By Emanuel Aziken

The confessions of President Muhammadu Buhari during penultimate Thursday’s National Executive Committee, NEC meeting of the All Progressives Congress, APC about the failed elections under his watch should ordinarily elicit much interest. The president in his speech appeared to be appealing to the grassroots of the party for understanding in the face of the difficult challenges the country has been passing through under a government that promised much change.

However, unbeknown to many, the president’s emotional appeal also helped to suppress many pressing issues still challenging the leadership of the party.

Before that NEC meeting, an unusual security cordon was mounted around the APC secretariat in Wuse 2 suggestive of the kind of violence that attended the secretariat at the peak of the crisis over the party’s candidate in Kogi State.

The security cordon, it was gathered, may not have been unconnected to an alleged plan by the rank of deputies in the NEC to protest the refusal to allow Timi Frank to take over the position of National Publicity Secretary following the departure of Lai Mohammed. The deputies it was learnt, wanted to protest in the course of the closed door NEC meeting with President Buhari in attendance. In any event, the plan derailed apparently after the deputies caught cold feet.

Even more, the NEC decided to reconstitute the BoT. That proposal many suspect, is part of the decoy to soothe the tension arising from the contentions over the chairmanship of the BoT.

There is no secret about the fact that party elders have been challenged over the election of a chairman of the board given the capacities of the men alleged to have shown interest in the office. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is favoured by some while Atiku Abubakar has also been favoured by many others. However, Atiku’s supporters have lately said that their man will not contest for the position, and will accept it only if offered on a platter.

NEC’s decision to reconstitute the membership of the BoT is inevitably seen as one way of postponing the evil day!

Unending mutterings in Edo APC

The leadership of the APC in Edo State came under pressure penultimate week after four of the aspirants jointly came out to indict the state chairman, Anslem Ojezua of bias.

The campaigns of the deputy governor, Pius Odubu, Kenneth Imansuagbon, famously known as the Rice Man, Chris Ogiemwonyi and Barrister Omo Irabor in a joint statement put aside their differences to accuse Ojezua of transforming himself into the campaign director of another aspirant supposedly said to be the favourite of the political leadership of the state.

Before now, Imansuagbon had walked an independent path indifferent to the feeling of the political leadership of the state, apparently believing that his works would help him out.

Odubu and Ogiemwonyi, on the other hand, had at different points sought accommodation within the mainstream but given the apparent determination to forge ahead with the supposedly favoured candidate, the two men have now come out to fight.

The capacity of the two to fight, however, remains an issue among stakeholders. Even more remarkable is the fact that no sane person has questioned the right of the comrade governor to anoint or even vote for a successor. The fear of his supporters is that he should not overreach himself!

Meanwhile, the situation in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP became clearer when Senator Ehigie Uzamere withdrew his membership of the party. Uzamere had kept the PDP guessing as to his intentions, before his resignation from the party. But few doubt if he would cross over to the APC after first moving over to the APC and using the platform for an unprecedented second term and then pulling back to the PDP!

A first in Rivers!

The violence that marked penultimate weekend’s federal and state legislative rerun elections in Rivers State may have shocked many, but not all. It is, however, not seriously contested that the rerun elections were apparently the first time that attempt was made to conduct genuine elections in the state since the 1999 general elections.

Following the 1999 elections, the state was known to have slipped into one a one-party state in which the PDP held overall dominance. Squabbles were, for the most part, restricted to within the party with losers going into internal exile within the state or relocating to Abuja.

Indeed, Sergeant Awuse, popularly known as the Bulldozer was the first to be so subjugated after Peter Odili won the party ticket in 1998 with the help of Marshall Harry. Harry, the godfather, himself soon came under as Odili became the prominent political leader of the state.

Odili was followed by the short-lived regime of Celestine Omehia before Rotimi Amaechi arrived and made Rivers State hell for both criminals and even political rivals.

However, no one bargained for Amaechi’s exit out of the PDP and hence the emergence of a rival party structure in the state. That inevitably is the major reason for the rift in Port-Harcourt; to wit, that for the first time a major political party has challenged the grip of the PDP over Rivers State.