Although it seems dramatic, it is real indeed. The parties involved in the All Progressive Congress, APC merger have begun a move to decide who gets certain positions in Kwara State if eventually the party scales through its registration hurdles, AROWONA ABDULAZEEZ writes.

It is no longer news that the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC; Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN; All Nigeria’s Peoples Party, ANPP and the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA are the major opposition parties that have vowed to rest power from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, come 2015 general elections.

In view of this, the metamorphoses of the parties into APC though, yet to be registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has blinked so many warning signals to the leaders and lovers of the parties at the national, state and local levels.

In what Karl Max, in his political postulations, described as the political class will lay the eggs of their destruction, if not well managed battle for supremacy may consume the child yet unborn, that is APC.

The case in Kwara State is no different due to the peculiarity of the political intrigues of the Saraki dynasty which have being determining the political fate of the people of the state since its inception 1967.

Olusola Saraki, the late Waziri of Ilorin and former Senate leader in the second republic is well acquitted with, for his uniqueness and humane disposition which has not only made him a hero of the land but a ‘political god’ who must be worshipped in his own rite even in death.

However, Senator Bukola Saraki, having successfully inherited his late father’s political dynasty has been anointed as the determinant of political activities in the state going by his current title “leader”.

With no atom of doubt, Bukola Saraki is the leader of PDP in Kwara State today, all the political associates of his late father have learnt to bow before him while many take a long queue for one political patronage or the other.

Therefore, APC, if registered as a political party, will be the first test on the survival of the Saraki’s dynasty and this will determine how far the new emerging leader, Bukola Saraki can sustain his political patronage in the absence of his father.

Nigerian Pilot politics desk however gathered that in Kwara State, what would have served as the strength of the newly formed APC seems to whisper as a weakness owing to a supremacy tussle.

On Thursday, March 28, 2013, the ACN stakeholders’ forum in the state held a meeting at the party’s secretariat and expressed optimism that its governorship candidate in the 2011 election, Mohammed Dele Belgore (SAN) will get APC’s governorship ticket come 2015.

This, the party said was due to Belgore’s excellent outing during the last election saying that in 2011 ACN got over 150, 000 votes; Senator Gbemisola Saraki of the defunct Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN, scored over 75, 000 votes; Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of the CPC scored about 10, 000 votes while Alhaji Khaleel Bolaji of ANPP stepped down his ambition and declared his support for the PDP candidate days to the election.

It is on this note that the chairman of the forum, Dr. Sa’ad Omoiya confidently assumed that if APC would have to wrest power from PDP in Kwara State, it must accept the fact that Belgore is a popular and reliable opposition candidate to beat.

Omoiya also maintained that the success of APC as a strong opposition party will begin by presenting popular candidates for election at all levels irrespective of the party they belong to in order to achieve the aim of the merger.

Also, the director of publicity and strategy of the party therefore called for an emergency congress that will usher in substantive executive members who will midwife the 2015 election at all levels and deliver a significant number of seats to the party at the polls.

He therefore noted the activities of the current executive as null and void and advised Mr. Olawepo, to desist from parading himself as the helmsman noting that the party would host its congress as soon as directed by the national secretariat.

In reaction to this, CPC and ANPP declared that there is no automatic ticket for Belgore if APC gets registered maintaining that all the parties involved in the merger has equal rights in decision making.

In a statement signed by the chairmen, Alhaji Suleiman Buhari and Alhaji Taiwo Eleje respectively and made available to Nigerian Pilot, the parties said: “Our attention has been drawn to the press briefing of a factional group of the Kwara ACN reportedly led by the duo of the very esteemed Dr. Sa’ad Omoiya and Engr. Jide Usman.”

According to them, “Our attention has been drawn to the press briefing of a factional group of the Kwara ACN reportedly led by the duo of Dr. Saad Omoiya and Engr. Jide Usman. It is refreshing to know that public spirited individuals drawn across party lines and beyond are boldly and timorously identifying with this rescue mission.

