The crisis rocking the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has reached a boiling point with the disclosure by the Governor of Ondo state, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, that the party harbours politicians whose characters are less than desirable. In plain language, he insinuated that some of them are, indeed, criminals.
Reacting to developments within the party that had seen the date for its national convention shifted severally and leadership changing hands, the Governor, a lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), alleged that the ousted Yobe State Governor and erstwhile Chairman of the Caretaker and Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Mai Mala Buni had, alongside a few of his colleagues, whom he referred to as ‘yahoo yahoo’ governors plotted to frustrate the convention fixed for March 26, from holding.
He did not stop at that, he also described them as “internal scavengers who were hand in glove with Buni to circumvent the will of the majority of our Party (APC) members.” For the uninitiated, yahoo yahoo is a Nigerian street slang used to describe internet fraudsters and cyber criminals. To use such a language to describe people the Nigerian electorate elected to serve them calls to question the integrity of all the members of the political class.
We recall with sadness that with the appointment of Governor Buni to take over the affairs of the APC in the aftermath of the less than ceremonial exit of the former chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, the party has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Buni’s committee was specifically delegated to plan and hold a convention for the election of its national officers. That, otherwise, simple task that would have restored a semblance of normalcy in the party structure has remained arduous until recently when he was dramatically eased out of office.
Curiously, in our opinion, that long awaited decision, instead of assuaging frayed nerves, accentuated the divisive tendencies that are now threatening the corporate existence of the party itself with some implying that it has in its midst elements out to loot and obtain by tricks.
While Buni was in office, even the blind could see that the fault lines within the ruling party were not only exposed but magnified to such an extent that irreconcilable factions emerged, each digging in and refusing to let go. The main issue is the 2023 election. Every one wanted to be strategically positioned to be able to secure their own share of the pie.
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Nigerians watched in consternation as the affairs of state took a distant back seat. Buni, himself, is the sitting Governor of Yobe State. He has been away from that terrorist enclave for close to two years. The man who took over from him is the sitting governor of Niger state, also a bandits-ridden territory. All the main dramatis personae in the unconscionable saga of political muscle-flexing that has almost set the stage for mutual destruction of the party and all it stands for, are state operatives on both sides of the executive and legislatives arms, raising unanswered questions about what is happening to their main task of governance.
