…As party’s registration and re-validation exercise pitch loyalists against the establishment
By Peter Obiechina
This is certainly not the best of times for hitherto putative National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as facts emerging from the party’s decision to conduct fresh registration of its rank and file appear to have his loyalists holding the shorter end of the stick.
The exercise, tagged Registration and Revalidation of Membership, had taken off this week on a tenuous note, with disputations over the exercise centred around the party’s flagbearer in the 2023 presidential election.
In Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, party stakeholders who gathered for a meeting to deliberate on modalities for the exercise were brutalised, with members of Tinubu’s extended political family at the receiving end of the crisis.
The meeting, which held at the Banquet Hall, opposite Government House, Ilorin on Wednesday, February 3, 2021 saw thugs descend upon the arena, forcing party members to scamper for safety.
Specifically targeted for assault was the Caretaker Committee Chairman of the party in the state, Hon. Bashir Bolarinwa and state Woman Leader, Ramat Alade. The latter had her car vandalised.
The two leaders belong to the Alhaji Lai Mohammed faction of the party, which is pitched in a fierce battle for the control of the APC structure with the state governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq.
Although the governor was not at the venue of the incident, the fact that it took place right opposite Government House – and the fact that no leader from his faction was molested – sparked apprehension that the attack was against Asiwaju’s larger political interests.
Instructively, Minister Mohammed is head of the Tinubu political family in Kwara state.
Speaking same day, Wednesday, February 3 in his Ila-Orangun country home, Osun state, Interim National Chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande, denounced the ongoing registration exercise, describing it as an “indefensible aberration.”
Akande is widely regarded as Asiwaju Tinubu’s closest ally.
Addressing members of the South West Registration and Revalidation Committee which paid him a courtesy visit – as well as get his membership revalidated, Akande said: “…I see the present APC registration within less than a decade after the original register as an indefensible aberration leading to certain ugly perceptions.”
Continuing, Akande insisted that the ongoing exercise had the capacity of conveying negative perceptions about the party, one of which is that the “APC leadership might be wasteful and unappreciative of the proper use of money in the kind of scanty economy in which Nigeria finds itself.”
Unwittingly confirming that the current spats was all about the 2023 presidential contest, Akande said: “I want to emphasis and warn that the next national election that would elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari is going to be the most important test of the ongoing APC membership registrations and whatever structure being envisaged to be imposed on it.”
Describing the party’s Caretaker and Extra Ordinary Convention Planning Committee(CECPC) as an aberration, the elder statesman urged it to discountenance any tenure elongation agenda. “In normal circumstances, a Caretaker Executive Committee for a political party is an abnormality. If not carefully controlled and expeditiously managed, most aberrant authorities end up in contempt and disgrace,” he said.
Confronted by journalists to react to Pa Akande’s misgivings, Secretary of the CECPC, Senator John Akpanudoedehe, declined formal comments.
But although Akande spoke in his personal capacity, Akpanudoedehe exposed the growing feelings that the current goings-on in the APC centred around Tinubu’s presidential ambition, when he exclaimed: “Ha, ha, anything that concerns Baba Akande is a no go area. For me, I owe Baba Akande and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu a lot of gratitude, honour and respect.
“Mr. President, the Chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni and the party hold them in high esteem too. Whatever he(Akande) said, we allow it to pass,” the party’s Caretaker Committee scribe said.
Notedly, before the commencement of the registration exercise, another top Tinubu protege, Hon. James Faleke of the House of Representatives had tried to halt the process.
In an open letter addressed to the CECPC chairman, Buni, Faleke had canvassed a postponement of the exercise, saying, “the registration could give the party a bad name if the number of infections increased during the exercise.”
But reacting at that occasion, Akpanudoedehe stated that Faleke could not dictate to the party regarding the membership registration exercise.
While thanking Faleke for his concerns, Akpanudoedehe, however, insisted that the exercise would go on, as planned. “We appreciate all the issues raised in his open letter, but as a Committee, we are guided by the directive of NEC on the conduct of the registration exercise and we wish to state that the exercise will continue as scheduled,” he said.
In deed, since the fall of Tinubu’s arrowhead, former Governor Aliyu Oshiomhole, from the national championship of the APC, his 2023 presidential dreams, many say, appear to have become stillbirth – at least under the platform of the APC.