There is no doubt that the national convention of our great party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has come and gone, with the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, retained as the National Chairman of the party.
I congratulate him and the new members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party, even as I encourage them to brace up for the challenging tasks ahead.
However, I must point out that the new NWC members are not going to enjoy any honeymoon because the time frame for the conduct of party primaries is too short, and as a result, the leadership must roll up its sleeves and hit the ground running because there is no time for a walk in the park at the moment.
In this regard, the party must adopt both proactive and reactive strategies in handling the post-primary election crisis, which will most likely erupt.
I’m not a pessimist, but the new party leadership must anticipate a crisis emanating from some states over conflicts of interest and make arrangements on how to strike a balance between the interests of longstanding members and the interests of new members who now enjoy the attention of the party.
This is where the proactive strategy will work perfectly for the overall interest of the party.
The second strategy is that the leadership must embark on genuine reconciliation immediately after the primary elections are over in order to establish a modus vivendi within the party structure across states.
If this second aspect is not properly handled, anything can happen because politicians always go to where their nest would be feathered.
The Presidential Primary would not be an issue because the President would be given the automatic ticket of the party.
Next time, when our party delegates will be coming back to Abuja, it will be to ratify the automatic ticket that would be given to Mr President.
So, at the presidential level, the leadership will have a field day because there would not be much trouble in this regard, but it will most definitely not be like that at the state level.
This is where the challenge lies, and it requires high-level negotiation abilities and conflict resolution skills to overcome it.
Such a challenge did not arise in Anambra, Ondo and other states that recently witnessed gubernatorial primaries because it’s a staggered primary with minimal interest.
This area is one of the most neglected aspects that led to the downfall of the former ruling party — the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 Presidential Election.
A lot of analysts focused on the immediate cause of PDP failure, but refused to look at the remote cause, which I want to highlight in this piece because I was part of the process.
Towards the end of 2014, the PDP conducted the worst party primary, which it carried over to the 2015 general election year.
Initially, the party encouraged interested members to buy the nomination and expression of interest forms at very high prices and promised that it would give every member a level playing ground.
But during the primaries, the party went against its own rules, and the leadership carried on as if nothing had happened.
Because these aggrieved party members commanded huge followership among the electorates, they decided to protest under the auspices of the PDP Aspirants Forum (PAF), of which I was one of its national spokespersons.
PAF wanted to engage the party leadership to amicably find a lasting solution to the crisis, but some hardliners within the party hierarchy, who thought that the election would be business as usual, frustrated every one of our moves until we decided to go public.
Because our members refused to participate in partisan activities, their non-participation started showing bad and dangerous signals for all the candidates, including President Goodluck Jonathan.
First, public opinion began to go against the candidates. Second, the electorates began to pelt the President with pebbles and sachet waters.
Third, blame and counterblame started creeping into the campaign train.
While all these were happening, General Buhari, who was the candidate of the APC, soared high as he became the main beneficiary of the internal party wrangling.
The Presidency and the PDP refused to recognise the political reality in the country and also underestimated their main challenger, General Muhammadu Buhari and his party, without knowing that the APC had covertly engaged the services of AKPD, which was the political consultancy firm owned by David Axelrod, President Obama’s Chief Campaign Strategist for the 2008 and 2012 United States Presidential Elections.
Because Mr Axelrod had the ear of President Obama, he was able to turn the heart of Mr Obama against President Jonathan.
Accordingly, Obama mobilised David Cameron, who was then the UK Prime Minister and other allies to work against Jonathan’s re-election.
When the Presidency saw the danger ahead, they decided to reach out to PAF by sending the Deputy Director-General of the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Organisation, Professor Tunde Adeniran and the traditional ruler of Jonathan’s community in Ogbia, King Asara A. Asara, to the group.
Professor Adeniran urged PAF members not to allow what some persons had done to cause them to leave the party or work against it during polls, noting that there were some party members on the campaign train who did not want President Jonathan reelected.