There has been a torrent of commentaries on the botched and rescheduled
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 strange occurrence happening within a
party that was cobbled together to torpedo the PDP in the last general
elections is increasingly distracted. The party’s catalogue of misdeed keeps
growing just like that of the former ruling party with reckless abandon.
The APC looks more like a joke and a shadow of what it
pretended to be only less than four years ago, that I wonder. The joke started
with the way and manner it handled the election into principal officers of the
National Assembly and ever since then it has been one wrong step after the
other; the list appears endless.
The contemporary issue, especially about the shadow election in
Ekiti, to be candid, was a fiasco foretold and has exposed the party as badly
fractured from within based on irreconcilable differences, yet they openly
boast of wining in the forth-coming election. The APC remains me of everything
the PDP was when at the helms of affairs.
In an epic book, ‘The Ideas That Conquered the World, author and one
of American leading foreign policy thinker and scholar, 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 to organize
political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation
of wealth.
This assertion has gained a near universal currency in the present
international system with some drawbacks, especially in the Africa, where
political party system that should anchor such ideologies are either
non-existent or on the decline. The APC as a political platform reaffirms the
notion that party politics system is weak and a reverse gear.
The intent of shadow election is designed to strengthen and bear
credibility to the electoral process but it is likely that such is not in the
radar of politicians in Nigeria. I have come to this conclusion based on the
recently re-scheduled primary election of the All Progressive Congress in
Ekiti, where the show of shame is a pointer, perhaps a need to rework our
political party system, political ideas and contestation for power which
requires a ‘class of interest’, it is expected within the bounds of decency and
decorum for democracy to flourish.
What played out in Ekiti during the said shadow election is a
continuation of power politics within the party in the countdown to 2019, with
vested interest daring themselves, of a truth some are just satisfied with the
ambition of stopping a bouncing back of the immediate past governor, Kayode
Fayemi.
The calculation is that by stopping Fayemi then their chances can be
bolstered and 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 party into this
inglorious state, a process that started shortly to its electoral loss in
2014.
It is this delusion that is fuelling desperation reactions that
appears like the last kicks of a dying horse which has snowballed into peddling
of cheap lies, counter-accusations, deepening conspiracies, gang-up, the threat
of the use of violence and 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, the horse has bolted away and defeat
is imminent if the party remains on this trajectory. This condition is
worsening by lies spiced with self denial.
Not many of them reckoned with the fact that Fayemi would trump them
in the contest. With defeat looming before their eyes, they have resorted to
all manner of indignities to cover their shameful defeat but that is not even
the ultimate issue before the party, 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 them with disdain and derision further attenuated by the
botched primaries. It is for a given that Fayose’s PDP will 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.
The state 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 is not loss on the people. 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 their emergence would suffice.
The APC is populated with thinkers and undeniable intellectual
heavyweights but with blur 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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