APC CHAIRMANSHIP AND EFCC CANDIDATES by Kassim Afegbua

Aside from one Alhaji Salihu Mustapha, the newly turbaned Turaki of Ilorin, anyone who emerges as the Chairmanship of the APC in its February 26th convention may likely be KASS running the party’s secretariat from the dungeon of the EFCC. They all have skeletons in their cupboard and have at different times, played guest to the anti-corruption body. And this tells something untoward and unhealthy about our political processes.

We love to promote inanities and deco rate vainglory achievements but when the chips are down, we see the tragedy of a nation that is helplessly digging its own downfall, at every turn. For power players and those who love to invoke the sentiments of a machiavellan maestro, they will easily tell you that it is easier to install a man with baggage than those who have clean records.

It is one way to rein in such chairman each time he’s reminded of his journey of heist and financial malfeasance. It perpetually haunts and makes him to be subservient each time the power oligarchs want to push through very unpopular agenda. Because his hands are already soiled, smelling from the filth of his profligacy, he will have no option than to kowtow to the trappings of those who installed him.

The APC is in serious dilemma, not because it is short of options, but the fact that the option it has is just one out of the several persons jostling for its chairmanship ticket. Only Salihu Mustapha has a clean record from EFCC binoculars into the characters of those who want to lead the party. This also explains the rot of a nation with several chichidodo birds masquerading all over the place pretending to chart the integrity course.

A simple exercise of organizing a convention for the ruling APC has suddenly become an endless journey marred by manipulations and conspiracies. The governors have their own plans. The president has his own too. Other stakeholders have their own sentiments and conspiracies too. The battle for the soul of the party has deepened the schism within the party hierarchy and opened up several cells depending on the interest being championed. The desperation to get a stranglehold of the structure has reached a fever pitch, each cell trying to outsmart the other in order to decide the direction of 2023 political pendulum.

While this onslaught and gerry mandering is ongoing, no attention is given to the content and character of the individuals. As members of a gang of sinuous collegiate, being a candidate of EFCC does not seem to matter to a president that preaches integrity and anti-corruption. How can you be standing trial with the EFCC, yet you still have the balls to lead a party that will recruit leaders for the country? How?

In trying to get people on board, credibility matters a lot because political parties are the recruitment ground for the future leaders of the country in the various categories of election. Those who will resume in the morning in the party secretariat and sneak to the detention camp of the EFCC, should ordinarily be screened out of the race if we are desirous as a nation to clean the Augean stable and reform the sys tem. Political parties are so important not just as a platform for the recruitment of candidates for the different elections but also as a fertile ground se for cross pollination of ideas that could so help to deepen the narrative of good governance.

But with the scenario playing out in Mr. President’s party, the likelihood of getting it right is remote. The APC may end up with an EFCC candidate who s will easily be amenable to the abuses that he may be confronted with, since his skeletons would be staring him in the face. For a healthier political process that is reform driven, the party ought to weed out those characters that have soiled their hands with public fi nances. We will be watching from the sidelines to see how far the president is. willing to reform a system that is gener ally characterised by the filthy lucre.

APC has ran a generally poor system. of governance in the last seven years. The party is driven by a vaulting ambition to get itself re-elected at all cost, and in the process, unable to reconcile all the dynamics within its fold. Its laying s former Director-General of the Governors’ Forum has repeatedly alerted to sail the party of the impending danger if it is unable to get its acts together, noting the possibility of losing the 2023 presidential contest. When he resigned from his position, it sent the signals of what to expect given the inability of the president to rally round the factors within the party and chart a road map.

As a ruling party, it has a greater responsibility to ensure that it gets its politics right as well as its governance structure. Having demolished all the indices of growth and development by poor delivery of electoral promises, APC is presently amok without a discernible destination.

The Governors on its platform are at each others throat. The other elect ed representatives are pursuing their own individual and selfish aspirations. The president is kept in the “solitary confinement” of the presidential villa waiting patiently for the final plot and counter-plot of his foot soldiers. His foot soldiers, for want of desperation, have not been able to hit at the crux of the matter. They appear undecided in laying their collective hands on an individual to sail the ship of discredit party struggling for survival.

The anti-corruption agency, the EFCC, must muster the required courage to insist that persons who are standing for election, be it for party positions or otherwise, must be those who are above board and not on the radar of the agency. If we must build a virile, less corrupt system, we must start by re forming the parties, using the recruitment process as a timely opportunity to do so.

It is not only ridiculous that almost all the aspirants for the chairmanship of the APC are persons standing trial by the EFCC. We do understand that they have not been convicted, but the mere fact that they have queries to answer presupposes their questionable status. We must therefore derive courage to interrogate the process, the persons, the factors and the characteristics of a system that is meant to throw up credible leadership for the country.

EFCC chairmanship candidates should leave the fray and allow serious minded people the opportunity to help cleanse a system that has become atrophied by poor governance. APC has not shown leadership by example. It has polarised a system that was hemorrhaging ab initio, and compounded our transition initiatives and woes.

An adulterated system requires well rounded leadership to purify the sys tem and set it on a path of utility-driven approach to governance. Almost every thing in the country is wrong, almost everything under the APC is wrong. Leadership of the country is on auto pilot, the APC as a party is dithering, the politics of the country is lacking cohesion, while the players are displaying desperation to ram themselves down our throat at all cost.

When the system is faulty, it throws up faulty people. When the process is wrong, it brings forth, leaders who are not worth their onions. As a way to reform the system and the process, we must begin to encourage the anti s graft agency to interrogate the political 5. process to wield out those undeserving of their aspirations. We need to build a strong-based political foundation with the required stamina to withstand the pressures of those seeking election in whatever form or shape.

The challenges of 2023 present a good opportunity for us to get it right through the recruitment of persons who have clean records to showcase. The parties are as important as the persons that would be thrown up to lead. Once we are able to rid the sys tem of EFCC candidates, the better for the country, the saner for the political process.