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Oshiomholes coronation runs true to form

Published by The Nation on Sat, 23 Jun 2018


WITH the withdrawal of both Osarheimen Osunbor and Clement Ebri, both former governors of Edo and Cross River States respectively, from the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairmanship contest, the stage seems set today for the coronation of another former Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, regarded since the last two months or more as the ruling partys putative chairman. The chairmanship position is being vacated by John Odigie-Oyegun, himself a former Edo State governor. Chief Odigie-Oyegun is departing in a blaze of controversy, with the president and party leaders declining to allow his tenure extended, regardless of both the effluxion of time, a nifty but controversial term coined by Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu, and the fear of acrimony overtaking the simple exercise of elective convention. At the end of todays convention, and notwithstanding whatever hitches and hiccups accompany it, Mr Oshiomhole will become the partys national chairman, in law and in fact.Chief Odigie-Oyegun was not always what he was cracked up to be. He showed a lot of promise when he was elected as the first chairman of the party in June 2014. Some two or three years down the line, he seemed to have lost the spark, became deeply divisive, embraced very contentious partisan and unpopular positions even within the party, and fiddled while the party burned. After failing to rouse party leaders and governors unanimously to his side in the effort to get his tenure extended, ostensibly to avert acrimony and fractiousness within the party as the next general elections loomed, he eventually bowed out and consented to an elective convention. But it took President Muhammadu Buharis unequivocal stand against tenure extension to dismantle Chief Odigie-Oyeguns circus, a presidential intervention that has robbed the party of the chance to set a precedence of running a party not dictated to by one powerful individual, be he the president or not.The moment President Buhari disavowed Chief Odigie-Oyegun and endorsed Mr Oshiomhole, every attempt to create the impression of internal democracy in the APC began to sound hollow. Despite the initial huffing and puffing by loyalists of the outgoing chairman, by early May it had become quite clear that any opposition to the new reality was hopeless and potentially costly. Soon the governors began to line up behind Mr Oshiomhole, who easily became recognisable as the presidents candidate, and everyone who was anybody began goose-stepping behind the new man. Mr Oshiomhole, unable to restrain himself in the best and mildest of times, given his natural impetuousness and feistiness, also began to speak alternately like the chairman of the party or the in-coming chairman. And he spoke forcefully, magisterially, and as usual with the flourish and fecundity he constantly, if sometimes irritatingly, ascribed to his past as a union leader.Even though Chief Odigie-Oyegun is all of 78 years old, and does not look it or act it, it was clear his leadership of the party had come to end even before the president weighed in with an imperial diktat. The outgoing chairman retained his strength and lived by his wits; but he no longer wielded the imagination and virtue, not to say the circumspection, needed to run the ruling but soulless APC. The younger and boisterous Mr Oshiomhole, who thinks like a strapping 66-year-old and looks confident and vibrant, seemed the perfect counterpoise the bewildered APC needed. They will have him, all of him, and hope that their self-made internal schisms, not to talk of their engaging amateurishness and incompetence, will answer to his talisman. It was never a great idea that the party circumvented elective convention, basing its fears on the supposition that the congresses and convention could turn ugly and fissiparous, especially with the nPDP already gnawing at its innards. But whether by accident or design, the party has finally and sensibly overcome its fears and pushed itself through the democratic process of holding congresses and convention as indicated by its own guidelines and the countrys constitution. It has discovered that despite some controversies here and there, the heavens have not fallen, and the party has not quite imploded as many speculate it would. If it would implode, it would not be because of the congresses and the convention. It would be because it had failed from the beginning to manage its unexpected success with the adroitness expected of its innovative leaders, and closed its ears to the grievances of the nPDP, a faction it has approached with indifference, haughtiness, stubbornness and disdain.The APC may by this convention manage to overcome its demons, but it has managed in the same breath to let loose a number of fierce goblins capable of wreaking havoc on both the countrys body politic and the intricate and sensitive tapestries of party organisations. In the foreseeable future, Nigerian presidents will continue to hold the ace in party chairmanship elections. No chairman will emerge without the overweening input of the president. It would not matter whether that chairman had demonstrated capacity and uncanny insight into the workings of the party and the system. What will matter is that the chairman of the party will remain both subservient and submissive to the powerful president. In any case, even where the president is apathetical to the chairmanship position, his aides will egg him on in the direction of establishing relentless control over the party.Chief Odigie-Oyegun did little to control a party that was spinning out of order, especially in the last two years. But it is safe to assume that Mr Oshiomhole has learnt a number of lessons from his outgoing predecessors nonchalance and connivance. As he has promised, he will exert control right from the beginning of his tenure, and deploy labour union negotiating tools to rein in party rebels. More, he asserts, he will bring to bear an uncommon sagacity and imaginativeness in running the party in order to build it into the best party in Africa. His enthusiasm cannot be faulted. But Mr Oshiomhole wrongly assumes, like his predecessors critics, that the problem with the APC is essentially one of low capacity, interest, and style of the party chairman. But the ruling partys problems far transcend the symptomatic quarrels convulsing its organs and playing off one interest group against another. If Mr Oshiomhole does not carry out a proper diagnosis of the partys problems, he will find himself administering the wrong medicines: painkillers for oncogenic problems, and placebos for diseases of unknown aetiology.There was no problem posed by the nPDP, for instance, that a conciliating president could not have resolved. But having yielded ground to cabals and caucuses of different backgrounds and goals, it was a question of time before the partys values and mantras became contorted. With those values denuded by private and group interests rather than ennobled by national and constitutional dictates, it was not surprising that the party began to promote interests and individuals that war against common sense, the constitution and the rule of law. Legal subterfuges began to inundate the polity, sectionalism took root, and desperate internal struggles were triggered within the party and within the government itself. Consequently, the party became weakened, and everyone began to look up to a strangely immobilised presidency for interventions that were not forthcoming. These problems do not admit of negotiating skills; they call for the president and the party to conduct deep soul-searching and self-examination.No one doubts Mr Oshiomholes upbeat mood, or the inspiration and energy a party fresh from a successful convention can bring into the equation. Nor does anyone think that the incoming chairmans diplomatic and negotiating prowess would not be of some value in smothering disgruntlement within the party. Nor, still, does anyone fear that his boundless enthusiasm and can-do spirit would race reprehensibly out of control. However, despite his gifts, despite his energy, despite his infectious candour, Mr Oshiomhole must both understand the roots of the discord in the APC and find a balance between his famed ability to mingle with and disarm party leaders, especially the president who shares a great part of the blame, and his sometimes unexplained proclivity to pander to the highest authority. After all, as everyone knows, Mr Oshiomholes glorious deeds both as governor and union leader were not undergirded by any recognisable ideology, but the simplest pragmatism. In fact, like most Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairmen imposed by past presidents, regardless of what they believed or did not believe, Mr Oshiomholes coronation runs true to form.The post Oshiomholes coronation runs true to form appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.
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