The former interim national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has described the crisis rocking the ruling party over the composition of principal officers of the National Assembly as a conspiracy aimed at hijacking the party before the 2019 election. In a statement issued yesterday, the former Osun State governor noted that the current impasse in the party is the handiwork of the defunct New Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in the APC, polluted interests in the business sector, some Northern elites, and the Nigerian oil subsidy barons. According to Akande, after the March 28 elections won the APC, a meeting was held by certain old New PDP leaders in Alhaji Kawu Baraje’s house at Abuja to review what should be their (former New PDP members) share in Buhari’s government.
He noted that the group resolved to seek collaboration with PDP with a view to hijacking the National Assembly with an ultimate aim of resuscitating PDP as their future political platform. The statement reads: “Unknown to most APC members, while Senator Bukola Saraki was being adopted as the candidate for Senate President by certain old New PDP tendencies, the theory was being propagated that, like in most presidential democracy, the APC minority leaders in the old National Assembly (George Akume for the Senate and Femi Gbajabiamila for the House of Representatives) should automatically become Senate President and Speaker respectively now that APC has the majority. “Numerous among those calling themselves businessmen in Nigeria are like leaches sucking from the nation’s blood largely through various governments and particularly through the Federal Government.
While all these schisms were going on in the APC, those who were jittery of Buhari’s constant threat of anticorruption’s battle began to encourage and finance rebellions against the APC democratic positions which led to the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as the candidate of the PDP tendencies inside and outside APC. “Before the party knew it, the process had been hijacked by polluted interests who saw the inordinate contests as a loophole for stifling APC governments’ efforts in its desire to fight corruption. Most Northern elites, the Nigerian oil subsidy barons and other business cartels who never liked Buhari’s anticorruption political stance are quickly backing-up the rebellion against APC with strong support.
While other position seekers are waiting in the wings until Buhari’s ministers are announced, a large section of the South-West see the rebellion as a conspiracy of the north against the Yoruba. “What began as political patronages to be shared into APC membershipspreads among ethnic zones, religious faiths and political rankings and experiences have now become so complicated that the sharing has to be done by and among PDP leadership together with cohorts of former New PDP affiliations in the APC, by and among gangs of past anti- Buhari’s Presidency, and certain APC legislators and party members who dance round the crisis arena to pick some crumbs.
“Now that the whole conspiracy has blown open, it is doubtful if the present institutions of party leadership can muster the required capacity to arrest the drift. It is my opinion that President Buhari and the APC governors should now see APC as a wrecking platform that may not be strong enough again to carry them to political victory in 2019 and they should quickly begin a joint damage control effort to reconstruct the party in its claim to bring about the promised change before the party’s shortcomings begin to aggravate the challenges of governance in their hands.”
-New Telegraph
