Last week I argued that Nigerians should not vote for the All Progressives Congress (APC) this year. I am speaking to Nigerians who are guided by reason, facts, logic, and self‑respect rather than sentiment, conjecture, hot air, or idol worship. Any such Nigerian, wherever he may be, has witnessed the perfidy of the APC brand over the past eight years. The betrayal has been so comprehensive that, if the APC were a product—say a food item or medication—it would already have been banned by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control and its manufacturer prosecuted.
Recall that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) exhibited a similar nature between 1999 and 2014, which I labeled the “Profoundly Decadent Party.” In 2015, believing the APC would be superior, I joined the clamor to oust the PDP from power—and we succeeded. During his presidential campaign, APC’s Muhammadu Buhari swore that the party would end corruption, provide for Nigeria, and manage the country efficiently. “We will stop corruption and make the ordinary people, the weak and the vulnerable our top priority,” he declared. This was false advertising, part of the absurd practice whereby the head of the federal executive, lacking any laudable projects of his own, constantly runs to the states to celebrate minor achievements.
Two months ago, Edo Governor Godwin Obaseki—formerly of the APC, now of the PDP—flagged this false advertising, warning that Nigerians are poor because of the bad policies and decisions of their leaders. Just last week, the Arewa Renewal Forum offered the same explanation for the high poverty rate in northern Nigeria. What can one learn from the APC’s promise to prioritize ordinary people, the weak and the vulnerable when, under its watch, Nigeria has become the world’s poverty capital and continues to spiral out of control?
The APC has indeed become a peculiar animal. In 2016, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El‑Rufai sent a famous memo to President (retired) Major General Muhammadu Buhari, warning that the president was losing both mission and momentum. Curiously, last week El‑Rufai also publicly criticized the Buhari administration’s decision to redesign the naira and withdraw it rapidly, saying the measures could ignite voter rejection of the APC in the presidential election. APC presidential candidate Bola Tinubu himself claimed those decisions were part of a plan to scuttle the election.
El‑Rufai further faulted the Buhari administration for failing to remove the infamous petroleum subsidy and restructure the country, describing those policies as inconsistent with the APC manifesto. He blamed the developing fiasco on “elements” within the presidency, stating, “The people in the villa—most of them are not members of our party… I believe there are elements within the villa that want us to lose the elections because they did not get their way. They have their candidate, but their candidate did not win the primaries.”
Yet this ramshackle chaos—a party huge in words but derelict in capacity and competence—still seeks to rule Nigeria. To what end? In June 2019, after another London hospital visit at Nigeria’s expense, Buhari announced a war to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within ten years. He cited China, India and Indonesia as examples of large‑population nations that had successfully tackled poverty. However, soldiers without a strategy fail in war. Unsurprisingly, Nigerians have plunged deeper into poverty over the past four years, as every political and policy misstep since 2015 has compounded the crisis.
At the heart of the problem is the APC’s complete disrespect for principle, competence, and intellect. Although the party claimed that the 2014 National Conference motivated its formation and philosophy, it has upheld no principles. Buhari reneged on his “Covenant With Nigerians,” his First 100 Days pledge, and his campaign promises. His government ignored the constitution, court judgments, the Ahmed Joda Report he commissioned, and every performance commitment. Under the APC, key agencies such as the Auditor‑General and the EFCC have become ineffective or complicit, while hypocrisy and nepotism have become prominent state instruments.
After failing on the insecurity challenge for which it was elected, the APC government tried to recruit the United States to do the job. Instead of fighting corruption at home, it advised the world on how to fight it. Two years ago I denounced the Buhari government for duplicity and cynicism, asserting that every society needs a leader who can think beyond himself. “It is his contradictions and arrogance that are responsible for the chaos and insecurity in Nigeria,” I wrote. “For Nigeria to avoid disintegration, it must have a leader with a national vision and focus—a leader driven by the mammoth challenges of justice, poverty and accountability.”
Indeed, the APC itself wrote in 2014, “The consequence of trusting power to a party that does not have the genuine interest of Nigeria and Nigerians is clearly manifest in our political and economic predicament today.” That assessment is truer now than ever. One cannot look at the monumental incompetence and collapse of the last eight years and claim that the same authors will be the nation’s saviour. If we adopted a lie in 2015 that has collapsed on our heads, what wisdom remains eight years later to vote for an even more bogus and insidious leadership?
Therefore, it is obvious in 2023 that any reasonable Nigerian should send the APC—and its alter ego, the PDP—to powerlessness, not power; to oblivion, not the future. Even Buhari, now a little more humble, advises Nigerians to vote for good leaders from any part of the country. Why? Because unless you wish your future to be hopelessness, endless pain and desperation, you must reject the APC as the affliction it has proven to be. Anyone who objects is either part of the affliction or needs treatment. You do not take a curse home with you; you banish it.
I am not denying that the APC has built roads or commenced footbridges—projects that demand years, layers of budgeting and a mountain of excuses to implement. It has. But the party’s mission was bigger: to cleanse, reorder, reset, reconfigure, transform, change. Ask El‑Rufai. Ask Obaseki. Worse still, the APC enriched itself and then poisoned the well. You do not praise “gbomo‑gbomo”; you denounce and punish it. That is what the APC deserves. Unless you curse yourself, you must hold them accountable—or hold yourself responsible.
[This column welcomes rebuttals from interested parties or government officials.]
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