Sunday, 12 January 2025 04:20

[OPINION] APC leaders and chieftains should emulate Tinubu - Tonnie Iredia

By producing almost two-thirds of the 36 state governors in Nigeria, the All Progressives Congress (APC) which is the ruling political party at the federal level, has certainly established itself for now as the dominant political party across the country. It similarly dominates the 2 chambers of the National Assembly as well as the State Houses of Assembly. Against this background, one would have expected the party and its members to demonstrate greater confidence while approaching any political activity.  That has not been so. Instead, at every contestation, the level of aggression of the party which creates tension that often adversely heats up the polity, gives an impression of a lion that fidgets in the forest at the slightest provocation. 

In a game, it is usually not the champion that struggles to win; rather a champion is easily identified more by the degree of confidence which he or she exudes before, during and after the game. This is not what one can easily perceive of the APC, Nigeria’s current leading political party. The previous champion, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not act differently when it was in power making it appear that in Nigeria, goals scored by the victorious political parties in elections are actually not exactly clean. Perhaps, a better illuminating scenario is the trend whereby a state governor manages to win an election by a narrow margin but a few months later, achieves the magic of massively winning all the polling booths at a local government election in the same state. 

In the case of the APC, it is easy to see that members of the party including their officers are not on the same page with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that they presented as their candidate for the office of president in 2023. Whereas Tinubu has since his declaration as president moved on to govern while remaining calm and unperturbed, many of his followers are still fighting political battles as if the elections have not ended. Put differently, Tinubu is currently operating at the segment of governance as it should be, while his loyalists are still at the expired electioneering segment. It is indeed easy to see that the latter have not taken time off to watch the president’s political body language.  They need to quickly do so, in order to swiftly discard the toga of an apprehensive majority party. 

 
 

To be able to migrate successfully, APC members need to appreciate that the President of Nigeria cannot be reduced to the lower level of the president of a political party. They must allow Tinubu to stay at the higher pedestal of father of the nation. Until the approved era of the next electioneering season comes, Tinubu is not expected to be a partisan politician but a statesman who solemnly swore at his inauguration to be fair to everyone as president. They should not push him into behaving as if it was only members of the APC that voted for him to become president. He certainly got some votes from members of other parties who wanted power to shift to the South. In fact, he must have lost the votes of some APC members who deprecated their party’s support for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. So, it is essentially a plus and minus situation.

The clamour for the President to appoint only APC members into his government is therefore irrational. Although, there is nothing wrong in appointing many APC chieftains to government, everything is wrong with patronizing only APC members. Apart from the fact that it can obscure the delicate management of diversities, it is more likely to substantially derogate from the president’s new attribute of statesmanship. This probably explains why Tinubu offers appointments to some other Nigerians irrespective of their political, ethnic and religious backgrounds. By so doing, he fulfils his initial pledge that his government would work not just to attain national unity but also national competence.

APC members should thus learn to appreciate the spirit behind the inclusion in the federal government of those who previously opposed the president or even abused him. Apart from utilising the expertise of such appointees, Tinubu appears to be strategically building a new political coalition for future use.  This perhaps explains the bringing in of Bianca Ojukwu a BOT member of APGA as Minister of Foreign Affairs(state) which angered some APC members in Anambra State. It also answers some chieftains who think Tinubu should have dissuaded the appointment of Governor Hope Uzodinma as Chair of the Progressives Governors’ Forum PGF, because Uzodinma allegedly supported the presidential ambition of former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan.

From the look of things, a new political coalition may supersede the opposition of APC chieftains to the rumoured defections of opposition governors to the main ruling party. The recent visit of the President to Enugu to fraternize with Governor Peter Mbah is instructive. If care is not taken, events may overtake the stance of the Delta APC that has been telling Governor Sheriff Oborevwori that their party “is not a rehabilitation camp for failed politicians.” The situation may not be different from some events in Benue state where the North Central APC Forum is unhappy about a new alliance between George Akume, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and former Governor Samuel Ortom. Time will tell if Tinubu will warn Akume to discontinue the rumoured alliance because of what the loyalists of Governor Hyacinth Alia describe as “hobnobbing with a leader of opposition in the state.”

However, the attempt to build a new coalition cannot justify the impunity of engaging in hostile communication which now and again features the use of intemperate diction against critics and opposition politicians. The role of those in power is to govern and impress the people. On the other hand, the opposition parties have a duty to criticise government and hold those in office accountable. One obvious problem in Nigeria today is the failure of the ruling party to recognise that those in the opposition are undertaking their legitimate duty of criticising the government and providing alternative options. It is undemocratic to use the influence of government to criminalize dissent or to wage war on the opposition for criticising those in government.

Before 2015, Lai Mohammed, the former APC Publicity Secretary was probably the most audible politician as he mounted daily criticisms on the then ruling PDP. Other opposition politicians joined him to chorus the song that the then President Goodluck Jonathan was clueless. No one attacked them until their party came to power and they realized that “to perform is not as easy as to speak.” The situation these days is different as it is members of the ruling party that are noisy and creating controversies. They are however irrelevant because the government has outstanding office holders in Mohammed Idris the Minister of Information and no less than a dozen aides of the President who are eloquent and persuasive media professionals. 

Felix Morka, the current publicity secretary of the APC should let the government appointed communication professionals engage in public enlightenment on government programmes and policies. There is no doubt that many Nigerians are really tormented by the harsh impact of the reforms of the Tinubu-led government. There is therefore no better time than now to soothe frayed nerves and concentrate on massive education of the people on the benefits of the tax reform bills for instance. If criticisms that irritate party officials are left to professionals to handle, the polity would be more stable. After all, many vocal critics of the tax reform bills are APC leaders themselves some of whom do not appear to have fully comprehended the provisions of the bills.

APC party officials have many other things to handle. For example, they can start off by holding meetings with aggrieved members who often publicly tackle the government. They can also focus on a post mortem review of party activities with a view to redressing subsisting defects in political party management.  Having a proper membership register alone can place APC above others if party officials restrict themselves to attaining a well-managed party structure based on an effective framework that can reduce party primaries and enhance internal democracy. Unfortunately, the party officials relying on an APC government in place are currently leading in the use of undemocratic diction like always posing ‘to capture’ a state where the next election is due as if election is a battle instead of a game.



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