That the All Progressives Congress (APC) is facing serious challenges nationwide is no longer news, as this much is in the public domain. From the north central to the north east, from the middle belt to the entire south-south states and event the south west. Hitherto party faithfuls, particularly aggrieved members of the legacy parties that merged to form the APC (ACN, CPC and ANPP) are beginning to dump the party in droves, across the country.
What could have happened? How did this much-touted strongest opposition party in Nigeria get to this stage? For obvious reasons, the concentration of this piece shall be on Delta State, albeit with occasional reference to other states.
Signs that the APC in Delta state was headed for an imminent crash started when Chief Tom Ikimi from Edo state alongside a few greedy interim national officers of the party, imposed Olorogun O’tega Emerhor on stakeholders as the party’s flag bearer in last year’s bye-election for the Delta Central Senatorial district. O’tega, who came from nowhere but with very deep pocket, was able to throw some good money around and captured the souls of some interim national officers of the party including Ikimi, Akamukali, the national Secretary and a few others. O’tega was dashed the APC ticket but he lost woefully to Chief Aggwariwhodo who is now occupying the seat in the Senate.
The next pointer to a failed APC in Delta State came during the setting up of the State Harmonization Committee (SHC) across the country. This is a sort of interim committee for each of the 36 States and FCT, pending when substantive congresses would be conducted to elect Ward, LGA, State and National executives across the country.
Controversies trailed the SHC for Delta State, which threw up one Prophet Jones Erue, a colourless politician, from the late Senator Pius Ewherido faction of DPP (Democratic Peoples Party), like his master, O’tega. Erue was imposed on the state by O’tega, who by now had compromised not a few of the national officers and pocketed virtually all the leaders in the state except the Chairman of one of the defunct legacy parties (ACN) in Delta State, Chief Joseph Adolo Okotie-Eboh.
Those whom O’tega pocketed in the state and practically became his foot soldiers in the three Warri LGAs for instance include Dr. Alex Ideh/David Tonwe/Yemi Emiko/A.S. Meme etc faction, Hon. Temi Harriman/Mr. Yemi Omaghomi etc faction, Ms. Omasan Agbajoh/Tunde Okorodudu etc faction and a few others. These were the people O’tega used to fight Chief Okotie-Eboh, with a view to stopping him from ultimately emerging as the substantive Chairman of APC in Delta State. It was a tensed battle which is still on as at the time of going to press.
But one interesting thing that came out of the struggle in APC in the 3 Warri LGAs is the revelation that apart from Chief Adolo Okotie-Eboh, all the other facttions of Itsekiris in APC Delta State as captured above, collected monies from top PDP members during the Ward and LGA congresses. Now we know those who truly are working for PDP in APC. Certainly not Chief Okotie-Eboh as dangerously propagandized by these same characters merely to tarnish the hard earned image and intergrity of Chief Okotie-Eboh before the national leadership of APC and ultimately stop him from emerging as the Chairman.
Then came the nationwide membership registration of the party. This was another strong indication that APC was headed for imminent doom in Delta State. As a result of the internal fighting, things fell apart and the center could no longer hold. After the exercise, Delta State APC was able to register less than 140, 000 members! Breakdown of the registration figures per senatorial district revealed that Delta North has 38, 476 members; Delta Central has 42, 646 and Delta South, 53, 860 members.
This figure is abysmally poor and puts APC in Delta state in a very weak position, given that the 2006 census put the state at 4, 056, 410, while INEC 2011 registration of voters put the voting strngth of the State above one million votes. Going by theses figures, APC captured just about 10 percent of the voting population and less than 4 percent of the population of the state.
The weakness and failure of APC in Delta state becomes even clearer with the membership strength of the PDP and the emerging DPP-Labour Party (LP) alliance estimated at about 600, 000 and 550, 000 respectively.
It is however very shocking that the Erue-led interim Delta SHC could not deliver on the membership registration exercise despite the huge funding it received from some Governors in APC-controlled States. For instance, Governor Adams Oshiomole gave N25 million to Erue and his team. How they used all these money is still curious to stakeholders but accusing fingers are pointing to the fact that the committee shared over 90 percent of monies they collected for the exercise among themselves, thus the abysmal result they posted.
