The situation in the All Progressives Congress (APC) might look gloomy to many of its members following the gale of the defection of its members in the National Assembly, last week, but not so to the top hierarchy of the party. The National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, made frantic efforts to stop the defection of some of the party’s lawmakers to the PDP, but he discovered that most of them had made up their minds to leave long before he assumed office.
Just like Senator Shehu Sani said in an interview that Oshiomhole inherited “a divided party”, that was the situation when he came in as National Chairman of the ruling party. Meanwhile, the former labour leader went to work, held marathon meetings with all the aggrieved persons, with a view to addressing their grievances. Whatever the situation might look, barely one month and five days after taking office, Oshiomhole led his party to victory in the Ekiti governorship election and held a successful direct governorship primary in Osun State. So it is too early for the PDP to celebrate because, after the on-going reforms being carried out in the APC, winning the general elections in 2019 will be a mirage for the PDP.
Oshiomhole, who met with the APC caucus in the House of Representatives, led by the leader of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, on Thursday at the APC Secretariat in Abuja, shared his experience with the lawmakers and stressed that those who had the party were mercenaries that could not be taken seriously. He urged the caucus member to be calm and remain resolute on the ideals of the APC just as he expressed optimism that the party will emerge victorious at the end.
“I want to thank you for keeping faith even in moments of temptation. In some of my interviews at the time I declared my intention to contest for this job, my conviction is that we should go beyond political parties functioning merely as platforms for elections. And if they are no platforms for elections, we will not be better than a public taxi which you hired when your car breaks down.
If you get to your destination, if you are a kind passenger, you will pay the driver; if you not a kind passenger, you might not pay the driver. If we are going to deepen democracy in our country and sustain multi-party democracy, the Nigerian people must be able to see what distinguishes one party from the other. We must consciously build a political party that is bonded together on the basis of ideas or a clear ideology”, he told the lawmakers.
“My understanding of forming the APC, all those who are progressive elements, this party is their home. And we need to understand that to be progressive is to be pro-people, pro-Nigeria, pro-poor, people-driven, people-oriented and people-centered.
And that we need each and every one of us who is in this progressive party to internalize these core values of progressive politics. And that it is contradictory for us to have in a progressive party, from the far right and even fascist being on the same party along those from the far left. For all of us to be on the same platform is not sustainable. Therefore, we must choose who is admissible to the platform of a progressive party. And I believe that there are just two forces within the Nigeria political class.
The progressive forces which we represent and the reactionary and conservative forces which the other forces, as led by the PDP, represent. Those who are happy with the Nigeria paradox of a country that is so weak and its people are getting poorer. More and more people are having private jets just as more and more people are becoming homeless.
Those who are happy with this they belong to the far right and they should remain in the PDP and any other party that offers them a tattered umbrella. But if you are concerned about putting to an end a situation whereby a country prides itself as the richest and most powerful in Africa, we must stop lamenting, form a party of change, change the economic policies, change the social policies, educational policies, change the health care policies that explain this paradox.
“Therefore, if you are going to eliminate poverty within the ranks of the Nigerian people, we must start by showing that we work consciously to deal practical expression to our commitment to universal basic education. And for those who said they are moving to PDP, that is where they belong.
If you left there because you thought that the culture of sharing the money will be deepened in APC, and you have found that share the money is not part of it and you choose to return, good luck. But you must know that the access to CBN has been cut off, the access to NNPC has been cut off, the access to defence funds has been cut off.
PDP blackmailing lawmakers
“I am excited that even in a moment like this, we have men and women of honour in the House of Representatives who recognize that there are values that are more important than dangling automatic tickets, dangling dollars without asking questions about the source of the dollars.
But I can tell you, if people have not learnt from the recent past, then they will go the same way of the recent past. We must remain focused and I am glad that we have men and women who have refused to defect. Somebody asked me, are we going to counter the PDP by offering automatic tickets? I said, did we serve anybody a departure ticket?
If we did not give you a departure ticket, how does the issue of return ticket arise? I am clear; we need every legislator who has value, every legislator who is at home with his people, not with the god fathers. That legislator is a value to our party and this party will do everything possible to retain him.
“It cannot be argued that experience can be discarded. I was a governor for eight years and I don’t have any problem with any National Assembly member on account of the fact that he did not come to say good morning or goodnight to me before I go to bed.
Because I was clear about my job and what determined their tenure is to the extent to which they have bonded with their people and whatever arrangement they have in their domestic constituencies. I think that is the way to go. I understand now, after we carried out investigations, that certain persons simply played on the fears of some people who were completely innocent.
My finding from interactions I have from the caucus of the House of Reps and that of the Senate is that there are a number of our congressmen and senators who have some issues with local forces in their respective states. Those issues did not arise at the federal level, they are local and because every politics is local, every solution to political problem necessarily must be local.
If there are issues between any one of our members or our leaders with local forces across the 36 states, we have a duty to try to ensure that that problem is nipped in the bud so that it does not spread.
“In Osun state we have tried to prove that it is possible for those who have invested too heavily on few individuals who may not be accountable to the party members that we can transfer power back to the owners of the party which is our card carrying members. We will talk to those who have genuine grievances but we will not negotiate with political mercenaries”.
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