One important lesson for leaders of the All Progressives Congress to learn from the governorship election in Ekiti State is that there is a very thin line between policy and politics. Renowned political scientist, David Easton, gave a very lucid definition of politics as: “The authoritative allocation of values in a society.” Policy on the other hand is defined broadly as a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by a government, party, business or individual.
Whereas politics is the process through which political actors get into public office, policy is what political actors do when they get to public office. Therefore, politics and policy are two sides of the same coin. And more often than not, there is a clash between politics and policy in the life of any administration. A politician might have his or her policy direction correctly and still lose re-election if the politics is wobbly. This is the thesis that the Ekiti State election provides.
That is why it is commendable that the APC leadership has initiated some peace moves and it is also good that the reconciliation committee in Ogun and Oyo States is headed by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a founding member of the APC. It is clear that the APC did not lose the election in Ekiti State on account of under-performance by the incumbent administration. What went wrong was the way the administration played its politics.
Abubakar, with his vast network and political experience, will do a lot to help reposition the APC and mend the cracking walls within the party. His intervention to quell the impeachment plot against the Adamawa State Governor, Alhaji Murtala Nyako, particularly shows that Abubakar is a deft politician who knows where to make a fix whenever the political engine becomes overheated.
The two states in the South West where the APC engine is under a serious overheat are Oyo and Ogun. In the case of Oyo State, speculation is rife that the two APC senators – Ayo Adeseun and Femi Lanlehin – are already on their way out of the APC to join the Peoples Democratic Party and Accord party respectively. In Ogun State, the no-love-lost relationship between Governor Ibikunle Amosun and former governor Olusegun Osoba is posing a huge threat to the unity and strength of the APC in the state.
Obviously, Abubakar has a huge job to do in these two states. It is difficult for a political party to win in a governorship election when senior members of the party in the state are not united.
In the Ekiti State episode, whereas the APC got not less than 220,000 registered members during the recently concluded membership registration exercise, that the party ended up with a little more than 120,000 votes in the governorship election is a clear indication that almost 50 per cent of party members boycotted the election. The APC learnt a tough lesson from Ekiti State and it doesn’t have to wait for too long before it mends the faults in its own house.
But it must be known to leaders of the party that a major component of allowing reconciliation in the party is giving room for internal democracy in the party. The idea that state governors are automatic leaders of the party is an idea borrowed from the PDP and it is an idea that stifles the principle of internal democracy in a political party system.
Abubakar is a strong advocate of internal democracy and he has also been a victim of arbitrariness in a party system. He knows where the shoe pinches.
Balogun wrote from Ibafo, Ogun State through babajidebalogun82@yahoo.com.
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