Ahmad Sajoh on APC Crisis (I)
Comrade Ahmad I Sajoh Saturday, visited the Periscope Global Yola office. Newsmen sought for his take on the crisis rocking the major opposition party in Adamawa state that the chronic-know-only-insult, as dogs of war, feeding from the support of certain leadership as alleged, would want to degenerate the motto and symbol of the party from broom to cutlass for doom.
Political pundits wondered how the unpatriotic party members would sharpen their cutlass simply to break the broom, while Sajoh pointed out the possibility of the Judas within the party, working against and praying for negative judgment, if their candidate, however unpopular, would not be made to fly the party’s governorship flag.
Sajoh has lambasted and lampooned, while lamenting the leadership inefficiency and ineffectiveness on the side of the national vice chairman northeast of the party, whom Hon Sunny Moniedafe earlier suggested for him to resign should he have the vestige of decency.
Sajoh noticed excessive division within the APC, rancorous and excessive use of foul language, uncultured people picking words from the pit of gutters to throw at each other, which he said is totally unhealthy and far from being in the interest of anybody and an anathema to participatory democracy, the division is in such a way that it is becoming difficult for the possibility of reconciliation because people have taken extreme positions. “It’s no longer about division, it’s about hate. It’s about not wanting people to understand what’s going on.
“But most importantly, I think we also have infantile leadership within the APC. I must confess that one of the most unfortunate things to APC in Adamawa state is the position that is being taken by the national vice chairman northeast.
“Leaders are supposed to rise on the high pedestal of moral rectitude. Leaders are supposed to be unifiers. Leaders are supposed to be people that bring people together. Leaders are supposed to be the final bus stop for whatever rancorous situation happening in the system.
“But here we have a leadership that is encouraging divisiveness, encouraging animosity, based on unmanaged, uncontrolled unconscious bias, where lies the role of leadership in creating harmony when leaders take position?
“I want to call on the national vice chairman northeast to rethink his position; to begin to be the moral voice of APC in the northeast and in Adamawa state.
“He doesn’t have a very good record, so he should accept his failure.
“The first national vice chairman APC, gave us a governor, convinced a governor to leave PDP and become an APC governor. The second one helped us to win an election and installed a governor.
“Since he became the national vice chairman northeast we lost governorship, we lost two senators, we lost 5 of the 8 House of Representatives, we lost the majority we had in the House of Assembly.
“And because we lost the governorship, we lost the entire 21 local government chairmen, we lost the 226 Counselors. That is not a good record upon which a leader should be proud of.
“What I should have expected him to do is call for unity in the party so that we can recapture the state and regain our position as the leading political party in Adamawa state.
“But as things are, I think he’s not getting it right. Hiring the willing jobless scallywags who have taken a vocation in insulting whoever tells him the truth in the media is not the best way to ensure that things go right.
“This does not however change the fact that his leadership has not added much value to the APC in Adamawa state.
“I want to caution that in 2019, our divisiveness was not handled properly and we lost the governorship. Now we’re in 2023, we’re going to lose again if we do not moderate our positions as a political party.
“Secondly, we must remember that whatever we’re doing is not for ourselves, I know there are some political entrepreneurs, they get money, they get favours, they don’t care about what happens to the ordinary people who look up to the APC. Therefore, we should for the sake of God begin to think about ordinary people.
“People are losing confidence in us as leaders. We must regain that confidence and the only way to achieve this, is for us as leaders to begin to conduct ourselves in the manner that engenders confidence in our people.
“I think the national secretariat of APC has a role to play. The fact that one of them, the national vice chairman northeast is taking direct responsibility for some of the conflicts, by issuing statements that are unbecoming of the person that holds a national position and that everybody thinks that is the voice of a national secretariat and if the national secretariat could for any reason take side in the conflict of this nature between her own children, I think it’s not good and I don’t think the national secretariat is taking this kind of position. If the national secretariat understands that could spiral across the country, when the crisis of Damagum and Kugama started in Adamawa, we told them that this could snowball to crisis that could engulf the country, they didn’t believe us but when it resulted in a new PDP and then the New PDP most of them branched over and went to APC and PDP suffered defeat, then they realized that an injury to a part is an injury to a whole.
“Therefore, the national secretariat should come in and address the challenges by calling all the conflicting parties to order .
“The National Vice Chairman has taken a position, and the state party leadership has lined up behind him but that should not be the case. Leadership is supposed to be neutral, when it comes to the interest of their members, whatever that interest is. I think that is where I’m appealing to the national secretariat to step in with mutual and central neutrality.
“I hate to contemplate, think and believe that there are some political merchants and entrepreneurs that are selling the APC to the PDP. There’s that likelihood, because we see that there are some members of the APC who have since dropped their brooms and are picking a cutlass and changing our peaceful nature to a warring nature. I think we must begin to look at it beyond just what is happening.
“We believe very sincerely that there is a connection between those who worked very hard to scuttle the success of the APC in 2019 and those who are working very hard to scuttle the APC in 2023.
“And we believe very sincerely that because people don’t do things for nothing, there are probably some, one or two peculiar reasons they are doing this and it is unfortunate. We are however hopeful they would not succeed this time around.