• Atiku, Sheriff back Ikimi
Ahead of the May 24, 2014 National Convention of the All Progressives Congress, APC, cracks have emerged within the National Executive Council, NEC of the opposition party.
Sources privy to the emerging leadership crisis, said there is unease amongst the ranking members of the party over who becomes the substantive national chairman of the APC.
While Ahmed Bola Tinubu and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari favour returning Chief Bisi Akande, the party’s Interim National Chairman as the substantive national chairman, another group led by former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, is surprisingly rooting for the emergence of Tom Ikimi, the man who chaired the merger committee and supervised the successful union of the legacy parties into APC.
The in-fighting, according to our source, is not unconnected to the coming contest for the presidential ticket in 2015. It was gathered that Tinubu and Buhari want Akande, who they believe would do their bidding by ensuring the much-talked about Buhari/Tinubu ticket materialises. Atiku’s group, which has ex-Governor Ali Modu Sheriff as its main weapon of war are banking on Tom Ikimi.
At the 2014 APC Summit held in Abuja in March where the party presented its manifesto, Ali Modu Sheriff never hesitated to berate the party over the treatment meted to Ikimi, whom he described as the arrowhead of the successful merger. He then warned the party to avoid such pitfalls if the party must remain as one. “We are trying to chart a new course, a new Nigeria. But we must avoid allowing some trivialities ruin the party. We can win 80% of the votes cast in Nigeria, but if we don’t sort out some trivial issues, what happened to PDP will still happen to APC,” he warned.
Also, it was widely reported recently that in a NEC meeting of the party, Sheriff violently confronted Tinubu, telling him not to run the party as his personal fiefdom.
All these gave credence to the story of the in-fighting as these two clearly demarcated camps in the party are said to be at daggers drawn over which group produces the party’s substantive national chairman.
Both camps are said to be keeping their options open with a Plan B still in the offing. The source disclosed that the Atiku group are keeping Ogbonnaya Onu, former Abia State governor and the former national chairman of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, as their Plan B, while the Tinubu camp are looking at the way of Sam Sam Jaja, Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s ally as their preferred candidate for the national chairmanship of the party.
The source further disclosed that it is more likely that Tinubu’s group will triumph at the end of the day, especially with the backing of the governors of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, who are Tinubu’s protégés.
“The influence of the governors in the successful merger of the party has been acknowledged by all who were privy to the merger and therefore, they also have a huge say in how the national offices of the party will be shared.
“So with the ACN governors backing Tinubu and the ANPP/CPC governors loyal to Buhari, they account for the 11 original governors of the APC and they still take orders from Tinubu, knowing his overwhelming influence when it comes to the running of the party,” the source said.
This arrangement, the source said, has left some governors feeling that they are holding the short end of the stick. For instance, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state has never hidden his displeasure since he discovered the high wired intrigues played by the party, which has left him and his zone totally removed by the party’s reckoning.
Before the governor left the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA for APC, he berated the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP for shortchanging the South-East and boasted that it was only in APC that the dream of Igbo presidency would be realized.
However, with the unfolding events in the party where he has been effectively sidelined, the governor has been forced to speak out, criticizing the party of imposition of candidates.
In a First Progressive Governors-Legislative-Civil Society Roundtable held in Abuja recently, the governor warned that the party’s victory could be manned by the culture of imposition, which the party enjoys using. “Our victory is in our hands and it is left for us to make or mar it, but I believe we can make it. I believe that this issue of imposition of candidates must stop in APC and that is the only way. The masses know us better; when they say this is the candidate that can win the election, he is the candidate. Let there be liberal democracy,” he advised.
Source: Nigerian Pilot
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