Less than 2 years ago, different political parties came together to form one single, nationalistic opposition party in Nigeria, making history by not only being the first truly opposition party with national spread, but most importantly, going on to defeat the ruling party PDP in the March 28th elections after 16years in power. It was a glorious moment in our political history as a nation, one that political analysts and pundits from around the world are still trying to comprehend, how we did it.
Elections were over, the President and other elected officials were sworn in, and just a month into this administration, our party is obviously suffering from what General Godwin Alabi termed “Tragedy of victory”. The current happenings in our National Assembly are disgraceful, shameful and utterly childish to say the least. Our party is gradually losing focus, from the way and manner it handled the election of National Assembly’s principal officers, to what we saw happened in both chambers as they reconvened to appoint other leaders. Throughout the process of our great party’s formation, one thing that has remained in its backbone is supremacy of the party, everyone respected party leaders and everyone shelved his or her interest, allowing the party to be well disciplined and in total control of all situations. But today, sadly, we have got to a stage where the party has been defied more than once by the Senate President, with no disciplinary action against him. The party did not handle the situation leading to this in the best manner, and clearly within our eyes, we are sliding into the same position the now opposition party PDP was, when they were in power. As stated by Bill Gates “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failure”. PDP has provided us with enough failure lessons to last a lifetime, unfortunately, a month into our victory at the polls, we haven’t learned anything from the failures of PDP
As youths of this great party that sacrificed a lot to be where we are, we feel ashamed, displeased and furious at the way and manner things have been done since the swearing in of this new administration by our party leadership. If they cannot control things now, how then will they handle major things to come like congresses and party primaries in the not too distant future? It is in light of these that we, without mincing words, call for the immediate resignation of our party chairman, Chief oyegun, for his failure to provide the much needed leadership that will make our party stronger than it is.
At a point when our President, Muhammadu Buhari has clearly stated that he will not interfere in the NASS leadership crises, which translates to not having any form of interference from the presidency which was a departure from the usual way of the PDP, we would have assumed the APC leadership will seize the moment and manage all the various interests like it did during the presidential primaries, if we could handle that perfectly, despite the many powerful candidates contesting, one wonders how a simple NASS leadership election can degenerate into this national display of shame. Before things become completely out of control, we still have a chance to salvage the situation, by removing our national chairman with immediate effect and handing the party over to a capable hand.
Mahmud Jikamshi
For: Save APC Group
Great post Thank you. I look forward to the continuation.