what parties such as the PDP stand for. Lazarus Adanmiyaba, a civil servant in Abuja, made it even more hilarious when he retorted that “as far as I am concerned, the PDP’s ideology is corruption, corruption, corruption all the way!” For regional blocks such as All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), former ACN or even former CPC and ANPP, many Nigerians were and remain at a loss to what constituted and/or constitutes their ideologies. But that era of vision politicking appears to be ticking away given that the newly-wed APC has come out to pointedly tell Nigerians that its “ideology can be reduced to existing for the sake of the people and not for the selfish aggrandizement of the resources of the nation into a few persons leadership.” Even more assuring is the claim by the party that it’s “manifesto will soon be available for Nigerians to appreciate.” In any case, so far so good, the All Progressives Congress appears at ease as it cruises through its current political altitude in galvanising its sectional strength to become Nigerian’s other major political party that is if it is assumed that the PDP is a major political party. While this cruise is on, it cannot be wished away that the impending Anambra gubernatorial elections in November will throw up too many issues for INEC and even the political space to accommodate. For what it is worth, while the INEC-recognized APC is putting machinery in place to organize a congress as part of preparation for the governorship elections in Anambra State, the other APC (African Peoples Congress) which is challenging the ownership of the acronym in court, is also preparing to field a candidate on the platform of the APC (its acclaimed acronym). Even more, while the INEC-recognized APC is busy hop-moping, hoping to nominate its candidate for the elections before INEC closes the window for nomination of candidate, Said Balogun, national secretary of the African Peoples Congress says his party “will head to court to get a restraining order, restraining INEC from fielding any candidate on the platform of APC except such candidate our own APC.” According to Balogun, “if INEC goes ahead to allow a candidate from the other party to contest the elections, we will have no option but to field our candidate on the APC platform even as we shall pray the court to order that no logo of any of the APC is printed on the ballot paper. Only two APCs should be on the ballot paper and let the court judge at the end of the elections, which of the two APCs won the elections.” In any case, whether INEC is mandated by the court to print two APC acronyms on the ballot papers without the individual political parties logos, for the Anambra governorship elections, or the court issues the electoral body a restraining order mandating it not to field any candidate from the All Progressives Congress; the fact remains that by ignoring an ongoing litigation on the acronym to register and recognize on claimant against another; INEC may have inadvertently cast the dice. From all indications it is obvious that the APC confusion has entered stage 2, confusion climax! More remains to be seen of what will become of the dilemma that ‘APC’’ will generate.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:30:35 +0000
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