John Diidi
With the June 16 LGA Elections in Rivers State around the corner, the non-participation of the All Progressive Congress can best be described as a political blunder.
Maybe the non participation could be linked to lack of trust in the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC), which the state government has influence over to conduct a credible election, a situation applicable all over the country; or maybe as an act of solidarity with their members who had their mandates upturned by the courts in July 2015.
Whatever the reason may be, the party is making a political mistake.
For example: In Kaduna State, the opposition PDP participated in the May 2018 local government polls and won 4 Chairmanship positions out of 19 Local Governments.
The implications of the victory are that the PDP has an ample opportunity to preach it’s message to the local people in those LGA’S and reduce the advantage of the ruling APC.
All Politics is local, and hence the local Government is the closest Government to the local people, and thus any Party willing to take over power must first plant its structures and take it’s message to the local people, one opportunity the All Progressive Congress in Rivers State has missed by not participating in the election.
With the supremacy battle ongoing in the All Progressive Congress between Nigeria’s Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi and the Senator representing Rivers South-East Senatorial District, Senator Magnus Abe; the LGA Elections would have provided a platform for the party to channel all the excess energy generated by the two Elephants into achieving results at the Polls, campaign ahead of 2019 and also test it’s popularity among the local people.
The leaders of the Party might think that the Free Rivers Development Initiative is ‘grassrooted’ enough, but one question for them would be: has the change message in Rivers State been taken to every village/community in the state? And would there be enough time to achieve that when INEC announces the timetable for the 2019 Gubernatorial Polls?
The PDP in Rivers State, despite being the Ruling party and having no opposition in the local Government Polls has gone ahead to maximize the missed opportunity by the APC; taking it’s campaign to every village/community in the state, preaching the Wike message to the local people, thereby beginning an early campaign for Governor Wike even before the stipulated campaign timetable to be released by INEC, a smart political move.
With Nigerians becoming more interested in the electoral processes, rigging elections in areas where a party is not popular is becoming something that is no longer feasible. And with time running out as the APC is yet to put it’s house in order in the state, one can say that a defeat at the 2019 Rivers Gubernatorial Polls could be attributed to the political blunder committed by not utilizing the 2018 Local Government Polls.
