APC’s horsetrading, intrigues to keep nPDP

 

In the last one month, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been polarised by the demands of the faction the Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP), which formed foundation of the party in the run-up to the 2015 general elections. In this piece, BODE OLAGOKE looks at the horse-trading and intrigues to keep the group in the APC.

Just like they made history when the group left People Democratic Party (PDP) before the 2015 general elections, a move which is believed to have cost the party the presidency, the nPDP is once again on the verge of history as the 2019 general elections draws closer.

After weeks of speculation about the group leaving the ruling APC, the group in a letter to the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, made formal complaint to the party stating that despite their contribution to the success of the APC, their members have been relegated to the background in the scheme of things in the party and in the government.
Not unmindful of the potential damage the group defection could cost the party in the forthcoming elections, the APC has since commenced processes of fence mending.

The contention

In what analysts have described as the battle for the soul of the APC, the nPDP which is one of the power blocs that fused into the APC before 2015 general elections, the group gave the APC leadership a seven-day ultimatum to convene an emergency meeting to address their grievances.
Remarkably, the letter came days after the party conducted ward and Local Government congresses across the country, which left many party stalwarts disenchanted with the process.

Speaking to journalists at a press conference after a closed-door meeting with the APC national chairman, at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja, where the letter dated April 27, 2018, and titled “Request for redressing of grievances of the former new PDP block within the All Progressives Congress” was submitted, the group’s leader, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, declared that without votes contributed by the members of his group, the present government would not have been elected into power.

The letter signed by Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraja, and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, on behalf of the group further stated that despite their contribution to the success of the APC, their members have been relegated to the background in the scheme of things in the party and in the government.

The grievances

The nPDP in the letter listed the following as reasons for their resurgence to include: “In the constitution the Federal Executive Council (FEC) the new PDP bloc was generously side-lined as virtually no positron was conceded to it. The only member of fed that belonged to former new PDP block comes from a state that contributed virtually no vote to the APC in the 2015 presidential election.”

“There has been no significant patronage and appointments to executive positions in various government agencies such as Chief Executive and Executive Directors of government agencies and parastatals as members of our block of the party continue to helplessly watch as these positions are shared by the erstwhile CPC, ACN, ANPP and even APGA blocks of the party and those who have no party at all.

“In appointments Into Boards of various government agencies, very few former new PDP members were patronised. These, are however not commensurate with our contributions to the growth and victory of the party.”

Similarly, “When members of the former new PDP block showed interest in running for the offices of President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives, they were subjected to a vicious and relentless political opposition as if they were not legitimate members of the APC family.

“During the party primaries preparatory to the 2015 General Elections, most of the promises made to sitting members of the National Assembly who belonged to the former new PDP in terms of a level playing field were reneged upon or observed more in breach.

“There has been general lack of consultation, non-recognition and even persecution of former new PDP members and leaders by the party and government. For example, some of our leaders are denied the security cover necessary to visit their constituencies even though they are elected representatives of the people in a government they sacrificed so much for.”

Others include that, “Harassment, intimidation and persecution of former new PDP leaders by the government is still an ongoing affair. We do not want to overstate the obvious by cataloguing names of former new PDP stalwarts that are targets Of this political pogrom.

“There is inadequate reflection of programme and policy contributions of members at the former new PDP block in the running of the government.”

nPDP splits

Surprisingly, a faction loyal to the ruling party and President Buhari distanced themselves from the one-week ultimatum issued by its chairman, Alhaji Kawu Baraje.

The opposing group led by former Governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, had stormed the APC national secretariat in Abuja to present a letter to the national chairman urging him to call the bluff of the Baraje-led group, whom he accused of fronting for Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Adamu, who briefed journalists after presenting the letter, expressed the support of the group for the Buhari-led administration and accused Saraki of being the brain behind threats by the Baraje faction of the nPDP.

According to the two-term governor, his group which was part of nPDP that broke away from the main PDP right from the beginning, was never consulted nor carried along before the letter of complaint was tendered by the Baraje-led group.
The letter submitted by the Adamu-led faction was titled, ‘Unfounded and Unjustified Grounds for Confrontation with our Party, the APC, and Government by Some Members of the Defunct nPDP,’ and dated May 14, 2018, described Baraje’s letter as “misleading”.

