21st November, 2013
By Ademola Adegbamigbe
Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, on Tuesday 12 November 2013, marked his fifth year in office. Wellwishers within and outside the state trooped to the Ogbe Stadium, Benin City, the capital, to celebrate with the labour leader-turned-politician.
It was actually another opportunity for the All Progressives Congress, APC, leaders to sensitise the public about the challenges ahead. That is, how to wrest power from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, federal government in 2015. In fact, the party elders launched APC in the state that day.
One after the other, Patrick ‘Igodomigodo” Obahiagbon, the former House of Representatives member, now Oshiomhole’s chief of staff, who initially did not entertain the people with his bombastic English (but did when he invited his principal), introduced, one after the other, guests who brought goodwill messages.
Apart from euglogising Oshiomhole for a job well done, the same theme ran through the politicians’ speeches.
After Professor Julius Ihonvbere, activist scholar and secretary to the state government, welcomed all guests, Chief Bisi Akande, the interim national chairman of APC, mounted the dais.
He was happy that Edo has always been counted among the progressives. Akande, therefore, asked the people of Edo to give APC the leadership of Nigeria in 2015.
Chief Odigie Oyegun, one-time Edo State governor who spoke after Chief Tom Ikimi, showered encomiums on Oshiomhole for his great works and added that the battle ahead (which goes beyond Edo) is not easy. “Nobody surrenders power easily. APC must be ready to seize it electorally,” said he. “We must make it impossible for election to be rigged.” Oyegun wanted the transformations in APC states of Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Lagos, Ogun and Edo to be transmitted to the federal level.
It was the turn of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State and APC national leader. Like other speakers before him, he told the crowd that with good planning, “we have witnessed phenomenal development in Edo State.” However, with emphatic knocks on the lectern, he warned that this “is not the destination”.
He reminded the crowd that APC is the new platform, or the rescue boat, for Nigeria where the government at the federal level “gives us statistics of growing GDP in a situation of grinding poverty”.
General Muhammadu Buhari was not left out either. After telling the people of Edo that they had seen the difference in governance in the past five years, he emphasised that APC “is ready to take over the affairs of Nigeria in 2015”.
This, for the past one month or so, has been the message of the APC leaders to the G-7 governors. One after the other, like elderly abbots bearing a transcendental message, they visited Governors Babangida Aliyu, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Rotimi Amaechi, Murtala Nyako, Abdulfatah Ahmed, Aliyu Wamakko and Sule Lamido of Niger, Kano, Rivers, Adamawa, Kwara, Sokoto and Jigawa states, in that order. Many of the “beautiful brides”, to borrow the expression of the great Zik of Africa, hid their real intentions in political diplomatese.
As 2015 inches closer, all eyes are on PDP and APC. Will the latter be able to pull a surprise and send PDP packing? Questions upon questions are asked, with a sense of déjà vu. This is because Nigerians, in the past, were given this kind of expectation. That was when a political leviathan would ride rough shod over the people and a grand coalition would, after giving the people hope for a veritable alternative, later scatter like a pack of rifles knocked over by a drunk. We pray that this will not be history repeating itself.
However, if APC wants to assure Nigerians that this coalition will work, there are a number of things it needs to do so that the people will not say “we have travelled down this road and we will not allow anyone sell us down the river.”
First, APC must, when choosing its presidential candidate, come up with a masterstroke that can throw its enemy’s camp into confusion. Right now, critics of APC are cocking their snook that when this critical moment comes, its leaders will become as fractious as scorpions kept in a jar or cocks thrown into a pit.
Second, the party must, as much as possible, demystify power at all levels. Excessive luxury and over-dramatisation of authority must belong to the past. Pray, must state governors’ convoys overspeed? Festus Iyayi, an academic and political activist, lost his life in Kogi State last week in that kind of circumstance. It was an avoidable catastrophe.
APC should also, if it must live up to its welfarist credentials, promise Nigerians that education must be cheap so that the rich and poor will have the same opportunity to realise their endowments. A situation whereby many states across the parties price education out of the reach of the common man is not reassuring and it is a contradiction to the spirit of welfarism.
Moreover, APC must promise Nigerians that it will ensure that the practice of rich men living and making their money in Nigeria but going overseas to die, which does our country’s image no good, will be discouraged. The party can do this by coming up with a complete health policy that can guarantee health care services for all.
Above all, the party can take measuring achievements in office beyond building of infrastructure to the number of jobs created.
It is only when these and more have been put in place and settled that PDP, a behemoth which seems, by the day, to be developing feet of clay, and the electorate will not wave APC off with derision. The party must get it right.
—Adegbamigbe, 08055002056