It is
clear by now that Adams
Oshiomhole's suspension may not put Nigeria's ruling party,
the All Progressives
Congress (APC) on the path to peace.
Many
Nigerians, rightly or wrongly, see Mr. Oshiomhole as a major obstacle to
stability in APC, even though the party's crisis appears deep-rooted and beyond
the suspended chairman. But he is a part of the problem, nonetheless.
It is
about four months to two crucial governorship elections - the Edo election in
September and Ondo, October.
The
events that happened in less than 24 hours after the Court of Appeal ruling on
Mr. Oshiomhole is an indication that the APC crisis has just moved on to the
next level.
Shortly
after the court ruling, the APC announced the Deputy National Chairman (South),
Abiola Ajimobi, as the acting chairman of the party.
The next
day, the deputy national secretary of the party, Victor Giadom, backed by a
court order, declared
himself acting national chairman of the party..
And then,
like a game of ping-pong, majority of the members of the APC National Working
Committee (NWC) came out to ratify Mr Ajimobi's appointment as acting chairman.
But since
Mr Ajimobi, a former governor of Oyo State, has been very ill and hospitalised,
the NWC asked the party's National Vice Chairman (South-South), Hilliard Eta to
stand in for him, because he (Eta) is from the same geo-political zone with the
suspended national chairman.
Meanwhile,
a group of APC members from the South-West has come out to disown Mr Ajimobi.
The group
said the position of the APC deputy national chairman (South) is
"vacant", with a pending court case on it and, therefore, Mr Ajimobi
was not eligible for the appointment as acting national chairman.
With the
way things are right now, Mr Giadom is really some bad news for Mr Oshiomhole
and some other leaders of the party, including Bola Tinubu, a man highly
regarded as the national leader of APC.
Who is
Giadom?
Mr Giadom,
56, is a close political ally of the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi
Amaechi. He once served as Mr Amaechi's commissioner for works when the latter
was Rivers State governor.
Mr
Giadom, handpicked by Mr Amaechi, was Tonye Cole's running mate in the 2019
governorship election in Rivers.
Both men,
however, could not contest in the general election because of a court judgment
which declared that their party, APC, did not have a candidate for the
election, thereby paving the way for Nyesom Wike of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) to easily win re-election as Rivers governor.
The court
judgment against the APC in the Rivers election was a consequence of an
intra-party dispute between Mr Amaechi and a former senator from Rivers, Magnus
Abe, over Mr Abe's governorship ambition which Mr Amaechi disapproved of.
Victor
Giadom [PHOTO: Tori.ng]Mr Amaechi and his allies, including Mr Giadom, believe
that Mr Oshiomhole and other APC national leaders backed Mr Abe in the Rivers
APC crisis in order to cut down the minister's political influence in the party
because of the 2023 presidential election.
Chris
Finebone, a former spokesperson of APC in Rivers and Mr Amaechi's loyalist,
told PREMIUM TIMES Mr Oshiomhole and other APC leaders gave covert support to
Mr Abe against the minister.
"Adams
(Oshiomhole) has shown too much ambivalence to issues pertaining to Rivers
state," Mr Finebone said. "If Adams, for example, wanted to show
leadership and discipline in Rivers state, would Magnus Abe go and set up an
alternative state secretariat of APC?"
The plan
has been to weaken APC in Rivers State because of Mr. Amaechi, he said.
Mr
Finebone said he did not know if Mr. Amaechi was in support of Mr. Giadom's moves
to take over the APC national leadership. He, however, said the minister has
been betrayed by many people.
"People
thought that by now Victor (Giadom) would have been swept away, that is not how
these things happen in politics," Mr. Finebone said of Mr. Giadom current
fight in the APC.
Mr. Abe's
appointment into the board of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation could be
viewed as a way of re-building the APC in Rivers around the former senator
ahead of the 2023 presidential election.
