The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) started off with so much promise, but its populism in the North was also its undoing in the last elections. Regional Editor (News), Olawale Rasheed, X-rays the party and its future agenda.The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) truly scared many in the political terrains of the nation, when it was formed in December 2009. Its founder, General Muhammadu Buhari, took the country by storm, creating a political whirlwind that forced the incumbent party into worrisome drawing board. It was a time of bitter feud within the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).The zoning battle was heating up within the PDP with the Northern geopolitical zones bitterly opposed to the presidential ticket going to the South. The All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), to which General Buhari belonged, was already hand in glove with the ruling party, with no hope of him getting the presidential ticket. His decision to move out was thus taken with the members of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation as the core of the new party. They had hoped to build a unique party with Spartan discipline.The CPC is unique, not just because of Buhari, but because of its constitution. The Board of Trustees (BoT), which in other parties is advisory, is a policy making organ in the CPC. The National Executive Council (NEC) of the party implements the decisions of the board which is chaired by Buhari himself. Hence, the board is largely superior to the party's NEC. The other unique feature of the CPC is that the NEC is restricted to national officers and zonal vice-chairmen. In the CPC, state chairmen are not members of NEC.Buhari's inner caucus, led by Sule Hamman and Buba Galadima, dominated the Board of Trustees though unelected. An unelected Board of Trustees is thus superior to an elected NEC, a party structure that originated the party's internal crisis. Senator Rufai Hanga, the pioneer chairman in whose name the party was registered, played along under this structure until the trustees, through Galadima, issued directives that touched on his political interest with respect to Kano State gubernatorial ticket of the party.Galadima had announced the dissolution of the party executives of Kano, Katsina and Kebbi states as fallout from the decisions taken by the BOT. Two days after, the party chairmen in those three states debunked the dissolution order, affirming that the party chairman, Hanga, had authorised them to stay put as chairmen of the party in the affected states. AlhajiHarunaDanzago, who was removed as Kano chairman, presented a fresh letter signed by the national chairman of the party, Senator Hanga, showing that the party's chairman has reconfirmed his appointment as the CPC chairman in the state. The dissolved executives of Kebbi and Katsina states also publicly declared their defiance to the dissolution order.In Kano, for example, the then chairman, Hanga, was interested in the gubernatorial seat, hence the congresses were thoroughly tainted and discredited. As a consequence, two caretaker executive committees emerged in Kano, Katsina and Kebbi, Sokoto and other states, especially in the Northern party of the country , one appointed by the National Chairman and the other by the BOT.From then onwards, a serious power tussle ensued between the Board and the NEC, a confrontation that weakened the party by the time of the general elections. Those who entered the CPC to ride on Buahri's popularity to secure their election were not ready to accept such puritan structure run by Buhari's henchmen. With so many money bags joining the party, its character was diluted and those the General often refers to as thieves largely hijacked the party at state levels.By the time the party held its national convention in December 2010, Buhari and his men regained the initiative with a new executive under Prince Tony Mommoh. The new chairman, Prince Momoh, defended the structure of the party as follows: 'What some people are asking for is what they can find outside the party. They cannot find it in the party. For instance, they are saying that they want the Board of Trustees to be elected. We don't elect our Board of Trustees. The constitution is clear on what we want. They also want the NEC of the party to include a lot of other groups including state chairmen. The NEC comprises 24 members elected at the national convention, and the same offices are listed for all levels.'The board of trustees is the policy-making body of the party, while the NEC executes the policies. The CPC is deliberately structured in that way to ensure that all the fightings going on in other parties do not occur here. So, anybody who is not interested in this kind of structure can go and form his/her own party,' Momoh said.The election of the new executive, however, did nothing to stop the power struggle within the party. Re-confirmation of Buhari's hold on the party with the convention only deepened the divides at the state level with contest for the party gubernatorial tickets becoming a matter of life and death. In a bid to restore Spartan discipline and control, the party embarked on changes and substitution of candidates, worsening the internal confrontation and precipitating the party's widespread loss at the state elections.Worst still, the party lost a key Igbo pillar of the party, Chief Mike Ahamba (SAN), who complained about the abandonment of the founding ideals of the party. In his resignation letter, the one-time Minority Chief Whip of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in Imo State House of Assembly wrote: 'I regret to inform you that with effect from the date of this letter, I have ceased to be member of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and, by implication, all the positions held therein are also resigned.'Painful as this decision is to me, I have come to the conclusion that I am really left with no viable alternative, given the events that have occurred in the party since late December 2010.' Ahamba, who had left the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) with Buhari to form the CPC, following irreconcilable differences with the party (ANPP) regretted that the lofty ideals and objectives of the CPC had been betrayed.'In forming the CPC, the ideals were lofty, the expectations high, and the objective unambiguous. Most of us believed that, at last, Nigeria would witness an ideologically-based party. We had set out, as most of us believed, to prove that internal democracy was possible. I, for one, believed, and still believe, that it is only when a party is able to manage its internal democracy that it can hope to instil same in the national