Josef Omorotionmwan: The APC must stop ‘Tako-tako’ politics in Delta

by Josef Omorotionmwan

APC

On election day, members of opposing factions would fight to the polling station but with all the bickering, they would still end up casting their votes for the same candidate. Factions struggle to outwit each other.

We shall be very liberal with the use of names in this essay, except in the very rare case where anonymity would save the subject some embarrassment.

In our political career, we have seen politicians. There are organisers and there are dis-organisers.

Between the spring of 1990 and the winter of 1992, this writer had a wonderful internship under Chief Tony Anenih. Reference here to an internship, as opposed to apprenticeship, is deliberate as I was already a successful politician, having represented the Greater Orhionmwon Federal Constituency as an elected member of the Constituent Assembly, before I met the elder statesman. Those years further sharpened my life.

Anenih inculcated in me the virtues of hard work. In terms of party organisation, he was most effective. A greater workaholic, none could be! He hardly slept.

During the organisation for the late General Shehu Yar’ Adua, we would hold marathon meetings in Port Harcourt lasting from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. the following day; we would be in Uyo in the present Akwa Ibom State at 10 a.m. to begin another meeting that would last far into the night.

Yet, we would be in Warri for another meeting that would start at 10 p.m. and last till 5 a.m. the following day. In all this, we did not disappoint the people at the home front who were expected in Benin City for another marathon meeting scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.

On occasions, Anenih would abandon the luxury of his healthy cars, hop into my jalopy and say, “Joe, let’s go”.  We were heading for Okhoro Road area or Uptown Ikpoba Hill, to see some of those “Talakawas”, the type some people would never allow into their premises.

This way, Anenih easily agreed with members at the general meeting that there was no reason to see those lowly grassroots people, unknown to those members that he had seen those ones the previous night. In essence, everyone was irreducibly important. His was a policy of separate but equal.

He did not eat seed money. In times of organisation, Anenih would rather add his own money to whatever was brought to ensure victory.

He provided a quick reminder of my late father who was one of the greatest farmers in Isi land of then Benin East Division. My father could give you the biggest tuber of yam but he would not allow you go with the smallest seed yam because in due season, that small seed yam could produce the biggest tubers.

In the ill-fated Third Republic, the meticulous selection of candidates supervised by Chief Anenih, which sometimes lasted all night, produced the fantastic results we saw for the SDP everywhere.

On the debit side, Chief Anenih has a kinsman who is disorganising everything in the opposite direction. To this kinsman, every season is harvesting season. He eats the tuber and the seed yams, oblivious of the coming of any planting season. Give him N100 to organise an event, he would pocket N99 and organise with N1. To him, immediate personal gratification rather than organisational group success is the name of the game. In local parlance, such is called “Tako-tako”.

Enter the late Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido (1963-2013), a man who believed in hard work and commanded tremendous followership wherever he went; a man who on a short notice, moved from the PDP to the DPP to compete for the Delta Central Senatorial seat in the April 2011 election; and in the end, he dusted an adept in political engineering, Chief Amori Ighoyota, securing 102,313 votes to Ighoyota’s 85,365.

Shortly before Ewherido died, he moved to the APC, bringing with him, an enviable asset in tremendous goodwill. All that we have now rubbished, no thanks to Tako-tako master. As it were, Ewherido asked for rain and we gave him a rainbow. We certainly owe him an apology wherever he is.

By way of twisted reasoning, Tako-tako believes that politics is 99 percent inspiration and one percent perspiration. So, between poor or absolute non-preparation and the concessioning of the party’s candidature to the highest bidder, the PDP ran away with 263,024 votes to APC’s miserable 29,077 at the recent by-election for Delta Central Senatorial District.

In our university days, a student was usually quick to say, “I got an ‘A’ in the course” but if the result was otherwise, he would say, “The lecturer gave me a ‘D’”. That explains why the APC must now shout to the high heavens that the election was rigged. Let them tell that to the Marines! Who should have least imagined that the APC might be dead on arrival to the South-South, no thanks to Tako-tako? He still holds the empty chips to his chest and he is using them to ferment pockets of divisiveness everywhere. This essay should serve as the first point of order on him before he finds that he is left alone in that party, the party we all celebrated before its birth!

Divided we stand, united we fall. There could be unity in disunity. We must watch out for this emerging trend in the politics of Nigeria. On election day, members of opposing factions would fight to the polling station but with all the bickering, they would still end up casting their votes for the same candidate. Factions struggle to outwit each other. Immediately after votes are counted, factional heads rush to headquarters to impress on the winner and the party leadership that they were responsible for the outcome.

If morning shows the day and if this started playing out at the Delta Central election, it is also reasonable to expect a national spread of the same phenomenon; with all the in-fighting that now portends imminent danger to the PDP, providing real strength in due season. The APC and other allies must now get serious by clearing imposters off their front line. Otherwise, this is the beginning; this is the end!

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Read this article in the Vanguard Newspapers
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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