"Abe
was appointed by Timipre Sylva (the minister of state for petroleum), and not
APC," Mr. Finebone said. "We know the reason he gave him the
appointment was to spite Amaechi."
Minister
of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi.
Mr
Amaechi lost
out again recently in the APC crisis in Rivers when a high
court in the state declared Igo Aguma of Mr. Abe's faction the chairman of the
party in the state, thereby taking the party off the minister's control, for
now.
The APC
national vice-chairman (South-South), Mr. Eta, whom Mr. Finebone said is
pro-Tinubu said the party has accepted the court ruling on the Rivers APC
crisis.
Mr. Eta,
to the consternation of Mr. Amaechi faction, barred members of the party in
Rivers from appealing the court ruling.
Mr
Amaechi's faction, however, disregarded Mr. Eta's injunction and has appealed
the court ruling.
Although
Mr. Giadom left Abuja in 2018 for the 2019 Rivers elections, Mr. Oshiomhole had
granted him a waiver to "continue to discharge your official duties the
Deputy National Secretary while pursuing your political/campaign activities.
The
waiver was in line with Article 31 of the APC Constitution, Mr. Oshiomhole said
in a September 14, 2018 letter to Mr. Giadom.
In May
2019, the APC did not only accede to Mr. Giadom's request to resume office, but
had asked him to act as the party national secretary after the former
secretary, Mai Mala Buni got elected as Yobe State Governor.
The March
'conspiracy'
A power
struggle within the APC has been going on quietly between MessrsTinubu and
Oshiomhole on one side and Mr. Amaechi and others - including allegedly Governor
Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna - on the other side. The Oshiomhole-Obaseki rift was
just a small part of it until it became the epicentre in March this year when a
Federal High Court in Abuja suspended the
party chairman.
Here are
four things to take note of in the crisis:
The court
order against Mr. Oshiomhole was based on his earlier suspension by the APC
leadership in his ward in Edo State, which apparently was instigated by
Governor Obaseki.
Mr
Amaechi and Co. anticipated Mr. Oshiomhole's suspension and had prepared Mr. Giadom to take over the party leadership.
Mr
Amaechi, three other ministers from the South-South (Osagie Ehanire, minister
for health, Festus Keyamo, minister of state, labour, and Goddy Agba, minister
of state, power) had closed
in on Mr. Oshiomhole and almost removed him from office, but for
Mr. Tinubu's intervention.
And
finally, the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting which would have
decided Mr. Oshiomhole's fate was adjourned indefinitely on March 16 by
President Muhammadu Buhari after Mr. Tinubu issued
a public statement, reprimanding those pushing for the chairman's
removal.
Mr. Tinubu
said those who were plotting Mr. Oshiomhole's removal saw the national chairman
as the obstacle to their 2023 political ambition.
Other
members of the APC NWC who are working with Mr. Giadom are Mustapha Salihu, the
National Vice Chairman (North-East) of the party, and Lawali Shuaibu, the
Deputy National Chairman (North).
After Mr
Oshiomhole survived the plot to remove him in March, he recalled Mr. Shuaibu
from a controversial suspension as part of a reconciliatory effort.
But when
Mr. Shuaibu, a former senator, resumed at the APC national secretariat, he
declared support for Mr. Obaseki's re-election ambition, apparently to send a
signal to Mr. Oshiomhole that the fight was far from over.
Asiwaju
Bola Tinubu
At least,
15 of the NWC members, out of 20, are said to be loyal to Mr. Tinubu and Mr
Oshiomhole.
After
declaring himself acting national chairman of the APC, Mr. Giadom was 'sacked'
from the NWC by the majority members who said he is to be replaced with Worgu
Boms, a former attorney general of Rivers state.
To
underscore how rattled Mr. Oshiomhole has been lately, the suspended chairman in
an interview with Channels TV appealed to Mr. Giadom to "put God first and
put our national party's interest second".
That was
before Mr. Giadom was 'sacked' from the NWC.