The letter jointly signed by Adamu as chairman; Chief Theodore Geogewill as deputy chairman; and Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin as secretary of the group; said Baraje’s letter “was full of contradictions, false assertions, misrepresentations, a distortion of history and facts and in many instances outright lies.

“We as initiators and founding members of the defunct nPDP, therefore, wish to condemn and disassociate ourselves from the letter and apologise for the obvious embarrassment the letter has caused our party and government.

“We wish to reaffirm our support and confidence in the party and Mr. President and we do not in any way feel marginalised or maltreated as we are clearly in the league of the biggest beneficiaries of the party.

“Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of correcting the misleading contents of the letter and setting the records straight, it is pertinent that we provide some facts on some of the issues raised in the letter,” the group said.

We’re not being marginalise Senator Adamu
On the issue of marginalisation, as alleged by the Baraje-led group, Adamu’s group said government patronage was not limited to the executive arm only, adding that APC has ensured a balance of power among the legacy parties that formed the coalition.

“Government at the federal level is not only the executive branch in isolation. It includes the legislature as well. The APC government deliberately or not has a balance of power among the various parties and groups that merged to form the APC at the federal level.

“While the Muhammadu Buhari-led CPC got the presidency, the Bola Tinubu-led ACN got the vice-presidency and the nPDP as we were then eventually got the combination of Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives, though under somewhat questionable circumstances,” they stressed.

Continuing, the group said: “It is strange that we did not see any qualms when the Senate President and Speaker dispensed about 200 appointments including committee chairmen without asking for nominations from Mr. President, the vice-president, the APC as a party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as party leader, Baba Akande, the pioneer national chairman, and a host of others. Is that not marginalisation?

“If we in the nPDP did not view that as marginalisation, then we do not have the moral justification to accuse the president if he appoints his ministers without seeking for our nominees.

“The APC has been very gracious to us but we must not over-stretch our luck. We have concentrated on pointing accusing fingers at the president and the party and generally others while we failed to look inwards to address the greed, selfishness, witch hunt, injustice and high-handedness exhibited by some leaders of the defunct nPDP in privileged positions today against our fellow members.

“We only remember that the nPDP ever existed when it was time to advance our personal and often selfish interests. Let us be careful not to become a cancer to any house we seek to join or gain a specialty in trying to destroy every house we help to build. We must be introspective and change our ways.”

The group led by Adamu said that the party and Buhari should also reach out to its members if they wished to grant audience to the aggrieved Baraje group.

“In any event that it decides to grant audience to the group led by Kawu Baraje, we the Buhari supporters who are now in the majority in the defunct nPDP should be invited to the meeting as well, for it seems the petitioners no longer stand for the ideals of the defunct nPDP nor represent our collective interest and position,” the group said.

Adamu-led faction pledges allegiance

The Adamu group, which copied Buhari and Tinubu in the letter, also expressed solidarity for the president and the party for “steering the ship of state in this trying moment and for their maturity in the face of several instances of attempts to intimidate, blackmail, harass and embarrass the government and party by some members of the defunct nPDP members for their selfish interests”.

“We remain resolute in our loyalty and support for our party and this government in the effort to deliver service to the Nigerian state and our people,” they stated.

APC, Presidency respond

Without wasting time, the jittery national leadership of the APC before the expiration of the seven-day ultimatum given by the aggrieved nPDP members arranged for a meeting with Alhaji Baraje led group.

Speaking after an hour of closed-door deliberations at the national secretariat of the APC, the party’s Deputy National Chairman, Senator Shuaibu Lawal, who led other National Working Committee (NWC) members to the meeting said the party was taking up the disaffections seriously.

Shuaibu, who stood in for the national chairman said: “We have not yet resolved. They wrote a letter to us, they are partymen, they have grievances, we looked at the letter, their grievances are genuine. And they requested a meeting within seven days and before the seven days expired, I called them and they were not ready to come, they said we should shift the meeting till today, which we did.

“So, we are listening to them, we have listened to them and we are taking up their matter seriously, we will address it. We don’t ignore our people except if you don’t send your grievances to the party, but if you send, we will always address your grievances.”

When asked whether he was satisfied with responses his group got from the closed meeting, Baraje said: “So far so good, we have just started and when you start a race, you don’t say whether somebody wants to see you until you are getting to the middle or to the end. But it is a good start, it is a good beginning.”

