Is the APC falling apart before our eyes?

The APC has been very poor at managing its post 2015 election success. Several instances abound, but this piece will cite a few recent examples to buttress the point.

On Saturday, May 19, 2018, the APC held two parallel congresses in Lagos which threw up two separate State chairmen in two locations in Ikeja.

One faction led by Fouad Oki was going against the other faction of the party led by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

A divided APC was once unheard of in Lagos; a city where Tinubu has maintained a stranglehold on the base since 1999. But here we are.

In Bayelsa, the APC has two factions. One faction is loyal to former Governor Timipre Sylva, the other swears by Nestor Binabo, a former acting Governor and Speaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly.

On May 5, 2018, the APC held a contentious governorship primary election in Ekiti which ended in fisticuffsA couple of weeks before the July 14 governorship contest in that Southwest State, you still can’t put your money on the APC putting together a united front that will give the Fayose backed PDP a run for its money.

A couple of weeks ago, the 'new PDP' faction in the APC made a return (and here we were thinking nPDP is no longer a thing in the politics of our nation).

The nPDP wrote a very bitter, long letter to President Buhari, threatening to pull out of the APC if they aren’t compensated with board and federal appointments.

At least one chieftain of the APC, Timi Frank, has gone on the record to say he misses former President Goodluck Jonathan because the APC under Buhari has become a dictatorship.

In Kogi, two chieftains of the APC in Governor Yahaya Bello and Senator Dino Melaye have been engaged in a battle for supremacy for a while now.

In Kaduna, Governor Nasir El-Rufai has drawn the battle line againstSenators Suleiman Hunkuyi and Shehu Sani.

In the national assembly, the APC has been unable to push through its policies and agenda even though it holds a slim majority in both chambers; because presiding and principal officers often sing from separate hymn sheets.

And just before Chief John Odigie-Oyegun was told he wouldn’t be handed another term as APC national chairman, Tinubu often wrote public letters calling him a disaster and snake.

Such is the sorry state of the nation’s governing party before major election battles in Ekiti, Osun and across the nation in February of 2019.

Any keen watcher of politics in our nation shouldn’t be surprised at what the APC has become. The 2013 merger of CPC, ACN, ANPP and a splinter of APGA was an assemblage of strange bedfellows whose only goal was to seize power from the PDP. There was no ideology underpinning what was essentially a marriage of convenience or circumstance.

However, writing off the APC on account of all of its recent troubles across the States will be foolhardy and presumptuous because there is no formidable opposition ready to take advantage, exploit the governing party’s many cracks and make it pay.

If the APC’s acrimony teaches us anything, it is that the political party system in Nigeria remains a huge joke that very well mirrors the rest of the nation.