Old Ambition-Virus 2023: Why a meeting of NEC is the solution

That the All Progressives Congress (APC) is having leadership crisis is no longer news.  What is news now is that the party is collapsing with no leader in charge. Following the Appeal Court ruling sustaining the suspension of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the National Chairman of the party, late on Monday, June 16, 2020, members […]

That the All Progressives Congress (APC) is having leadership crisis is no longer news.  What is news now is that the party is collapsing with no leader in charge.

Following the Appeal Court ruling sustaining the suspension of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the National Chairman of the party, late on Monday, June 16, 2020, members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party started making disparate claims as to who is the Acting National Chairman.

It is as if the party doesn’t have a constitution or those who operate the constitution are either ignorant of its provisions or have decided to set aside the constitution and just embark on a free for all fight. Yet, APC is the ruling party in Nigeria.

Is it possible for a ruling party in control of the federal government, with President Muhammadu Buhari who is incontestably a moral leader, not to be able to resolve a matter as important as who presides as the national chairman of the party?

How can a party so blessed with experienced and very skillful leaders such as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Chief Bisi Akande, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu, Chief Tony Momoh, etc. be incapable of resolving the problem of leadership vacancy?

With twenty governors and in control of the National Assembly leadership producing the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives, shouldn’t that serve as a source of strength to be able to solve any leadership dispute in the party, no matter how complex?

These are practical questions requiring very urgent answers. Every loyal member of the party must be ashamed of what is going on now.

Within a few hours of the Abuja Appeal Court ruling, our party has produced three conflicting claims to the position of the National Chairman.

Sen Abiola Ajimobi, Deputy National Chairman South, Chief Hilliard Eta, National Vice Chairman South South and Chief Victor Gaidom, Deputy National Secretary are all within 24 hours of the ruling presented to Nigerians as Acting National Chairman by disputing sections of the party’s leadership.

While Chief Eta is being presented to stand in for Sen Ajimobi who is indispose, Chief Gaidom is being presented on the strength of a court ruling on accounts of vacancies, which may have made him the most senior NWC member as at March 2020.

All manner of arguments bordering on legal technicalities around interpreting provisions of the party’s constitution are being presented.

Didn’t the resolution of the problem in March 2020 lead to some reconciliation within the NWC? If there wasn’t reconciliation, why was there no action between March and now towards resolving the matter with Comrade Oshiomhole’s short return to the position of the national chairman?

Somehow, this situation reminds one of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s diagnostic of March 15, 2020 when he argued that “We must be alert to another sickness that seems rampant within a certain segment of society.

“That sickness is old ambition-virus 2023. This illness afflicts many in the political class along with their allies in the media.

“Those touched by this malady find that their ability to tell time and discern the difference between the present and the future has been strongly impaired.

“The carriers of this sickness are confused as to the very season our nation now finds itself. They conflate things, which no sensible person would conflate.

“The primary symptom of their malady is the driving tendency to believe the events of 2023 will be decided before we even exit the year 2020.”

Without doubt, this diagnostic is true. On the strength of this prescriptive accuracy, we may need to ask, is APC faced with a cancerous situation? Could the cancer have spread to have consumed all our leaders? Somehow, this may appear to explain the state of health of members of the NWC.

Virtually all of them may have been infected with the highest degree of the “Old ambition-Virus 2023” on accounts of being proxies to politicians that are already in critical stages on account of the sickness. Being proxies, they will do nothing without the approval of their patrons (if you like godfathers).

With the godfathers in critical stages, it would appear that to treat the “old ambition-Virus 2023”, we must go beyond the members of the NWC. In fact, the NWC members are just the face of the symptoms.

The careers of the symptoms are not the NWC members but their godfathers. In other words, it will be foolhardy to imagine we can resolve the leadership problems of APC by solving the current leadership tussle in the NWC.

We may recall that the last time, in March 2020, we had this problem, it took the combined intervention of President Buhari, governors, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and other leaders to create the temporary reprieve, which was terminated by the ruling of the Appeal Court of June 16, 2020.

Before the intervention of these leaders in March 2020, the controversy around who has the authority to convene meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) given the suspension of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the National Chairman of the party was the dispute.

With the resolution of the problem and particularly since meetings of NEC are statutorily required to hold quarterly, why didn’t the NWC under Comrade Oshiomhole convene any NEC meeting between March and now when the crisis resumed? Wouldn’t it have been possible that NEC may even have pre-empted the current crisis?

May be the NWC members, including Comrade Oshiomhole are conscious of the high possibility of the of the party’s NEC taking steps to apply the right treatment to the “old ambition-Virus 2023”, which may include terminating the tenure of the NWC members responsible for the crisis.

Termination of the tenure of any of the NWC members responsible for the crisis could mean destroying the ambition of the godfather behind the affected NWC member.

Is it why the crisis is lingering and no end in sight? What is it that can be done to help our leaders find a permanent handle to resolve our current APC leadership challenge?

Can we immediately activate intervention of our leaders – President Buhari, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, governors, Asiwaju Tinubu, Chief Akande, Chief Onu, Chief Momoh, etc. similar to what happened in March to resolve this matter? Or, is it that these leaders are also infected by the “old ambition-Virus 2023” sickness?

The situation APC finds itself is very traumatic for every member. By extension, the inability of the party to find solution to the leadership crisis makes it also traumatic for all our leaders including those of them who today serve as the face of the crisis – Comrade Oshiomhole, Chief Eta, Chief Gaidom and their accomplices in and out of the NWC.

What makes the situation more frustrating is the reticence of President Buhari in the face of what obviously could damage the legacy he will bequeath to the nation.

While we must celebrate the fact that his leadership style is required to ensure that the party is managed independently and therefore made possible for the exercise of supremacy of the party based on decisions of organs, “old ambition-Virus 2023” may have weakened the capacity of the party to benefit from the commendable leadership approach of President Buhari.

This position does not represent the view of any APC governor or the Progressive Governors Forum.

Salihu Moh. Lukman, Progressive Governors Forum Abuja