In the midst of all this brouhaha came the Ward, LGA, State and National congresses. The ones in Delta State would make a good Nollywood script! Even as at today, results of the Ward and LGA congresses have not been published, yet the highly compromised (by O’tega) Sylva-led Delta State Congress Committee, went ahead to conduct a so-called State congress within the premises of a church in the middle of the night! That jaundiced process (not surprisingly!) saw Erue emerging as Chairman.
However, stakeholders held another congress at the secretariat in Asaba, which saw Chief Adolo Okotie-Eboh emerging as Chairman. As at today in Delta State, the only APC Chairman that has been unveiled publicly to the world is Chief Okotie-Eboh. He was elected alongside 35 others into various positions. The O’tega nocturnal congress has not been able to summon enough courage to make public the result of their widely condemned congress.
Suffice it to say that O’tega showed his through colour during his congress when he jettisoned his former accomplices like Ikimi, Harriman, Senator Okpozo and others. To this extent, there is serious crack among these hitherto friends. The crack has a snowball effect in the entire state.
A sidelined but not necessarily repentant Ikimi, recently fired a memo to APC Chairman in Abuja. Coming from a man like Chief Ikimi, the memo was indeed unnerving.
The memo dated May 1, 2014 was a narrative of the increasing confusion in the opposition political party across the country with the assertion that the party is losing members in strong numbers across the country.
“I am compelled to express strong reservations on the present state of affairs in our Party and my heart bleeds when I look back at the efforts and personal sacrifice many of us made to bring this national platform to fruition,” Ikimi wrote.
Ikim raised the alarm over the impending exodus of members of the party nationwide, urging party leaders to urgently wade into the crisis rocking the party in some states, including Ogun, Delta, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers and Edo states, to avoid a political disaster. Ikimi said he consulted nationwide and discovered that “all is also not well.”
He lamented being almost rendered incapacitated in the region to resolve the political logjams in the party, accusing the party leadership of establishing ‘strange channels of communication’.
Ikimi also claimed that he had gathered, “some secret names are now being compiled to form National Convention Committee. How we are to proceed to a National Convention under the present circumstance baffles me.”
According to him, “I have spoken to party members and leaders across the country and the feeling is unanimous regarding the downward trend of things. I am writing this from Benin, you must have gathered from the press and other sources all are also not well.
“The latest problems arise from the Congresses, where in the South-South region, there are fundamental problems in Delta, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers and Edo. I have been informed of similar problems in other states across the country.
“Parallel Excos have emerged in Ogun State. Here in the South South, I could personally do nothing as a leader or the South South Vice Chairman since the arrangements on ground give me no powers to operate.
“Party headquarters has established very strange channels of communication with my region and State. I accepted the position of South-South Vice Chairman just to assist build our party in this region. Unfortunately I have not been allowed to do so”, Ikimi added.
Leaders of the defunct ACN in Delta state most of who are inclined to the leadership of either Chief Okotie-Eboh or Senator Francis Okpozo allege that O’tega, a wealthy businessman known to have a governorship aspiration on the platform of the new party, foisted Erue on the party.
Many party elders are, however, worried that Erue was supported in the congresses by elements known to have worked for a former governor of the state, Chief James Ibori whose loyalists it is alleged, may be working to either gain control of the APC or weaken the party to allow the PDP sail through.
“The kind of money that reportedly changed hands during the congresses is not the kind of money that a businessman like O’tega would throw into politics and that is why we suspect that his people have a connection with Ibori and his boys,” a party elder told newsmen.
Party elders are also peeved that Otega, once he came into the APC, threw up a parallel structure that almost always worked in parallel with the mainstream structure of the party led by Okotie-Eboh and Senator Okpozo.
How all this will play out in Delta State is left to be seen in days and weeks ahead, even as a crucial meeting of the national leadership is scheduled for Abuja on Tuesday, May 13, 2014. But one thing is certain; all is dangerously not well in APC Delta State.
However, APC national spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed rebuffed the agitations as he insisted that the party has internal mechanism for settling its disputes.
“We have a mechanism to settle the issues from the congresses and that is why the appeals committee was constituted and that is not even the end of the matter. If anyone is not satisfied with the outcome of the appeals committee, he or she can still take the matter to the national body but what we have is that some people are not patient enough and are making their appeals on the pages of newspapers,” he said.
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