Hotweb.waphall.com Theunprecedented merger of three political parties into the All Progressives Congress, APC last year revolutionised the political space and gave fillip to the opposition in the country. However, recent congresses to produce officers for the party have opened fault lines within the opposition party. Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Interim National Publicity Secretary of the party last weekend fielded questions on the mutterings in the party, the state of affairs in the country and the resolve of the party to give good govervance to Nigeria. Excerpts
Howwould you describe the recent congresses across the country?
I believe that they have been largely successful in the sense that there is no way you can build a new party like ours without having permanent structures at the various levels of the party.
For our exercise, we started at the ward level and the idea was to get the administrative structure at that level. To ensure that people at the ward level actually take possession and ownership of the party and at the local government level also, that the people should take ownership of the party. Ditto for state and at the national level.
Variousstructures
The idea is that when you have a mass movement like the APC and given the genesis of the APC which is the coming together of several political parties and the collapse of the various structures of those parties, we could not stay for too long without having permanent structures at the various levels. Every officer today, before the congresses were interim and were not elected as it was just an ad-hoc arrangement to be administered.
All our congresses at the ward level were direct congresses and every registered member of the party had the right to cast a vote and choose the candidate of his own and I think largely, it went very well.
Yes, we are not unaware of some misgivings, some people who believed that they were short-changed. It is to be expected and this was why we also set up appeal committees at every level of the congress to address such grievances and I can tell you that the whole problem stem from the fact that some people believe rightly or wrongly that they should take control of the party structure in every level in order to show that they relevance. And this I think is the root cause of all the problems.
Lai Mohammed
You see, these are people who have political ambitions and of course, you cannot rule that out because people are in politics because they have legitimate political ambitions. But we have told everybody that possession or hijack of party structures does not necessarily help to advance your political fortunes, no. As a matter of fact, it would eliminate people against you and create factions within the party.
Reports ofappeals
The party would do everything within its powers to resolve all these issues. Even the reports of the appeals are even subject to the appeal of the national exco of the party.
Are you aware of the memo from Chief Tom Ikimi?
I am very much aware, I was copied. Actually, we were all very embarrassed that it was leaked to the press.
He claimed that efforts to resolve these grievances are being ignored.
I think it would be very wrong of me to start discussing the internal workings of the party or our challenges on the pages of the newspaper. But I can tell you that I know that the situation prevailing in states differ from one to the other. As a matter of fact, while we have concluded state congresses in some states, we are still conducting local government congresses in some states.
So, when people now talk of appeals being heard and being resolved and meetings being called, it is because they don’t have holistic picture of the whole thing. But I know that on a daily basis that the national chairman, the secretary and the exco, they receive complaints and petitions and appeal committees are set up and I am sure all that the exco is waiting for is for a time when all the congresses would have been completed and from that point in time they would do the review. But once again, a newspaper is not the place to discuss the internal affairs of the party.
But this situation has led to the defection of some of your followers in Edo State including the former national vice-chairman, Pastor Ize-Iyamu
We are worried naturally because we do not want any of our members to go. But what we would not do is to make decisions without going into the root cause of the disaffection in every issue. As I am speaking to you now, many of our leaders are talking to the disaffected members. I called the pastor myself and he called me back and we are concerned that any of our members should leave.
In any political party you only want to have more members, you don’t want to lose any. It is only when it becomes impossible for you to retain them that you accept their leaving. Right now, I don’t think that it has gone beyond remedy.