APC and the crisis of success

Let me begin by first of all drawing attention of the leadership of the APC, the governing party in Nigeria that came to force just about two weeks ago, that if what happened on the floors of the Senate and the House of Representatives on June 9 would so distract them and cause this much stress and disaffection, then let them be prepared for more serious challenges in the years ahead.

A few weeks ago in this column, I wrote a piece dedicated to the leadership of the APC and their millions of sympathisers and supporters headlined; ‘PDP as a lesson to APC.’ In that piece my concern was on advising the party to learn from the fundamental mistakes that the PDP had committed in the last four years which no doubt were responsible among many other reasons behind the sacking of the party at all levels of government.

One of such mistakes was the issue of the election of Aminu Tambuwal versus Mulikat Akande. PDP faced the greatest rebellion in that circumstance from members elected into the house on its platform and since then, things had not been normal until the idea of G7 and later five governors of the PDP moved away and defected to the new coalition called the APC.

The House of Reps rebellion of June 2011 was a watershed of what the PDP became towards the end of 2014. The result of that is what we have in place today. The PDP was roundly defeated and APC is now in government at the centre and in 22 states of the federation and has a majority of 59 to 49 in the Senate while over 214 members of the House are from the party with just a little over 140 for the once domineering PDP.

I am thinking that the mistakes of the PDP are too recent and current to be forgotten by the new party in government and its leaders. I am sure the anger and frustrations in the minds of millions of APC supporters on what happened in the assembly is much more than what the leaders of the party as expressed by Lai Mohammed are undergoing at the moment, but one fact remains very clear, the leadership of the party must be careful in handling the situation if it desires to navigate out of the turmoil in one piece.

I followed with keen interest the several calls Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso on the party leadership to take proactive steps in addressing the lingering crisis that was brewing in the party before the inauguration