“We however wish to state categorically that the abiding principle for our coming together under the APC mega platform is that of mutual camaraderie that does not transcend the thin line of individual party’s independence or meddling in our respective internal affairs. Therefore, the CPC and the ANPP do not wish to be dragged into the internal squabbles of any of the other two parties in the merger: the ACN and the APGA

“Our effort so far, in rallying the merger parties is in absolute good faith and essentially based on the prevailing circumstances. We posit, without any fear of contradiction, that the modest effort we have recorded so far is not targeted at taking sides with any person or factional group within the ACN or any other party for that matter.

“It however bears repeating, in the light of the statements credited to certain stakeholders of the ACN in their press briefing yesterday, that our coming together under the single platform of the APC is unconditional.”

The duo chairmen while expressing the high level at which they were jolted, said: “Since we have mutually resolved to work together as a team without preconditions, we make bold to say that any rumour, suggestions or innuendoes that might be consciously or unconsciously promoted to mean that a particular former aspirant from any of the merging parties has leverage over and above the rest, is bound to fall flat in the face of its initiator.

“The essence of this brand new arrangement is to bury the ugly past where ego prevailed over reason in our previous attempts to forge a joint political front. We all must therefore be ready to bury the past with all its debilitating relics. So, the idea of who becomes what does not arise now, and when it eventually does, it must be mutually agreed by all.

“We hasten to add that much as we pledged to make sacrifices with a view to making the merger become fruition, we will nonetheless vehemently oppose any scheme that has the slightest element of relegating or whittling down the equal standing of any of the merging parties to the background, on the basis of any concocted ‘sharing formula’.”

“Therefore, the grand plot to surreptitiously conscience the impressionable public into erroneously believing that one party is the ‘husband’ while the others are disingenuously tagged the ‘wives’ should forever remain in the imagination of its progenitor, because it is only meant but for the trash bin of the past. We have come this far in our individual struggle, and we are sure going to resist any plot to either subjugate our platform or make it play the second fiddle under the alter of a speculative yet out rightly objectionable political arrangement.”

The statement however stressed that “As long as there is yet no official communication of the scheme of realignment from our national leadership, any bogus assertion from any quarters now, no matter how highly placed, is of no moment.

“But assuming without conceding that there was actually a scheme of engagement, the peculiarity of the Kwara political configuration does not give room for any political subjugation of any of the other merging partners over and above the other by a so-called senior partner. Thus, the grandstanding of a certain section in the merger coalition, whereby the unsubstantiated and unsustainable kite of a purported past electoral victory is being flown is not only immoral but capable of derailing us in our avowed bid.

“Our goal now is to be guided not by the vestige of the past but by the reality of the present while holding tenaciously to what the future holds for all of us. Therefore, exhuming past relics that have effectively been overtaken by obvious political events is downright unacceptable to us. Even at that, as it might be fairly strategic to concede to a party that posted a fair showing in the previous elections, so shall it smacks of a downright political miscalculation if the post-electoral fortune of the respective parties is not equally taken into consideration in arriving at a just and equitable scheme that will be acceptable to all.”

Though, the parties’ stalwarts expressed their esteem interest in the merger saying: “To us as progressive parties, we hereby reiterate our commitment to the merger and state with all sense of responsibility that there no amount of sacrifice that is too big to make to ensure that the merger works.

“All stakeholders in this coalition and beyond must therefore make it a moral point of duty to make the merger a reality in order to rescue whatever is remaining of our collective humanity in the state. We must be ready to eschew all form of arrogance and egoistic posture that is capable of undermining the modest achievement we have made so far.

“We urge all persons of good conscience to be circumvent and guarded in their public outings in order not to give a wrong impression of false and shaky start in the rainbow coalition bid. We assert that we have come a long way, and as parties committed to the merger, we will not allow fifth columnists to pull any upset at this critical time. We must make sure that first thing comes first.”

Kwara CPC and ANPP therefore advised that, “We all should be more concerned about making the merger a reality rather than fighting dirty over spoilt of offices. It is blatantly disingenuous to put the cart of party slots before the horse of the all-important merger. Writing the glossary and footnotes of the merger history now while jettisoning even the preface is way off the cuff.”

Therefore, if a medication which was meant to cure a particular illness turns out to be poisonous at the point of usage, what then is the solution?