The All Progressives Congress is a party of loyal grassroot supporters but mostly of disloyal leaders.
I am gifted to observe deeply things and situations around me and I do not take for granted this gift.
If I get to a new place or I’m meeting a person for the first time, I observe first.
In APC, and I mean from the time of AD to AC to ACN and finally APC after ACN, CPC, ANPP and a faction of APGA formed it, I know of party faithfuls in my polling unit, ward and local government area who have never benefited from the party yet remain committed to it come rain come shine.
If an election is conducted in Borno state, which probably is the farthest place to my home town, I know of people from Otun who will call me and ask for update of the election and if I said we are losing, they become sad immediately but if I said we are winning, you could feel the joy in them instantly.
Some of them live abroad yet they’ll be among the first to call.
And I am not talking about only my people from Otun, if you can see more than what is written.
I know some in many other states.
Then, there are those who have used the platform to get to the top at one point or the other but turned against the party. Some of them work against its success even with resources they get from their elevation through the platform.
These folks are disconnected from the feelings of the loyal grassroot supporters who, at all times, want the party to win.
They are the ones who believe completely in the ideology of the party, I mean the loyal grassroot supporters.
They are for better for worse.
They are not those who always intend to bring the roof of house down the moment things are not going their way.
Among the leaders are a few exceptions.
And the greatest of them is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Tinubu nominated Osinbajo for vice president but he ran against him. Osinbajo had no structure. Osinbajo was not there when the party was formed but through Tinubu’s nomination, he became the number two man.
Akanbi did not pick arms against the party because of that.
Lawan was Buhari’s choice for the office of Senate President but Saraki out smarted him (illegally).
Until Tinubu supported him but when the cabal were looking for a soft ride for Atiku to become president after another northerner was rounding up his 8 years, Lawan became an option and so he also ran against Tinubu and that’s why he was singled out that he’d lick his wound. Lawan would have ultimately lost to Atiku before noon on election day.
Let us not talk about Aregbesola. Let us just note that he was brought to Tinubu by his mother, Alhaja Abibat Mogaji from a Muslim women prayer meeting he used to attend and Tinubu took him as his own, his closest ally. He became the powerful works commissioner, governor of Osun state and minister but became Akanbi’s number foe only because Tinubu wanted Oyetola to fly the party’s flag in Osun state after Aregbe.
That has been his sin, his unpardonable sin and that is why he prayed openly that God should bring him down.
Fayemi in Ekiti said that as the chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum back then, he was supporting Obaseki of PDP because that was the right thing to do to a fellow gomina. I have never heard such lame excuse for working against one’s party all my life.
It was laughable and sad at the same time.
Babachir Lawal was an ACN man and because fPMB who many had tagged a religious fundamentalist wanted a Christian SGF from NE, Tinubu gave him Lawal after Baba Akande had recommended him but Lawal went there and disgraced himself yet the moment Tinubu didn’t nominate him as his running mate, he became so hateful and in his last interview, I heard that he extended his bile to the entire Yoruba people.
These are leaders who are loyal only when things favour them.
When they said that he had no place in the party’s broad NEC meeting, Tinubu did not sulk. He did not call the party any unprintable name. The day I read that statement from a spokesperson of fPMB, I felt like there can’t be a more attempt to ridicule the man who made Buhari run again and won.
That is why Governor Bago was angry as he stated that some of them were governor, minister, advisers and commissioners but immediately they are out of office for a while, they become activists.
The strength of the party actually lies in the grassroot supporters who these leaders always like to take for granted, not in the leaders who are mostly after their own bellies alone.