It is
instructive that immediately Governor Obaseki perfected his plan to defect from
APC to PDP, the Edo Government House published a flier with the inscription,
"Did we not tell them? #EDOIsNotLagos", apparently mocking Mr. Tinubu
who has almost absolute control over who becomes governor of the State.
Edo as
battleground
Mr. Tinubu
is still effectively in control of the APC at the national level, but the
political battle would play out in days to come in courtrooms and in the Edo
governorship election.
Governor
Obaseki has defected to PDP where he is likely to become the party flag bearer
in the election, but he has strategically left behind some of his loyalists to
control the APC structures in Edo where they would take up a spoiler role
against Mr Oshiomhole and Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the man that the suspended APC chairman
is backing in the election.
For a
start, the APC in Edo said
they have rejected Governor Hope Uzodinma-led committee which
is to conduct the party primary in the state.
Again, as
soon as news filtered out on Saturday that the APC leadership in Mr
Oshiomhole's ward, Etsako Ward 10, has lifted the suspension on the party
national chairman, the APC faction loyal to Governor Obaseki issued a
counter-statement, saying Mr Oshiomhole was still on suspension. The
counter-statement was pushed into the media by the Edo State Government.
Because
of 2023 presidential election, the stakes are high in the Edo election for many
politicians within and outside the state.. People are worried that the
situation could degenerate to violence during the election if not properly
managed.
What's Buhari saying?
Many APC
officials have quietly expressed their disappointment with President Buhari's
style of looking the other way, while the party is falling apart. They said the
APC, perhaps, would not have lost some states to PDP in the 2019 general
elections if the president had intervened in the party's internal crises.
But Mr. Buhari's
spokesperson, Femi Adesina, in response to such criticism, said the
president is a democrat who would rather prefer to allow the
"process to run its course".
"One
thing about the president is that he likes to be fair to everybody," Mr
Adesina said in a video interview he had on Facebook recently with a UK-based
Nigerian citizen, Ata Ikiddeh, on the Edo APC crisis.
President
Muhammadu Buhari [PHOTO CREDIT: Bashir Ahmad]"So those who are complaining
he has not done this, he has not done that, they don't know what he has done.
"What
he has done is to meet with the parties separately. And he has been doing this
for more than a year since the crisis in Edo began. So if the people are in
entrenched positions and refuse to shift ground, what would the president do as
a democrat? You allow the process to run its course.
"What
people expect the president to do is to legislate things, to order Obaseki 'No,
step down' or order Oshiomhole 'No, give him the ticket'. That is not
democracy. When you begin to order and legislate things like that you would be
unfair to one party," the presidential spokesperson said.
"But
before Edo, there was Rivers, there was Zamfara and of course, you know many
other states were the governing party lost because of internal issues. What may
not be apparent to the public is what the president did in all those states and
he has done in Edo," Mr. Adesina said
"For
me, that is a perverted interpretation of the word democrat," the former
APC spokesperson in Rivers, Mr. Finebone said of Mr. Adesina's defence of
President Buhari.
"Do
you think that if the president (had) said 'What is even happening in this
Rivers State? Amaechi come, come. I need to see you! What's the name of the
other young man? Okay, senator come. Do you think he wouldn't have solved it
(the APC crisis in Rivers)?" Mr. Finebone said.
There
have been calls for the president to summon an emergency NEC meeting to address
the crisis in the party, but no one can tell if he would do that and how soon.
"Have
you ever heard Buhari say 'thank you' to anyone? Has he ever separated a
fight?" Buba Galadima, an estranged political associate of President
Buhari said in 2019
interview with the Independent newspaper
When
asked in the interview if he foresees an implosion in APC before 2023, Mr
Galadima said, "I know for a fact that APC is divided into three factions.
There is the Tinubu group, the El-Rufai group, and the Aso Villa group. The Aso
Villa group itself is also divided into three.
"So,
it is in our interest that they continue to disagree and fight. That is our
freedom. We have nothing to lose except our chains."
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