THE ANOMALY OF APC GOVERNORS WHO ARE NOT APC

Basil Okoh

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

APC is betting its entire political future on the outcome of a single election. Its manouvre to make every governor in Nigeria defect to APC looks like an agenda for a one party state, but on the contrary, the one party state is not the real intent of the strategy. The project aim is to gather every political actor with executive power or influence under a single political platform for a single one time objective and that is to re-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President in 2027.

After that election there is no plan to build a single political platform incorporating the defectors and mould all into an enduring political party. The defections are required only to build a massive platform to crowd the political arena and force the re-election of Bola Tinubu. Nothing beyond that agenda. There is no plan for any political alignment to serve beyond that single purpose election. So what happens to APC after that election, win or lose in 2027, no one can tell or has a plan. As can be seen, APC has no plan or organizational cohesion and definitely no commitment to fuse the parties together to function beyond the 2027 elections.

More than half of its governors now are defectors from other parties, particularly the PDP, this could mean that there will be no guarantee of party loyalty from these governors if they win the governorship elections in their states in 2027.

Governor Sheriff Oborevwori is one of the early defectors into APC from PDP. So Delta state is nominally APC but every operative in government is originally PDP. Delta state government is APC in name only. The governing political party is PDP and the ruling personalities, philosophy and ideology (if any) is PDP.

Right now there’s no integration of the governors and their defecting followers into the APC. Nothing changes with defecting governors in the states. The parties from which they defect and the party into which they defect remain parallel organizations and there usually are no personnel changes. So the defections had no depth and no mass following, only a repositioning of the governors for the next election. Because the parties have no philosophical groundings and no governing ideologies, defections become hollow rituals with no difference in governing ideas.

If the defecting governors win in the name of APC in 2027, they will become independent operators with APC having no powers or control over them and will not be answerable to APC as they do not answer to APC now. There will be no guarantee that governors who were just looking for safe platforms to contest elections will not return to PDP and or implement PDP programs afterwards.

Nowhere is this hollow ritual better exemplified than in Delta state. Although loyalties are now being purchased and so allegiances becoming more nuanced, the two parties, PDP and APC have related as two parallel formations in the state. There has been no integration of PDP into APC. PDP owns the government and the power but does not own the party. APC which owns the party does not own the government and has no power over it. This situation is expected to continue after 2027 and APC will be the loser in the end. In their present formations, there’s no way APC can compel allegiance from PDP for as long as its governor is an original PDP man. So PDP will continue to have the trump card even if in the end it will be forced to adopt another name or go back to the name PDP but it will still hold power in the state.

APC has never been integrated into government in Delta state, even as a ruling party. PDP members wielding the power of government overwhelmed APC party apparatchiks with money and are taking over control of the party machinery. PDP did not blend into APC as a defecting party, instead, as the party in government, it embarked on taking over the party structure of a divided APC.

It does appear with recent thinking and talk in APC headquarters that the party caucuses are beginning to realize the danger of desperately organizing the party around one man’s electoral ambition. From evidence across the country APC will lose many states after the 2027 election win or lose the presidency, as it will lose control of many states after 2027, except it begins now to create ways to make its own men run for elections particularly in executive positions of governors and chairmen of Local Governments.

Bola Tinubu, win or lose in 2027, will not be central to the party’s survival beyond 2027 and if we go by the practice of ex-presidents in Nigeria, may not care about how the party fares after his tenure. The recent talk by members of its National Executive Council to hold primaries in defecting states will begin to address the strategies of survival of the party by correcting the anomalies of APC governors who are not APC.Otherwise APC will be worse than PDP is now.

@basilokoh

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