Better For A’Ibom APC To Forget Hilltop Mansion In 2023 (Part 1)
By UbongAbasi Ise
Like Nigerian youth would say, wahala no go ever finish, the Akwa Ibom State APC’s infightings are seemingly taking different colours and shapes by the day. With the recent suspension of 16 chapter chairmen by the party’s State caretaker committee and impending sanctions awaiting 87 litigant members according to recent statement by the caretaker committee, it seems the APC’s squabbling would continue to remain intractable. It means the party is inadvertently burning the bridge ahead of 2023 general elections, so to speak.
Like a female rape victim who only wore loose gown without panties and would not even resist the goon’s ravishment on her body, that is how easy the defeat of Akwa Ibom APC would come in 2023. Like unhindered rape, the party’s defeat would be very smooth and steady. I am not a prophet of doom, and I am not a soothsayer too, but the cryptic handwriting on the wall has shown that the party is condemned to fail as it gradually sinks into mire of its internal conflicts in less than two years to the polls.
I may not be certain about those that might ‘move’ or ‘defect’ to this embattled party to change permutations or blight my prediction. But one unfortunate and sinister verdict is that another humiliation of APC at the polls would retire a lot of its politicians in Akwa Ibom: it would eclipse their past, including all they had ever achieved in the days of yore and render them totally irrelevant. Except rare punching bags with a hide made of rhino who might withstand the devastation and still move on, the shame of the defeat would be so caustic to most APC politicians to the extent that even their shadows would desert them.
The politicians in the APC fold are sapping their energy, wasting both resources and earliest opportunity in fighting the egoistic battle for internal supremacy. They have pugnaciously fragmented the party’s leadership into autonomous factions while each faction now meandering in different direction, hoping to grasp power singlehandedly. This is laughable. Yes, it is natural to have conflicts in any human gathering but when the differences turn out to be aggravated by mutual distrust, then there is no way the center could hold. Some APC leaders are trying hard to wave away the prevailing intra-party crisis with the back of their hands as if it is nothing to worry about. But keen observers know that this is a height of pretension and a sheer joke to the pleasure of their poor supporters. By the time water reaches the neck level, their effort at stemming the tide would be similar to the labour of Sisyphus in which so much energy, so much struggle, so much exertion amount to something very insignificant.
Unarguably, the crux of the immediate crisis has to do with the position of the Minister of the Niger-Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, in the party. While the fanatical supporters of Senator Akpabio in the APC’s rank and file are acknowledging him as the natural leader on the strength that he was pronounced so by the erstwhile national party chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, on August 8, 2018, including the fact that he (Akpabio) holds the highest federal appointment in the state, the APC State Caretaker Committee led by Dr. Ita Udosen and supported by the APC National Caretaker Committee secretary, Senator John James Akpanudoedeghe, have countermanded Akpabio’s leadership and altogether sneered at Akwa Ibom Development Forum (ADF) fronted by Akpabio’s camp to give their grand leader a support base. Udoedehe’s camp has also floated Akwa Ibom APC Coalition (AAC) apparently to strike a balance. With ADF and AAC supporting individual interests and diametrically opposing each other within, the sobriquet that party is supreme is no longer making meaning; in APC the individual’s interest reigns supreme.
While the struggle for the party’s leadership may appear as the main concern of the APC at the moment, the subterranean problem that would capsize the party in 2023 is the inexplicable negligence of the core supporters who had worked tooth and nail in the last general elections to ensure APC leadership is enthroned in the state. This set of common supporters at the grassroots suffer the hangover of 2019 elections in that they are grossly sidelined in the affairs of the state government and at the same time ignored by those who they laboured for, and are now appointed to federal positions. Some of them who thought they were lucky to have had their principals appointed into federal government are now disappointed as their leaders appear to be avoiding their yearnings and refuse to even pick their calls. Evidence that suffice is when the APC Ward Chairmen Forum had to embark on protest in March 2021 at the party state secretariat in Uyo over what they described as negligence by the leaders and the federal appointees from the party. The Forum’s Chairman, Engr. Saviour Williams spoke the mind of thousands of the aggrieved at the grassroots as he was quoted by the media thus: “we are the ones who promote this (APC) party at our respective wards. We are the ones who face stiff opposition by the opposing party. But when it comes to dividends, no one remembers us.
“Elections are conducted at units and wards. If we don’t mobilize membership at our wards, how would there be party at chapter, state and even national levels?”
…to be continued
ubongabasiise@gmail.com | SMS Only: 08189914609
© The Sensor | Insight-Out Column
> Unmasking Chukwuekezie, A Banker Who Knows Where A’Ibom Shoe Pinches
> Nya-Etok System And Festering Sore
Ekike Hector A Prop Manager Not Arms Fabricator – Ak Movie Industry
>Inter-Mamlakah Proposes Private Seaport, Railway, Over 27 Companies In A’Ibom
Comments
Post a Comment