Bisi Akande, pioneer chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC),

Bisi Akande, pioneer chairman of the

All Progressives Congress (APC),

says the rebellion in the senate is

being viewed in the south-west as a

northern conspiracy against the

Yoruba.

He also alleged that individuals who

feel threatened by the resolve of

President Muhammadu Buhari to fight

corruption influenced the emergence of

Bukola Saraki as senate president.

“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,” the former

governor of Osun state wrote in

a scorching letter, which was made

public late Sunday,

Describing the ongoing crisis within

the party as a conspiracy, Akande

expressed doubt that the leadership of

APC was capable of handling the

situation and he urged Buhari and

governors elected under the platform

of the party to intervene in order to

prevent APC from total collapse.

Akande went down memory

lane on how the APC was established

and the challenges that threatened its

existence in its formative stage.

The elder statesman said he had it on

good authority that some of those

who defected to the APC from the

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are

planning to resuscitate the former

ruling party ahead of 2019 election.

The letter is reproduced below.

Some times 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 hijacking 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 loophole for stifling APC

government’s 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.

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