Oshiomhole and the future of APC By Suleiman Adamu Usman

It is undoubtedly a growing point of profound concern for those who genuinely care about the fortunes and future of the All Progressives Congress ( APC) that the party is unstoppably collapsing into a precipitous abyss.

It is indeed the overwhelming position of the crucial majority of the APC that the current National Working Committee of the party is not by any means working for the evolvement of APC into a formidable mass-based party. In fact, a considerable number of strategic APC leaders hold the hardly incontrovertible view that the working committee under APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole is grossly deficient in the capacity to work effectively and nourish the party into electoral viability with organizational superiority.



This is not the time for continuing deception and diversion in the false narrative of APC’s performance in the 2019 Presidential and general election. Honor  demands that Oshiomhole-led committee must be prepared to subject itself to an internal earnest review for retrospective accountability.



It is only with such show of humility and honesty that our party can navigate the path forward for growth and future victories. If the party hierarchy and the membership continue to tolerate fabrication that the working committee played a stimulating role in the campaigns for President Buhari’s victory,  then APC would have become hostage to perpetual deceit and domestic abuse by its national chairman.  The party will consequently suffer internal decline presaging its decay and ultimate annihilation.



How can the leaders of APC not be cognizant of the recent ignoble and despicable history of the party that once described itself as the largest party in Africa with a vow that it would hold national leadership for six decades (sixty years).  The organization in reference, the Peoples’ Democratic Party which so recklessly boasted of its infallibility approximating immortality was at some point displaying the same kind of syndrome that Oshiomhole’s NWC is now exhibiting in the health of the APC.



There were some few PDP leaders and other Nigerians who warned the party then that the PDP was suffering from internal dictatorship especially in the way it conducted its primary elections. The counsel that the apex leadership had lost touch with the grassroots of the PDP was not heeded. The irrevocable lesson of history is that arrogance, hubris and impunity by political party leaders especially at the level of national working committees will irreversibly end with damnation, decline and defeat. May the fate of PDP not be visited on the APC; the progressive congress should definitely avoid this road of death because the party should soon vanquish itself from Oshiomhole’s Emperor-like siege.



What further humiliation would the APC membership allow under its current national working committee? Oshiomhole’s pitiful performance at the helms of APC’s affairs has made such a potentially magnificent political party the laughing stock of the opposition and a source of depression among APC membership. The portrait of Oshiomhole’s APC is an organization that is characterized by grave tactical errors and fatal strategic blunders.  With Oshiomhole, the hopes of APC members nation-wide that the party would serve as catalyzing agency for President Buhari’s second term agenda is diminishing. The supposed APC National Chairman is making the party to constantly dance naked in the market place. APC is becoming a subject of hurtful derision and public stigmatization. The party today stands very feebly before the jury of history.



For instance, who would have imagined that the APC national working committee will so recklessly proceed to ask the Supreme Court, just a few weeks ago, to review its decision regarding the Zamfara State governorship election? The outcome of utter dismissal that was unequivocally  handed down by the apex court was definitely the expected result that most conscientious party members envisaged; indeed anyone with minimum  familiarity  with the primary election disaster, created by the Oshiomhole’s national working committee in Zamfara state,  had no doubt that the wounds suffered by APC were unquestionably  self-inflicted. The legal gamble was a simultaneous squander of the party’s funds and a shameless endeavor by Oshiomhole to give the impression that APC was the victim of a judicial decision.



Truth must be told for an unvarnished testimony for history:  the fact that APC woefully and totally lost such a valuable APC Northwest state in the 2019 general elections was due to the dubious game in which the party’s leadership was engaged during the primaries in Zamfara State. The painful consequence of the dishonorable conduct has caused a situation where APC does not have a single member of the Zamfara House of Assembly, none in the House of Representatives, no Senator and of course, the party lost the governorship seat. The party won only the presidential election in the state because of the mass attraction and personal charisma of President Buhari. With the organizational failure of the APC national working committee, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Zamfara State literally harvested where they did not sow. Up till date, Oshiohmole- led national working committee has not cared to offer the membership of the party a modicum of remorse or an explanation as to why APC members in Zamfara State were dis-enfranchised as a consequence of the conduct of the party’s chairman. Will the APC be re-awakened to ensure the investigation of Oshiomhole’s Zamfara political tragedy?



But more troubling for the APC is the exigent fact that even now, Oshiomhole, is still engaging in actions capable of further fracturing and slashing the soulful fabric of APC solidarity. While grassroots APC party leaders are ashamed of the fact that there are currently about 900 APC primary election-related cases in the courts, Oshiomhole, is already creating arenas for fresh crisis in locations where he intends to impose his will on the people in varieties of questionable political scenarios. In fact, the last place where one would have thought that Oshiomhole will engender crisis would have been the only APC state in the South-South region. But the only principal consideration that seems to matter to him, is his personal advancement and egotistic interest. And so, Oshiomhole, the ex-governor of Edo State, has literally established a parallel assembly in Abuja thereby overheating the polity in the state he once governed.



The emergence of APC as a political party was a historic phenomenon for Africa’s giant nation. Supposed party leaders with diminished vision of momentous chronicles of times cannot, therefore, be allowed to decimate the optimism that APC represents. The progressive congress will ultimately emerge stronger without an Emperor-like national chairman.