Michael Orodare: The opposition merger is for itself, not for the people (Y! Politico)

by Michael Orodare

APC

There is no doubt in the fact that we need a strong and viable opposition party to keep the ruling party on its toes, but this present APC cannot remedy Nigeria woes, NO, it can’t…

First of all, let me congratulate members of some opposition parties, for the successful ‘christening’ of their new baby, the All Progressive Congress (APC). In my last piece, I posited that the proposed Mega-Party by some opposition parties might fail before conception. Last week the opposition parties finally announced to the world the name of their party, ‘which will give the PDP a run for its popularity and its money.’

You are welcome!

But like I stated in the last piece, the antecedents of the personalities involved in this merger have not proven to us that they are people who can be entrusted with a local government mandate, and we are not ignorant of the ‘doom’ which might befall the nation if they lay their hands on power at the central.

READ: Michael Orodare: Mega Party: For who? Another story again (Y! Politico)

The APC is just a name, with same old people, the same recycled leaders, many of whom were formerly at the front and second row in the PDP we are now rejecting, now that they’ve found a new ‘bride’ they are now  ‘progressives.’ Lai Mohammed was swift to announce to us that many of their likes left in the PDP are still coming to APC, balderdash! If progressivism is by the name of a party, then the likes of Lawrence Anini and the Biblical criminal who was granted freedom in the stead of Jesus Christ would be a progressive by identifying with the APC.

Progressivism as rightly defined by Governor Olusegun Mimiko should be “the instrumentality of government to make choices on behalf of the majority of our people. Being progressive means democratisation of access to fundamentals of good living.” But this is an irony among some of these political parties proclaiming themselves as ‘progressives.’

In the merger where we have an inconsistent ACN; when it was AD in 2003, we saw it as one of the viable opposition party then, until its National Chairman, Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, swiftly grabbed an appointment as a Special Adviser to former President Olusegun Obasanjo after the 2003 general elections. Why we are still trying to erase that from our memory, in 2011 again, when Mallam Nuhu Ribadu was its Presidential flag bearer, many young Nigerians decided to identify with one of their own, they thought the time has come for a man like one of them to go make the change we’ve been yearning for, but we were disappointed again by the party’s inconsistency, Ribadu was traded for ‘cool’ billions of naira. For the ACN, when money is involved, integrity is thrown into the thin air.

We also have in the merger, a crisis-ridden APGA, a faction in the party has also declared that it’s not part of the merger by distancing itself from the position of one of its governors, Rochas Okorocha of Imo state. the National Chairman, Victor Umeh was also sacked last week by an Enugu court, the party is now disjointed. So who is fronting the merger talk for APGA?

And then we have the ANPP which ‘betrayed’ Buhari at the point of need after the 2007 Presidential election.

The CPC, which hopes to fully explore benefits of the merger to ride to power, should be told to look well before it leaps into being deceived that a merger has truly come.

As the APC stands today, none of the political parties involved in the merger have a pinch of trust in each other. Any good observer would definitely know that the journey of the APC is a journey to nowhere, it’s just another ploy to seek undue attention for a bumper negotiation in 2015, as they did in 2011. Some of the political parties involved, like the ACN is already being rejected in the Southwest where it currently hold sway, hence its quests for stronger force to safe itself of the impending humiliation and rejection from the electorates in the 2015 general elections.

There is no doubt in the fact that we need a strong and viable opposition party to keep the ruling party on its toes, but this present APC cannot remedy Nigeria woes, NO, it can’t, the problem with Nigeria, is in the circle of recycled leaders, the self-proclaimed ‘messiahs,’ the ‘pseudo-progressives’ who have refused to leave the political terrain for the younger generation who can do it better. They are just like the Biblical Jonah who should be thrown off the ship to still the storm ravaging our nation.

They’ve been running the show for decades without feasible results, and this is one of the reasons why we are at this stage crawling as a nation. It’s high time members of these old generation who have been occupying the first and second rows in the political terrain made way for those occupying the back row – the younger generation. It’s time for a generation shift, not a new party without ideology, formed to drive personal interest.

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Michael Olanrewaju Orodare has worked in the Office of the Chief Press Secretary to the Ondo State Governor as a Media Assistant. He has garnered experience writing in the The Nation Newspaper working with the paper’s Sunday Desk. He blogs at www.michaelorodare.blogspot.com and tweets from @MichaelOrodare

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

One comment

  1. Thank you for this article. We need the enlightened younger generation in politics who are not blinded by religious bigotry and tribalism. With these old men trying to seize power, Nigeria might be better off as more than one country.

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