Will APC Be Another Eatery?

Argues APC must perform the task for which it is elected

bajaspeak, there would be “nothing for you”. They would return worse off. They would come back leaner and more malnourished. Because the rule in Mama Put’s roadside eatery also applies to any respectable party: Service is on a first-come, first- served basis.

The game plan is to convince the already hungry that there is worse hunger elsewhere and they will become virtual hostages. They will not venture out to try their luck. They will endure until whatever election year the PDP regains the reins of power.

The funny thing is Jonathan addressed the wrong audience. People don’t listen when they are famished. Starving folks can’t stomach a sermon on longsuffering. A sad confirmation is the tryst of hunger and mass suicide called the Mediterranean Sea. A shipload of Africans, Nigerians inclusive, drowns there in a tragedy of countless rewinds. The new batch of migrants draws odd incentive from the report of the obliteration of their last forerunners: Their desperate resolve is: “If I perish, I perish’’.

The truth, however, is that the hunger President Jonathan alluded to was not mundane hunger. It’s not the hunger that takes the appeasement of three square meals. It’s not the hunger of the commoner. He spoke to the hunger of the privileged.

Governor Godswill Akpabio illustrated this premium hunger last year. When an assembly of Chairmen of South South PDP states complained that they were hungry, Akpabio showed five-star compassion. He responded, ‘‘my brother, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, said our members are hungry and that we must put food in their stomachs so that they will not stray to other parties. I am giving all the state chairmen of the party N1 million each for lunch. Our members must not be hungry.’’

The lunch-eaters didn’t ask why they were given so much for lunch. They didn’t ask whether the donation made Akwa Ibom treasury or the cheerful giver poorer. They didn’t bother to ask. They believed they were entitled to such stupendous meal tickets. When a PDP man confesses hunger, it is his right to be fed the monetary weight of an adult elephant.

Apparently, all hungers are not equal. Hunger has rankings. The hunger of a PDP member takes more food to satisfy than the hunger of a commoner. One instance of a PDP man’s lunch will pay the Nigerian minimum wage for four and half years. That’s why President Jonathan couldn’t feed more than 15 per cent of his aides.

Another pointer to the party as a hedonist enterprise is the annual geometric increase in the food budget of the Presidency. This year, gluttony was allocated N17.6 million.

Now the culinary party is over. Or as Senate President David Mark says, PDP is “in comatose situation”. APC is the new ruling party. Will APC be any different from a club of feasters? Will it be a decent political party?

A party has to be about a vision of the country. It has to derive its being from a noble persuasion to better the country and her people by the pursuit of a set of agenda. If it’s the lengthened shadow of one man or the confluence of ambitions ranged against another party, it is a fraud. And like all frauds, it would someday the day the victim awakes.

Most APC supporters admit that their celebration of Buhari’s game-changing win was tempered by the fear that the new ruling party may turn out PDP’s alter ego. APC owes a significant part of its population strength to former PDP diehards. Some of APC’s biggest promoters match PDP’s sponsors in corruption notoriety. APC has no proper ideological individuality that makes confounding it with any other party impossible. Its foremost challenge is define itself in sharp contrast to the party it just supplanted.

APC’s messaging machinery has been drumming that the party predicated its ability to deliver CHANGE on inheriting a treasury running over with money. The party and President-elect Buhari had a strategy for confronting the Gowon dilemma of sitting atop too much money and not knowing how to spend it. But Buhari has hard luck. He would inherit empty coffers. The bus conductor receives a big sum before he is obligated to give you some change. The job of a President is more complicated than that of a bus conductor. So Buhari is acquitted of his campaign promises.

This offers a range of tenable readings: The winners regret their victory because there are no spoils. This is an appeal to be relieved of expectations raised by sugar-coated manifestoes. This is APC and Buhari’s advance alibi for failure. This is laziness dreading a fraction of its job description.

Last week Chairman of APC Governors’ Forum, Rochas Okorocha, led his brother governors to a courtesy call on Buhari. And it was a shameful outing. Okorocha pleaded on “behalf of his colleagues” for a bail-out for the states. The states are bankrupt. They can’t meet their recurrent obligations. They borrow to pay salaries. Taken together, APC is sending a disheartening signal. They seem intent to convey that lethargy has preceded the resumption of work. The party’s agents want an easy yoke and a light burden. They laboured to win elective office in order to procure an eternal Sabbath. They don’t want to break a sweat. They just want to sit back and disburse ready-made riches.

But we are in the last days of the oil era. There will be less and less petrodollars to share. APC’s task is to create wealth, to explore innovative ways of harnessing the abundant resources of the country.

APC’s stalwarts cannot distinguish the party by adopting a consumption posture. They can’t plead surrender because the situation demands resourcefulness. What they were elected to do is a job. They will have to earn their keep. They have to bring something to the table.

PDP was about tending the bellies of its upper echelon. APC must be a different ruling party. Or we would have effected the proverbial change of trading a dog for a monkey, another sitter animal.