Okenyi Kenechi
Political realities are changing in Nigeria as political equilibriums are being altered in different political parties. Loyalty to the ruling All Progressive Congress is also passing through its hardest test. The political shakedown currently ravaging the country has come to be in the favour of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, a flavour that catapulted the APC to power in 2015
While the APC is recoiling from their loss, how the party manages the issue in Rivers State will go a long way in testing the leadership qualities of the National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomole.
On Tuesday, the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, defected to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party alongside the Governor of Kwara State and 23 members of the state’s house of assembly with their teeming supporters. The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Bolaji Abdullahi also resigned his membership of the APC, citing lack of respect to their camp in Kwara by the national leadership of the party.
On Wednesday the 1st of August, the Governor of Sokoto state and former speaker of the house of representatives also joined the PDP. These are political heavyweights in their respective domains who provided the necessary strength that the All Progressive Congress needed to muscle the PDP out of power in 2015. How the APC will mitigate against such reverse progression is left to be seen.
While the APC won at the centre in 2015, it lost in Rivers State except for some senatorial and reps seats which were later reclaimed through the courts. The party in the state has also been plagued by enough political ‘rofo rofo’ that have led to the fractionalisation of the party in a way that weakens it.
How the party would dust itself up from the political and legal mud it has immersed itself in will equally determine how far it will go in challenging Governor Wike in 2019.
Recall in 2015 after Goodluck Jonathan lost the presidency, the people voted with anger and made sure that APC lost the state. While history is about repeating itself with the President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency looking like it will take the direction of Jonathan’s come next year, will the APC be able to muscle Governor Wike out of power like the PDP did in 2015?
The abilities of the APC to stand firm in the face of these obvious local and national challenges lie in the unity of the two factions of the party and the two arrowheads who have made sure that the party remained divided due to interests in the gubernatorial seat.
Some beer-parlour analysts have claimed that the reason the minister of transportation and the leader of the APC in Rivers State, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi does not want the candidacy of the Senator Representing Rivers South-East senatorial district in the National Assembly, Magnus Abe, is because the minister wants Wike who is an Ikwerre to continue for another 4 years knowing too well that only Abe has the political will in the APC to challenge Wike.
On the other side, they have said that the reason why the senator does not want to bend to Amaechi’s political will is that he is working with Wike who has promised him the gubernatorial ticket come 2023.
Between the confinement of their brutal lies, Wike is the subject. Between the confinement of Amaechi vs Abe’s disagreement, Wike is also the subject so why has there been no attempt at eschewing personal interests to ensure that the overall group interest is sustained?
A divided army never wins a war and the Rivers APC should have that at the back of their minds.
In the absence of unity between Senator Abe and Amaechi, the APC is as good as dead in Rivers State. How they want to go into 2019 in different factions against a unified PDP whose candidate is known for his grassroots-oriented politics is stuff for legends.
The talks about federal power will be a futile gesture owing to the fact that governor Wike enjoys a reasonable level of goodwill within the state and in his own words, you cannot rig where you are not popular.
Should Abe blink and allow Amaechi to field any candidate of his choice while he sticks to his senatorial seat, how would such persons measure up politically in terms of structures without the minister? Who in the APC will comfortably win Wike on his own without the minister’s support base?
Should Amaechi blink and support Abe, that will equally be counterproductive as the minister has said before that he will never support the senator. Those who have been lining up to contest again like the Director-General of NIMASA, Dakuku Peterside, will have a field day feeling disenfranchised.
The political heavyweights need to agree on the way forward. We want to have a robust political debate next year between the incumbent and the candidate that the APC will field. We want to be able to assess them by their integrity and antecedents.
However, the conduct of the party’s primary will determine how determined the party will step into the political ring come 2019.
