The imminent implosions in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State orchestrated by internal squabbles as in the case of the APC, and the unending elite face-off rocking the PDP, have paved a sprouting way for the Advanced Peoples Democratic Alliance (APDA) ahead of the November gubernatorial election in the State.
Now repositioned and ready to take the world by surprise, the APDA has frantically been engaging in massive strategic party reengineering which has resulted into shedding some unhealthy weight that hampered its poor outing in the last National and State Assembly elections in the state.
Interestingly, the party’s hierarchy has been able to identify, after several multilevel investigative panels’ revelations that the poor outing in the last election was a direct function of the anti party activities of some elements within the party at the time whose selfish interests were rather repulsive to other well-meaning and notable political leaders and their teaming followers in the state. Even when the party had made available all it took for these former candidates to fly high by way of soft-pedaling on many of the party’s extant rules and regulations, they still worked against the party.
However, because of the existence of the practice of a robust internal democracy which has always provided all aspirants on her platform with equal and level playing ground, the APDA has now become an ‘attractive bride’ to a lot of frontline political leaders from Kogi State who see it as the only viable and reliable platform on which they can realize their political ambition.
As usual, the party’s doors are always widely open to welcome new and returning members into its fold at all levels.
Aware of this open-door policy of the party, many secret meetings of some who-is-who in Kogi State, with the high echelon of the party have been going on for some time now. Some of them are even aspirants in both the ruling and the opposition political parties in the state.
In fact, reliable information has it that one popular gubernatorial aspirant who has even purchased his Expression of Interest and Nomination Form in one of the popular political parties has vowed that since the party’s hierarchy was not ready to toe the line of popular opinion with reference to the mode of primaries in the coming election, majority of the aspirants have perfected plans to move enmass, along with their massive supporters into the APDA.
Similarly, another strong stalwart of one of the main political parties too in the state has also poured out his heart that the way and manner the former leaders of their party were hell-bent on imposing their children on everyone in the party has infuriated the majority of them who have been faithful financiers of the party from the very beginning. According to the revelation, the party stalwart threatened that nothing less than three quarter (3/4) of the leaders who brought so many victories to the party in the state in the time past were already on their way to joining the APDA, the party which they have been observing as the only platform that can accommodate them peacefully.
According to the information from these two groups of politicians, their intention was never to come and hijack the APDA party structures and undermine the sacrifices of the original members of the party who have worked so hard to bring the party to it’s current enviable state, but to proof a point to their respective former political parties in the end that it was their influence that got the parties victories in the past and never the platform.
So, if the prevailing traffic at the national office of the APDA is anything to go by and a definition of a political party that’s incrementally taking giant steps and exuding an irresistible perfume strong enough to magnet the caliber of the political leaders who are already queuing up to launch the party into success come November election, then the political intrigues in the state are just beginning.
– Ahmed Usman writes from Ankpa.
