A former Interim National Chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande says
some Northern elites, oil subsidy barons and business cartels are
responsible for the recent rebellion witnessed in the National Assembly.
Chief Akande stated this in a statement released yesterday June 28th.
Read below...
“Some time in 2013, the Action Congress OF Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria
Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) resolved
to merge and set up a merger committee to work out the modality for
glueing together as one political party under one name, one constitution
and one manifesto.
“A splinter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) sought to be
included in the merger. An application made to the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) to this end by All Progressives Congress
(APC) National Interim Committee, composed of ACN, ANPP, CPC, and
factions of APGA and Democratic People’s Party (DPP) was approved in
July, 2013.
“Between Bola Ahmed Tinubu (an ACN leader) and Kashim Imam (a Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) leader), the idea came up and was adopted that
the new party should embark on a membership recruitment drive to certain
PDP governors, whose main agenda was to see President Goodluck Jonathan
out of power.
“The recruitment efforts took APC leaders to Rivers, Kwara, Niger,
Sokoto, Kano, Jigawa and Adamawa states.
Eventually, five PDP governors of Sokoto, Kano, Adamawa, Kwara and
Rivers, together with the majority of their PDP National and State
Assemblies members and other PDP National Assembly members from Gombe,
Bauchi and Nasarawa, under the banner of the new-PDP, joined the APC.
“The APC thereafter organised membership registrations in all the over
120,000 polling units and followed up by using these registered members
to conduct congresses in all the almost 8000 wards, in over 770 local
governments, in all the 36 states (including Abuja, the Federal Capital
Territory (FCT) and a convention at the National level, thereby creating
one united APC party structure all over Nigeria.
“With this air of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct primaries to select
candidates for state governors and Houses of Assembly and for the
presidency and the National Assemblies.
“After the elections, which saw the APC to victory all round, a meeting
was reported to have been held by certain old and new-PDP leaders in
Alhaji Kawu Baraje’s house at Abuja to review what should be their share
in this new Buhari’s government and resolved to seek collaboration with
the PDP with a view to hi-jacking the National Assembly and, having got
rid of Goodluck Jonathan, with an ultimate aim of resuscitating the PDP
as their future political platform.
“Unknown to most APC members, while Senator Bukola Saraki was being
adopted as the candidate for Senate President by certain old and new-PDP
tendencies, the theory was being propagated that, like in most
presidential democracies, the APC minority leaders in the old National
Assembly (i.e. George Akume for the Senate and Femi Gbajabiamila for the
House of Representatives) should automatically become Senate President
and Speaker respectively, now that APC has the majority.
“Certain leaders felt that most past Senate presidents had come from
Benue State, which Akume represented and that Benue State should be made
to assume the traditional home of all senate presidents.
“At the same time certain, senators were clamouring for one of the most
ranking senators anywhere outside the Northwest zone that produced the
President. That was how Ahmed Lawan, who has been in the House of
Representatives for eight years and in the senate for another eight
years emerged as the candidate for the senate president.
“Democrats among the APC leadership insisted on selection by mock
elections, rather than tribal or sectional considerations. As a result
of primary elections, Ahmed Lawan and George Akume emerged as APC
candidate for Senate President and Deputy respectively while Femi
Gbajabiamila and Mohammed Monguno emerged as the Speaker and Deputy for
the House of Representatives.
“Numerous among those calling themselves businessmen in Nigeria are like
leaches, sucking from the nation’s blood largely through various
governments and particularly through the Nigerian Federal Government.
While all these schisms were going on in the APC, those who were jittery
of Buhari’s constant threat of anti-corruption’s battle began to
encourage and finance rebellions against the APC democratic positions
which led to the emergence of Senator Saraki as the candidate of the PDP
tendencies inside and outside APC.
“Before the party knew it, the process had been hijacked by polluted
interests who saw the inordinate contests as a loop-hole for stifling
APC governments’ efforts in its desire to fight corruption.
“Most Northern elite, the Nigerian oil subsidy barons and other business
cartels, who never liked Buhari’s anti-corruption political stance, are
quickly backing-up the rebellion against APC with strong support.
While other position seekers are waiting in the wings until Buhari’s
ministers are announced, a large section of the Southwest see the
rebellion as a conspiracy of the North against the Yoruba.
“What began as political patronages to be shared into APC
membership-spreads among ethnic zones, religious faiths and political
rankings and experiences have now become so complicated that the sharing
has to be done by and among PDP leadership together with cohorts of
former new-PDP affiliations in the APC, by and among gangs of past
anti-Buhari’s Presidency, and certain APC legislators and party members
who dance round the crisis arena to pick some crumbs.
“Now that the whole conspiracy has blown open, it is doubtful if the
present institutions of party leadership can muster the required
capacity to arrest the drift. It is my opinion that President Buhari,
and the APC governors should now see APC as a recking platform that may
not be strong enough again to carry them to political victory in 2019
and they should quickly begin a joint damage control effort to
reconstruct the party in its claim to bring about the promised change
before the party’s shortcomings begin to aggravate the challenges of
governance in their hands.”the statement read
