Is Kogi State All Progressives Congress (APC) indirect primary jinxed? Is the party going to handover the state to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on a platter of gold? I think there is a saying that once bitten twice shy; is Kogi APC going the way of Zamfara and Rivers State again?
There is an adage in Yoruba parlance that “when a child falls, he looks forward but when an elderly person falls he looks backward to find out what prompted him to fall.” APC as a party is now power drunk, it cannot think right again. This is what made the party to lose Zamfara and Rivers states to PDP and they are about to allow history to repeat itself in Kogi again by conducting an indirect primary without allowing internal democracy to prevail (by using direct primary), by the time APC loses Kogi State to PDP, the party will be blaming non existing political enemies, while APC is the number one enemy of herself. The PDP as a party knows how to play politics; they will always plant a black sheep among APC members to destabilise the party’s administration such as what happened in Rivers and Zamfara states. If the APC fails to read the writing on the wall, PDP will capture half their territory before 2023 because they have already failed to guard their loins.
It is because APC as a party always succumbs to bend administrative guide lines because of a particular candidate to the detriment of the party. This was what happened in Zamfara and Rivers in 2019 that made Gov Nyesom Wike to win election in Rivers without strong opposition and the same mistake gave Zamfara PDP a free ride to Government House.
There are some powerful individuals in the party hierarchy who are always insisting on fielding their own candidates against the right candidates of the party. They are in the habit of overruling the entire party decision to install their puppet as the party’s choice to the detriment of the party. I feel that if a man uses his bare palm to fetch fire and got burnt, he should be wise not to try it the second time but that is not the case with the APC. The party has seen a farm bedevilled with rabbit before they started to plant groundnut in it. If the party allows internal democracy to prevail, the people of Kogi, who know where their shoes pain, will have the opportunity to make their choice.
– Israel Oyegbile wrote from Sabo Tasha, Kaduna.