He further explained: “As you are aware that we requested that we wanted to see the party, and the party, very sensitive party, very responsible party, responded to our requests adequately and we think it is a very encouraging time.

“Since last week, they have gotten across to us but because of one logistics or the other, we couldn’t come until today. We begged the party to shift the day till today and today we have seen our party. We are party members, this office is our office, we have only come home to discuss those observations we copied you people when we wrote in our letter. The meeting was very beautiful.”

A week after the meeting with APC leadership, the presidency through Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also held another meeting with the nPDP members, with assurance that President Buhari himself was planning to meet with the aggrieved APC members.

Defection plan
Findings show that majority members of the nPDP have made up their minds to leave the ruling APC, what is not certain, however is which party they are likely to end up in.

Although, Alhaji Baraje had said that the group was not considering defection but political observers are of the opinion that only a novice in politics that will take such statement to bank.

Again, it was also reported that one of the demands by the group is that President Buhari should discontinue the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki at CCT, a claim Saraki media team has since denied.
Similarly, Baraje while fielding questions from journalists in Ilorin, before the group’s meeting with leadership of the APC, said that “contrary to insinuations in some quarters, the nPDP’s recent letter to the leadership of the APC was to forestall such occurrences.

He said the nPDP members would not immediately pull out of the APC if the party fails to meet their demands, noting that like they did in the last administration, they would still go ahead and meet with several leaders across the country to stop what he termed as ‘impunity’ within the party.

“The last time we met here (Baraje’s house) in 2016 I told you that the way the party was going on we were on the road to perdition.

“If you look at the letter we wrote, we never said we gave an ultimatum but we advised them; we hinted the party because of the ongoing primaries of the party.

“Now the party has invited us, exactly on the seventh day of the letter and they wanted us to meet that same day but because we were speaking for several leaders across the country we told them we couldn’t meet that same day so now they have scheduled a meeting for tomorrow (Monday).”

He, however, dismissed the opposition of the group led by Senator Abdullahi Adamu to the petition by the nPDP, stating that the nPDP is such a large group.

“We have travelled a long way with the APC and now we are seeing things worse in APC than in PDP. If we the leaders are worth the name, we should be bold enough to speak about it,” he said.

They have made up their minds – Kailani Mohammed

Conversely, an ally of President Muhammadu Buhari and National President of Vote Guard and Awareness for Buhari, Engineer Kailani Mohammed, has dismissed claims by the nPDP of not planning to leave the APC, arguing that they have made up their minds to dump the party.

Mohammed, while addressing journalists in Kaduna said even if President Buhari and the party gave the nPDP members heaven and earth, they would still leave.

According to him, “The nPDP, even if we give them heaven and earth, they have made up their minds. There was a merger ahead of the 2015 elections, where about four or five parties came together, and every group came with its own interest. The complaint the nPDP members are putting forward is that, they have not been carried along.

“Though, in a political setting like ours, people are bound to be aggrieved, but in the case of members of nPDP, many of them got appointment; starting from Saraki, being the Senate President; Dogara as Speaker; many of them are governors, who benefited from the recent board appointment, while their spokesman, Kawu Baraje is a chairman of a lucrative board.

“Now, I learnt that, they met the Vice President yesterday and still, they are not satisfied; they said they have to meet the President. But believe me sincerely, in a party situation, we depend solely on the masses of this country who will do the voting and that is why the government is concentrating on how to bring the masses out of their present predicament. Whether this people (nPDP) agree or not, it seems, they are on their way out.

“For us, all we desire is peace, cohesion and mutual understanding for APC to move forward towards 2019. But truly speaking, nPDP have their own masters outside and maybe they have a second option. But, even if they do that, they cannot defeat us, because we have the masses.”

Nobody is leaving APC-Spokesperson
When asked to react to the suggestion that members of the nPDP were planning to leave the ruling party, APC the National Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, said there was no such plan to the best of his knowledge.
According to him, the on-going reconciliation within the party will take care of whatever grievances members might be having against the party.

However, how the on-going game of wit and negotiation will pan out in the next couple of days will be indicative of the preparedness or otherwise of the party to tackle, head on, the issues that will arise, even at the much talked about national convention, as the party and indeed the country heads towards the 2019 elections.

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