Lowering the Standard of Party Chairmanship
By his own design, the one thing the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole chairmanship of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has exposed in political governance and administration is that the office of the national chairman of any political party, much less a ruling party, is by far a much bigger responsibility than being the governor of a state – not even Lagos State – the most cosmopolitan in the country.
Clearly, the administrative immaturity of Oshiomhole, which was unduly glorified by his headship of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and concealed through mediocre elevation of his reign as the Edo State governor has merely been put to simple test as the national chairman of the APC in less than a month of assuming office.
Character, acceptable minimum attitudinal disposition, human relations, maturity, guarded and measured utterances and the likes, which ordinarily are rudimentary expectations of leadership at whatever level are evidently missing, however, not by sheer orchestration of the chairman himself but because he is unable to give that which he innately lacks.
Although he once gave some inkling to this disposition, when as governor, he told off a widow and asked her to ‘go and die’ – the afterthought that necessitated the eventual management of that situation could not change what was habitually inevitable hence the current flight of common sense in the running of the affairs of the party.
From the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to then opposition Alliance for Democracy (AD), which had changed name a few times to Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and now APC, to the All Peoples Party (APP), which also became All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the Labour Party (LP) and even the Congress for Progressives Change (CPC), which is now a major stakeholder in the APC, not to talk of the other fringe parties, there has always been a minimum standard in the choice of persons that led and still lead all these parties.
There was never a time that any political party’s national chairman resorted to the ‘motor park approach’ in the pursuit of any agenda, not even at the polling units. The baton of party leadership was always handed characters with pedigree, sound education, value-adding network of contacts, who no matter the case at hand, could hold down their heads.
Unfortunately, the APC has broken that record of enviable standard in party administration with its choice of Oshiomhole as national chairman. That the new APC chair would not respect the principle of separation of powers nor mind to subvert the sanctity of the constitution as well as the extant laws if they would prevent him from achieving his goals, points to one thing: the APC already has a problem – won ti ni problem!
Today, in the APC, decency and honesty in leadership are rare virtues even though intelligent politics long took flight the moment some of its brilliant minds started to quit its rank. It is interesting to know that some of the APC top notch members have already realised that there is a serious crisis on their hands with the rate Oshiomhole is going, charging at any and everything.
Yet, the management of the menace he constitutes at the level it is now, is very important before it goes out of control, otherwise, Oshiomhole’s current disposition is capable of sending Nigeria backward many years unintended.