CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGE: APC A PARTY IN OPPOSITION WITH ITSELF. Femi Ojo

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The recent development in our polity is something that has attracted plethora of comments across the country. To be specific the outcomes of the elections of principal officers in the National Assembly where Senator  Olusola Saraki and Rt. Honorable Yakubu Dogara emerged as President and Speaker of both the Senate and House of Representatives alongside with their deputies respectively have shown the nature of what the current ruling party is. A party that rode on the gullibility of many Nigerians and the near-saint image of President Buhari with an over hyped mantra of “change” appears to me from the contemporary political outcomes in the National Assembly as nothing but an hypocritical political party whose internal contradictions and dynamism if not urgently and well-managed can set the party on a gradual political obscurity.

The ruling party’s hypocritical enforcement of party supremacy over its individual ambitious member is a thing of great worry. Party supremacy though not antithetical to party politics in a clime where truly the party has been formed on a clear ideological underpinning and not around certain influential political juggernauts with egoistic garb. Unfortunately, APC’s formation was not based on any clear ideological underpinning but rather it was a political venue for those politicians from all different other political parties who were hitherto unhappy about their non-inclusiveness in the political equation of the former administration. The coming together of these strange bedfellows in APC was not driven by any altruistic motive rather it was  driven by different egoistic tendencies who hypocritically but provisionally dropped their different egos firstly, for the purpose of effecting their mantra of “change”. The recent developments in the National Assembly and the ongoing high- wire politics from different political blocks that made up the ruling party can further substantiate this premise.

Party supremacy no doubt is a very important strategy in party politics but the supremacy of the party itself is derived from the members of the party who have genuinely submitted their loyalties to the party’s machinery based on the conviction that the wisdom of men and women who pilot the affairs of the party can be trusted. This is how a party supremacy can be seen and obeyed by different members of any political party but in a situation where the supremacy of the party connotes partiality and seen to represent sentimental wisdom of certain individuals and groups within the political party as this is the case with APC, party supremacy will not only be challenged by the aggrieved members but also further deepening of internal democracy of such party may be a tall order.

The ruling party appears to be a party on collision not with the defeated 

opposition party PDP but with itself with these early failings in National Assembly elections last week, a situation that has given a bi-partisan politics at the legislative arm of the government. To me, the recent bi-partisan politics in the legislative arm of government may consolidate the nascent democracy in our nation if handled maturely and since this is the first time we are seeing this in the country, one may also agree that this may be one of the accidental changes that the ruling party’s political greenness at managing electoral success may bring to our polity.

Moreover, beyond these present political contradictions occasioned by a select political juggernauts in the ruling APC to foster imposition of favored elected politicians on other equally qualified members of its party, it is high time the ruling party  hit the ground running. The promises that the party made to Nigerians to effect change in the polity, I think should be given urgent attention. The signs of early failings in the party should equally be a pointer to the party that the party must learn how to entrench freedom of choice and free will of its members without necessarily imposing undemocratic policies in the name of party supremacy. 

The ruling party should by now move to urgently settle the contradictions it has caused for itself especially in the National Assembly where it appears that the defeated opposition party, the PDP has seen a mole through which if care is not taken, APC ‘s fragile political- house may be pulled down  before the expiration of the current administration. The ruling party should assure Nigerians that the change they told us during the electioneering period, is indeed not the same with what Nigerians experienced in the former administrations of the PDP government. This is because the signs of the early failings of the ruling party are the same with the defeated PDP. Nigerians expect the ruling party to rise up from its many hypocritical tendencies and egoistical influence of select powerful individuals amongst its fold and deliver the change promised in the various sectors of our national life. It will be in the interest of the party to fashion out strategies to hold its political house together and allow the President to hit the ground running without undue interference in the affairs of the country in the name of phony party supremacy. Nigerians are waiting to see the changes promised but such expectation from the majority of our people may be cut short if the ruling party continues on the current political hypocrisy.