Nigeria: APC And Its Rotten Eggs

By Ike Abonyi

“It is wise to direct your anger towards problems – not people, to focus your energies on answers – not excuses.”
– William Arthur Ward

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is desperately searching for the cause of its inability to raise their governance beyond plinth level. 

There is no doubt that the party has been struggling in its administration of the country in the past 20 months. As they try to cover one hole another opens. The fight against corruption which is their biggest strength has been trapped in the intrinsic contradictions in the regime.

The government has been rolling in and out of series of embarrassing scandals even as it tries to hold on to the acclaimed status of being a cleansing government. As the party strives to find its bearings, it has been groping aimlessly trying to look for whom to blame for its failings. For two years, it can hardly cough without calling on the past government. Even when their people face personal domestic problems they try blaming the past administration.

At a point the former President Olusegun Obasanjo was forced to cry out admonishing the regime to confront their challenges and stop the blame game. Now that it’s becoming very glaring that the administration is jaundiced ahead of 2019 stock taking election, the blame game is now being intensified but with a kink.

The apparent failure of the government by their own identification is within and from the PDP arm of the APC family. Recall that what is today known as ruling APC that won the 2015 general elections is an amalgam of five political groupings, the All Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), a fraction of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) and a fraction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

By electoral strength using states under their control as a barometer, the ACN and PDP came first before others but the CPC enjoying the then hurricane support of Muhammadu Buhari who happened to be the APC flag bearer also enjoyed some following particularly in the Muslim North areas.

ANPP and APGA with two and one governors respectively trailed behind like a political orphan into the group. Political analysts have said authorita tively that without any of the three key partners in the family, the ACN, CPC and PDP, victory for the party against the PDP would have been impossible.

But since they grabbed the victory, unity and family harmony have remained a scarce commodity in their fold. The consequences of this have been very apparent, the party cannot hold any statutory meeting without a crisis.

Two years as a ruling party it has not been able to hold a national convention. What you hear constantly is vote of confidence and its counter from members on their leaders. In this country, whenever you hear a leader getting a vote of confidence know it that he is not enjoying the people’s followership and needed to use his position to create one.

To say that the disharmony in the ruling party has not affected Buhari’s administration is like saying that a leaking exhaust pipe of a car is not affecting the sound and fuel consumption of the vehicle.

The problem now is who to blame for the leaking exhaust pipe. A sincere bad driver can own up that he has driven the car badly and it led to the pipe damage but not with a group like the CPC people in the regime that are at the driver’s seat.

As far as the CPC or if you like the original Buhari people are concerned, the problem is caused by the rotten eggs in the car like ACN and PDP who would not allow smooth movement. If you are familiar with the story of the bad workman who always quarrels with his tools, you are likely to also be familiar with the recent outburst of two key members of Buhari regime.

Conspicuously weighed down by the apparent incongruities in the administration especially the recent reprehensible reinstatement and promotion of a fugitive corrupt suspect Abdulrasheed Maina, one of Buhari’s man Friday, the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) thinks the blame should be heaped on the doorsteps of the PDP arm of the ruling APC family.

Here him: “There is no doubt that we have derailed because we are not doing what we say we want to do,” Mr. Ali, a key ally of Mr. Buhari was reported as saying that PDP loyalists occupy as many government offices as members of the ruling APC.

“Today, with all sense of responsibility, I want to say that we have 50 per cent of PDP in our government. How can we move forward with this load? How can we achieve our target with this load?” Ali said.

As if the Custom CG’s alarm was not adequately heralded, the new found lady attack dog of the regime, Buhari’s Special Assistant, Mrs. Lauretta Onochie (who says Igbo are not found in Buhari’s house) had to buttress it.

“These defectors were a bad influence to youths in the country, who had been turned into organs of transmitting hate speech and raining abusive words and insults on the policies of government to discredit its work against corruption.

“That brings me to those in this government who are here to serve themselves, those that Colonel Hameed Ali, the Comptroller General of Customs, called PDP. He said that there are about 50 per cent of them in this government, but I say no they are more than 50 per cent.

“They are everywhere; they are in the presidency, they are in the National Assembly, you can find them in the judiciary, they are in the law enforcement agencies, they serve their personal interests, they encourage our unsuspecting youths to be their foot soldiers on the social media to abuse and curse people while their own children are sipping tea in America, in England or elsewhere.

They are a bad example to our youngsters on social media,” Onochie said. But how true are these assertions? How clean are the so-called “saints” non-PDP members in their fold?

Even if they are, how electorally viable are they to get victory on their own for the party. They must have to rely on the so-called “bad eggs”. In fact, even the heavy political sentiment enjoyed by Buhari’s CPC in the North has been seriously dented by its showings in the last two years.

Moreover, most of the acts of omission or commission that have seriously brought this administration into disrupt have not been traced to the rotten eggs of the APC family. Sample! Is it the PDP that facilitated the return of Maina?

The Ministers of Justice and Interior under whose nose the mess was fabricated are all CPC. The grass cutting SGF is not a PDP nor is the issue that is causing unending fight between cabals of the administration traceable to PDP.

The NIA Director General is enmeshed in an apparent sabotage of PDP administration, so he could not have been a PDP. Even the Fulani herdsmen that are also giving the administration all the bad names are all known to be CPC adherents.

The Inspector-General of Police who is also facing corruption charges was the Commissioner of Police in Kano under whose security watch 1.9 million voters all voted for Buhari no single void vote, no underage voting and no arrests.

He couldn’t have been a PDP to play the role he played in Kano for which he may have been compensated with the IG appointment. If the DSS and the EFCC are also disconcerting this administration by their unending feud, the two leaders were no PDP. In fact, the DSS DG Lawal Daura was a strategic member of the CPC security team.

So clearly the black spot label on PDP is not supported empirically except there is a deliberate design to tag the dog with an ugly name with a view to hanging it. The excuses on sale is therefore not purchasable and like George Washington advised, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

The undisputed truth is that both the jackals and the hyenas are all from the lion’s immediate family. It’s better therefore to look inwards for the real enemy. God help us.