Why I dumped APC, by Tom Ikimi - predicts collapse of the party

FORMER Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Tom Ikimi yesterday formally dumped the All Progressives Congress (APC).

  In a letter he addressed to the national chairman of the party, dated August 26, 2014, he cited non-adherence to party's constitution as reason for his decision to dump the APC.

Ikimi, who has been linked with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) justified his decision to dump the opposition APC, saying he could not remain in the party whose members were blinded with the desperation to capture power at the national level.

  Ikimi, who spoke to reporters at his Maitama residence in Abuja, did not mince words in blaming the leader and former govern
or of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu, for creating the environment that has forced him to dump the APC.

  Reflecting on his days with the APC, he claimed that the party has not been able to abide by democratic principles and uphold the tenets expected by the teeming supporters of the party.

Expressing his disappointment with the APC, Ikimi said the leadership of the party is "incapable of restoring any positive movement to the party." He thereby described the APC as a party of rule breakers and power mongers in his letter to the national chairman of the party.

  The letter reads in part:" I would rather trust the informed whispers in the inner circles of the APC which have it that having positioned himself as perceived leader in the most lucrative income sources of the party, he is recipient and dispenser of bags and bags of party funds. I am also aware that he is, too, a beneficiary of most of the lucrative contracts in all the states controlled by the defunct ACN, without exception. To further bolster his image, it was also frequently said that Tinubu has control of all the votes from South Western Nigeria which, as has been currently touted, when added to the votes of North Western Nigeria would guarantee victory for the APC in the upcoming presidential election.       

"This reckless and arrogant self-aggrandizement paved the way for the imposition of a strange leadership on the APC in July 2013 when the party obtained registration from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Those of us who had worked so hard towards the successful merger and creation of the APC were manipulated out of the scheme of things. In the bizarre struggle to seize control of the party, we were even openly accused by the self-proclaimed owners of the party, of wanting to steal 'their' party. Many of us in the party as well as keen observers outside frowned at the skewed leadership image of the party that was being paraded. An image that blatantly ignored national sensitivities. The draft constitution prepared by the Merger Committee included an exit clause, which provides a time limit of six months for the Interim Management of the Party. That clause mysteriously disappeared from the version of the constitution that was smuggled into INEC records. Chief Bisi Akande's national chairmanship was therefore primed to stay on in power ad infinitum!  Tinubu frantically constituted a group of friends and cronies which he proclaimed to be the APC leadership. The press, led by The Nation newspaper, was made to propagate the aberration. And so, rather than allow the construction of a sound base for the party, conducive to free admission of members nationwide, these self proclaimed leaders embarked on a national travel spree all in a blaze of publicity, criss-crossing the country in private aircraft, visiting PDP state governors to offer them the state branches of the APC if they would join the party.

"While they obviously, but ridiculously, assumed that the crisis then in the PDP would last forever, the details of the agreements they reached with PDP break-away governors were never revealed to the authentic party leadership but they were such that they ignited the explosion of irreconcilable crisis in some states, particularly Kano, Sokoto and Adamawa, resulting in the instant loss of some valuable key members.

" Major decisions said to be party decisions now started emerging from this select group whose ad hoc membership varied from time to time. They usually congregated at Tinubu's private parlour in his Asokoro, Abuja residence. Those who wanted to belong had to find or force their way into that parlour. Once initiated, your independence or capacity to challenge the plots that emerged from that cult venue became seriously curtailed. Rather than freely open up critical issues to free debate at the Interim Executive Council for democratic decisions to emerge, positions plotted at the notorious Asokoro parlour were being desperately foisted on the party for execution."

  According to Ikimi, " A handful of us constantly challenged this trend with little success. Gradually, the direction of the party assumed a focus on the contest for the presidency. Then the images of presumed presidential and vice presidential candidates as well as a privately cooked up permanent chairman for the party started emerging, signaling a Muslim/Muslim presidential and vice presidential ticket. The details of this issue I have sufficiently dealt with in my previous statement.

"However let me state again that their calculation that the Presidency in the 2015 general elections will be won by the APC through votes from the North West and South West Nigeria became an obsession. Tinubu who passionately believed in this theory and who arrogantly claimed custody of all South West votes has already picked an aspirant from North Western Nigeria who will run as presidential candidate with him as vice presidential candidate. And the national image of the party immediately plummeted."

  In the statement, the former minister further revealed that "This disastrous trend was worsened by the arrogant departure from observing the provisions of the APC constitution, particularly as it pertains to internal party democracy. Crisis broke out at uncontrollable levels in the prosecution of the most undemocratic ward, local government and state congresses nationwide. Machinery for managing this self-inflicted crisis was virtually non-existent and it was inside this mess that the controversial national convention of 13th June was staged.

"The constitution of APC clearly defines the party organs and the party leadership. There is no provision for anyone to be named as the Party Leader. Tinubu, having paraded himself both at home and abroad as the leader of opposition and of the APC, had great difficulty in descending from the fictitious throne. In order to continue manipulating the party from his parlours in Abuja and Lagos, he struggled to retain Chief Bisi Akande as chairman. He was further troubled by the growing influence of the governors and panicked at the realization that he and his South West select caucus were loosing their grip on 'their' party to the governors. His last minute efforts to rally a South West leadership support for his absolute power over the party failed and chances of retaining Akande as national chairman also evaporated. In the circumstance, as the only option was to find a successor national chairman as well as other national officers, an illegal process of horse trading between the governors and Tinubu was initiated.

"The Interim Executive Council had no knowledge of all these processes. Chief John Oyegun, a Tinubu plan B project, said to be favoured for his NADECO and SDP credentials and also as one who could be controlled now featured, came into the picture."

Ikimi noted that "Until recently, the APC had 16 governors who describe themselves as the progressive governors. They are made up of the original merging parties' governors and the break-away PDP governors who, as a group, are determined to take control of the party. This composition of merging party governors and PDP break-away governors cannot in any realistic sense be described as progressive. They have come together with different personal agendas built around the central purpose of acquiring national power. Some of them nurse vice presidential ambition and some others are warming up for the presidential contest. In the circumstance, the project of taking control of the party's national machinery became crucial and it was out of the governor's caucus that the plan of zoning the national offices was initiated and concluded.

"The Interim Executive Committee had no input. Although it is claimed that the national chairmanship slot was zoned to the South South, the horse-trading to produce the beneficiary took place outside the zone. In order to secure the agreement of most of the governors, I understand that an agreement was extracted from Oyegun that he would agree to step down as chairman should a governor from the region emerge as either presidential or vice presidential candidate. And although the governors may not have envisaged the present setback they now suffer in their numerical strength, the battle to take custody of the APC platform that they waged against the Tinubu structure signaled yet another twist in the tale."

Ikimi said "apart from the Tinubu Group and The Governors Group, there is a third group of known presidential aspirants comprising in the main Gen. Muhamadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who are both northerners. The inclination of the party had always been to zone the Presidency to the North. Some governors are now thinking otherwise and given the decisive role that they seek to play in the affairs of the party as well as the tendency to ignore the principle of internal party democracy, a monumental disaster looms large in the selection of the APC's presidential and vice presidential flag bearers later in the year."