polity. But unfortunately, the presumption of discipline, integrity and transparency as the foundation of the party has been largely rebutted, and the noble objective betrayed. This definitely is not what we set out to achieve, and I will not wallow in self-deceit.'Many insiders stated that the duo of Galadima and Hamman ruled the party like a fiefdom with General Buhari largely adopting and sanctioning whatever these trusted aides told him. In the puritanical world of Buhari and his men, a verdict returning an allegedly tainted aspirant by a duly constituted congress can be cancelled, leading to a judgment between morality and politics.This moralistic view of politics was reported to have been responsible for the failure of the alliance talks between the CPC and ACN. While the ACN was operating mainly politically, Buhari and his men were said to be worried about perceived negative moral luggage within the ACN leadership. This was said to be behind the party's insistence not to drop its identity and candidate in the negotiation with the ACN. There was also that over-confidence and a simple belief that the CPC, being so purportedly popular in the North, could carry the day at the general election.Thus, as a countdown to the election, the CPC was badly divided due to many court cases over determination of candidacy, a second level of defection to the ACN and many tactical errors, especially in the choice of presidential running mate.Even after the election, Senator Hanga, having been denied the party's gubernatorial ticket in Kano, was quick to drag the party to court, claiming that he remained the original and authentic chairman of the party as the December national convention was illegally conducted and that he had never resigned as the chairman of the party. This was followed by the raising of parallel executives of the party across the states, a situation that is jeopardising the gubernatorial election petition of the party in many northern states.While the Momoh executive accused Senator Hanga of being a PDP agent,Hanga responded by affirming that the party was registered in his name and would, therefore, not surrender his house to others. More than four court cases are now pending on this issue.The reality is that the feud at the state level is unabated. Some blamed Buhari, while others defended him over the state of affairs in the party. This is particularly about the crisis in the General's home state which is still raging as at the time of going to the press. Alhaji Muhammad Doguru, while speaking with journalists, had claimed that though Buhari knew everything about the problem of the party, he kept mute, leaving the crisis to escalate,not only in Katsina, but in other northern states.Doguru said the party will remain in crisis until certain national executive officers of the party, who are very close to Buhari, were removed from their respective offices. 'We expect Buhari to intervene and solve the crisis at the infantry stage, but the General never said anything about the problems affecting the party, not to mention solving it once and for all,' he said.Another politician from the state, however, defended the General. Abdul Katia, a lawmaker, said 'it is not true that Buhari is our problem in Katsina. Anybody blaming Buhari over Katsina CPC is not sincere. It is not fair to Buhari. He has made several efforts to solve the problem, but some of us were not ready to cooperate.'All those blaming Buhari were in the party to ride on his back and win elections. If not, they should go to another party and test their popularities. We have over 50 political parties in the country. They should go to other parties and contest election to see if they can even be counted among the strong contenders. Whether they like it or not, Buhari is the main factor in CPC,' he said.In the face of internal dissensions and crises, the party leadership is not worried. Assessing the state of the party so far, its chairman saw nothing like failure in the outcome of the last polls. According to him, 'This party was registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on December 22, 2009. Nobody in the party is on a salary. And all the candidates we fielded had the blessing of the party, not the financial resources. The advantage others had was that they had government at the control, big-time funders and looters of the economy in their favour. Many of these parties had elected people.'The CPC had not even one councillor and we contested with parties with federal might, state might, military might. As at now, we have a state governor and about 80 elected members in the national and state assemblies. So, from no resources and no elected person to what we have now, you cannot say we did not do well,' he said.As to allegations that the party is mainly based in the North, the chairman said 'you must start somewhere. You can start from your base. The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, our leader in the Western region then, started in the Western region which he did not see as a final point. If you have the majority of people picking a particular ideological focus in a particular area, you entrench in that area before moving to anywhere``Future plansFrom now to 2015, the CPC is still hoping to play crucial critical roles in the party's bid to unseat the PDP. While its chieftains are very discreet about their future plans, certain facts cannot be hidden from the public view. The first is that Buhari, the soul of the party, is not likely to run for Presidency in 2015, meaning that he has to anoint a candidate whom he will campaign for.Secondly, the ongoing court cases and other internal feud have eroded the strength of the party, even in the North which was considered its main stronghold. Depending on which side the court rules, Buhari and his men may even lose the custody of the party they midwifed.Also, the refusal of Buhari's inner caucus to abandon its puritanical rule of the thumb in favour of internal democracy is a threat to the party's ambition to become a truly national political party. Moral judgments may be difficult as a substitute for party and democratic rules. In addition, the party is still planning to revive the alliance with the ACN. Insiders told The Friday Edition that the party leadership is well aware that the ACN and the CPC must come together ahead of the next polls. This much was confirmed by the party's chairman in a recent interview.Against the background of subsisting bitterness in the North and the increasing stranglehold of the opposition in the South-West and parts of South-East and South-South, the CPC still remains a potent threat which only a re-energised PDP can contain.
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