New APC faction is a joke, pay them no attention

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018, a group of politicians announced that they were breaking away from the governing All Progressives Congress (APC).

The aggrieved APC politicians were led by a former Buhari ally, Buba Galadima.

Galadima is actually a founding member of the APC and was a leading voice in the CPC, one of the legacy political parties that coalesced into the APC in 2013. Buhari joined the APC from the CPC.

Galadima announced that his new APC factionwill be called Reformed APC (R-APC).

“The APC has run a rudderless, inept and incompetent government that has failed to deliver good governance to the Nigerian people,” R-APC national chairman, Galadima, said.

Galadima added that “I stand here before you as the Chairman of the reformed APC to remind you that preparatory to 2015, the nPDP merged with APC to wrestle power, but the content of that agreement were breached.

“The APC in the last three years has performed poorly and refused to sustain its core values.

“The APC government was a monumental disaster, even worse than the government it replaced."

Some executive members of the APC are Kassim Afegbua, Kayode Omotosho, Fatima Adamu and Fatai Atanda.

Recycled politicians playing the same old game

But the APC shouldn’t be losing any sleep over these guys.

For one, I don’t understand why breakaway factions of political parties keep the name of the party they are running away from. First, we had nPDP and now there is R-APC. This trend not only highlights the ideology deficit in our political parties, it also brings to the fore the lack of creative thinking within the political class. What the heck is R-APC?

Galadima is right when he says the APC has been running an incompetent government at the center--one that has failed to deliver good governance to the Nigerian people. But the alternative to the APC government shouldn’t be a political party that shares almost the same name with the party that has failed or an alternative that has no ideology or vision of its own, save for a press statement before midnight that proffers no solution to the nation's problems whatsoever.

The APC has been as badly run as the government it sired. But this latest fissure from angry members who are at best lightweights in the larger scheme of things, won’t dent the party’s 2019 election fortunes or sway the party’s chances one way or the other.

What we have just witnessed is the emergence of a bunch of recycled attention seekers who are badly looking for concessions and bargaining power within the APC, while pretending to wave a non existent clout. And that right there is a political script that has been so overplayed in Nigeria, it now borders on the ridiculous.