One Party State Loading In Nigeria: The APC Game Plan

By Olanrewaju Aderemi Obafemi

A few days after the 1999 Presidential Election, then Comrade Adams Oshiomhole led a delegation of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to Ota, Ogun State to congratulate the winner of that election. While hosting the NLC team then President-Elect, General Olusegun Obasanjo, still smarting from his wholesale rejection in the South West, swore to destroy the Alliance for Democracy (AD) “in the national interest”. 

*Buhari and Obasanjo

He argued that with the kind of hold that the AD had on the South West it could only remain a regional party and that as long as the South West remained loyal to it the Yoruba would not be able to play at the national stage. Then National Secretary General of AD was procured by Obasanjo to foment a crisis, which he executed, but unfortunately he trusted Obasanjo to reward him handsomely and neglected to negotiate properly. What he got was a directorship in an obscure federal agency.

Shortly after Obasanjo leaked his infamous December 2013 letter to President Goodluck Jonathan to the press the leadership of the then newly registered All Progressive Congress went to Abeokuta to pay homage to the ex-president and invited him to help guide their new party to success. Obviously basking in the recognition that had been accorded him Obasanjo promised to help. He subsequently kept haranguing President Jonathan until the immediate past president was defeated at the polls.

2015 General Elections

Apart from President Jonathan’s principal shortcoming, which was neglecting the communities that supported him to victory in 2011 and instead heavily patronizing the ones that did not support him in the hope that he could turn them, the 2015 Presidential Election was won by rumours. What? While preparing to make a bid for the presidency a record fourth time General Muhammadu Buhari tasked an associate of his, Prof. Femi Olufunmilade, Head of Department of International Relations and Strategic Studies and Sub Dean of the School of Post Graduate Studies and Research at the Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, to avail him of a strategy with which to defeat the incumbent president. Olufunmilade accomplished the task and submitted a report which indicated that the only way incumbents have been unseated in Africa was through widespread disaffection with the government of the day.