Ogun’s APC presidential rally 2019: Matters arising

IT is no longer news that the internal crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) party boiled over on Monday, February 11th, when protests by party members of the Ogun State chapter marred the presidential campaign rally as party members booed and pelted the National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, former Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Director General of the APC Presidential Campaign, Rotimi Amaechi, even with President Muhammadu Buhari physically present at the event. In the aftermath of the unfortunate incident which has been dubbed a national embarrassment, attempts have been made by some dishonest commentators to hang the charges of incitement and anti-party on the neck of the Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun.

The genesis of the Ogun APC crisis has been well told and bears no need for a recount. It is however instructive to note that up till the day of the rally, the crisis was a festering sore that could bleed with even a tiny poke by any act of tactlessness from the party leadership. Any watcher of Nigerian politics could see clearly that for some time now, APC South West has continued to wobble under the threat of a growing anti-tinubu agitation. Recently, this has produced a simmering crisis between the Executive and Legislative arms of government in Lagos State, the effect of which has managed to create a strong new voice to energize opposition, especially PDP, in the State. In the past three years, the anti-establishment agitation has radicalized the APC members across the region and affected the configuration of the party apparatuses in Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti and Osun States. Ogun State is the latest casualty of this malaise and the unfortunate debacle witnessed at the Abeokuta rally should be situated in its right context. Simply put, in almost all the South West states, APC has in its fold many angry members whose grievances have not been properly managed and most of these have become the source of PDP’S new found voice and momentum in the region. Specifically relating to Ogun State, if Amosun and the disgruntled party members who were at the receiving end of the party’s national leadership’s unpopular decision to cancel the legitimate primaries organised by the State party branch before imposing another candidate on the state were political prostitutes, by now they would have become an albatross and whipping cane for APC. The APC should silently thank its stars that things did not go that route. That Amosun is one of the governors whose love and support for Buhari is deep and unaffected is not in doubt. Political whispers have it that Rotimi Akeredolu, Babatunde Raji Fashola, Kayode Fayemi and Ibikunle Amosun form the leading lights of a staunch pro-buhari group in the South West whose support for the president is not dictated by attachment to the well known Lagos cabal. Political watchers believe that if push comes to shove, the President can count on this group to be on his side no matter what. In Ogun state politics today, Amosun’s passion for Buhari, his organizational capacity and hold on the grassroots political structure have continued to grow in such a way that politically, opposition has been snuffed out virtually. In the whole of the South West today, Ogun state remains the one where PDP is weakest, in spite of the fact that two prominent Ogun indigenes - a former president and a former governor of the state - are among its major backers and pushers nationally.

For reasons that verged on Amosun’s political sagacity and undisguised sincere passion for Buhari, the PMB re-election project has been bought across party lines in the state such that it is freely bandied about in Ogun political circles that a segment of PDP, especially in the Central and West Senatorial districts of the state is working clandestinely for Amosun’s Buhari Project.

Though the strengthening of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) to absorb the exiting APC members in the wake of the acrimonious party primaries late last year might have created an APC/APM dichotomy which ordinarily should have fed PDP, as the main opposition, the reality on ground in the state today is that dichotomy, if any, has worked to further serve the purpose of shoring up and securing the electoral fortunes of Buhari in Ogun State.