The APC is populated with thinkers and undeniable intellectual heavyweights but with a blurred vision; they can’t see beyond their nose because of self-interest and reckless assumptions.
There has been a torrent of commentaries on the botched and rescheduled All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election in Ekiti State with quite a few hitting the bull’s eyes. It is an eyesore and quite regrettable that a party that prides itself as a progressive assemblage will continue to squander its goodwill with continued and amazing rapidity. Surely, this was a strange occurrence happening within a party that was cobbled together to torpedo the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general elections. The party’s catalogue of misdeed keeps growing just like that of the former ruling party.
The APC looks more like a joke and a shadow of what it pretended to be only less than four years ago. The joke started with the way and manner it handled the election into principal offices of the National Assembly, and ever since then it has been one wrong step after the other; the list of which appears endless. The contemporary issue, especially about the shadow election in Ekiti, to be candid, was a fiasco foretold and it has exposed the party as badly fractured from within on the basis of irreconcilable differences, yet the party openly boast of wining in the forthcoming election. The APC remains me of everything the PDP was when at the helms of affairs.
In the epic book, The Ideas That Conquered the World, one of America’s leading foreign policy thinkers and scholars, argues that three ideas dominate the world today: peace as the preferred basis for relations between and among different countries, democracy as the optimal way of organising political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation of wealth. This assertion has gained near universal currency in the present international system, with some drawbacks, especially in the Africa, where political party systems that should anchor these ideologies are either non-existent or on the decline. The APC as a political platform reaffirms the notion that the Nigerian political party system is weak and engaged in the reverse gear.
The intent of a shadow election is to strengthen and give credibility to the electoral process but it is likely that such is not within the radar of politicians in Nigeria. I have come to this conclusion on the basis of the recently re-scheduled primary election of the All Progressive Congress in Ekiti, where the show of shame is a pointer, perhaps to the need to rework our political party system, political ideas and contestations for power within the bounds of decency and decorum, in order for democracy to flourish.
What played out in Ekiti during the said shadow election was the continuation of power politics within the party in the countdown to 2019, with vested interests daring themselves, and in truth some are simply satisfied with stopping a bouncing back of the immediate past governor, Kayode Fayemi. The calculation is that by stopping Fayemi then their chances can be bolstered, while another stream of thinking is that whoever is chosen, anointed, selected or elected in the primaries will eventually emerge victorious in the governorship election. This assumption is at the base of the desperation fuelling the reactions of supposed ‘mighty contenders’.
It is simply outlandish and most unfortunate that a simple affair such as the conduct of a shadow election will make the party descend to an all time low. Here we are talking about self-professing ‘progressives’ with a putrid self-righteousness that stinks to the heavens. The party is filled to the brim, or more appropriately has a band of ego-maniacs who do not give a damn what becomes of the party in their overdrive. It is this self-centeredness that has put the APC into this inglorious state, in repeat of the process that led to its electoral loss in 2014.
It is this delusion that is fuelling desperate reactions that appear like the last kicks of a dying horse, and which has snowballed into the peddling of cheap lies, counter-accusations, deepening conspiracies, gang-ups, the threat of the use of violence and an utter lack of consensus. Unknown to the contenders and their army of supporters, the door to the stable of another colossal defeat is open with the multiple cracks widening, as the noble horse has bolted away and defeat is imminent if the party remains on this trajectory. This condition is worsening as lies become spiced with self denial.
Not many of the contenders reckoned with the fact that Fayemi would trump them in the contest. With defeat looming before their eyes, they have resorted to all manners of indignities to cover their shameful defeat but that is not even the ultimate issue before the party, as a party divided from within would require a miracle for it not to be completed walloped at the polls by the people’s revolt, which view the actors with disdain and derision, as further attenuated by the botched primaries. It is almost a given that Fayose’s PDP might ultimately do better that the APC in Ekiti.
This postulation sounds heretic to the APC members in Ekiti, yet they are yet to retrace their steps from the use of propaganda in a manner that the German master, Goebbels will shrink in horror. They bandy words about town on how the Federal Might, a pure myth in Ekiti, will be used to compel a win even if defeat occurs. How that would happen is yet to be seen but if the history of electoral contest in Ekiti is anything to go by, it is highly improbable. Ekiti is a swing state by tradition. As far back as 1999 when the entire South-West voted for Alliance of Democracy (AD), in Ekiti there was a senator elected under the banner of the PDP. In 2003, the PDP defeated incumbent Governor Niyi Adebayo and the same feat was repeated in 2014. On both occasion, Fayose led the charge.
I wonder how a divided APC will match Fayose whose taunting of the APC by promising to loan Governor Ifenayi Okowa of Delta, who conducted a free, fair, credible and transparent primary, to them. The talk of the town is how the APC is unravelling with the speed of light. The thinking is if the APC can assault a fundamental ethos of democracy with wantonness, then is it not fit and proper to excuse their charade, fraud and impolitic conduct by rejecting them at the polls? The truth must be told about this party brimming with lots of people who nurse a sense of misplaced entitlement and nothing short of this emergence would suffice.
The APC is populated with thinkers and undeniable intellectual heavyweights but with a blurred vision; they can’t see beyond their nose because of self-interest and reckless assumptions.
Rotimi Opeyeoluwa teaches in the department of International Relations and Diplomacy, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti.
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