APC National Chairman and Imperative of Right Choice

President Muhammadu Buhari and governors under the aegis of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday January 22, 2022 rose from a consultative meeting and finally laid to rest speculations about zoning of the party’s national offices. By a simple play of musical chairs, the APC leaders announced they would be swapping roles between the North and South. Thus, offices in the National Working Committee hitherto occupied by northerners in the last eight years will shift to southerners.
It was a welcome development especially as it disappointed those who have gone to town in recent times crowing about the imminent disintegration of the ruling party over an alleged inability of its leaders to agree on anything. Still, it is not yet uhuru. The APC must now sit down and transform this record accord into election-winning strategy by making sure that each post goes where it will garner the most electoral benefits for her given existing power dynamics in the Nigerian political space in the build-up to the 2023 general elections.
This is only possible by a clear-headed SWOT analysis that is based on the reality on ground in each geopolitical zone within the context of the overall national balance of power between the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led opposition. It goes without saying now that where the party sends the position of National Chairman within the North to which it has been micro-zoned is of utmost importance.
To my thinking, the most compelling criteria for the choice of the next APC National Chairman from Northern Nigeria should be based on at least five fundamental factors, namely current strength of the party in the selected zone, the candidate’s antecedence, his acceptance within the party, his national diversity rating, political experience and overall state of health. We will now examine the following:
The current strength of the APC in the state from which he or she will emerge and the strategic imperative of using the office to garner strength where the party is relatively weak; the candidate’s leadership persona translated in terms of charisma, persuasiveness, acceptability within the party, capacity to rally members using party structures as well as in-depth knowledge of party processes and procedures; the proven national influence and network of the individual, especially capacity to quickly feel the political pulse of a situation and respond constructively or of a constituency and reach across diverse political stakes and platforms for a resolution; cognate experience in high political leadership, with clear line of sight, ie, hindsight to recognise common pitfalls or advantages and evolve, and political foresight to drive for success while avoiding the inevitable rabbit holes that enthrall and distract an inexperienced leader and; strong mental and physical fitness for, among other reasons, hitting the ground running on the inevitable tour of reconciliation across the 36 states and the FCT and going through the rigors of leading a presidential campaign across the length and breadth of the country so soon after his emergence.
Once the above five factors are accounted for, and in order to make sure no geopolitical zone is marginalized or excluded, or feels so, the APC must go further to align them with the political considerations that will play out in 2023. Many of such considerations are already very visible right now and proving to be extremely divisive within both the governing party and even pretenders to the throne, such as the PDP.
For instance, the question of where the next presidential candidate of the APC comes from will take bearing from where her next national chairman emerges from. It is a fact that out of the three geopolitical zones in the North, only the North Central has not enjoyed any stint in the seat of power in a democracy since independence in 1960, either as President or Vice President, and that includes in this fourth republic.
The people of the North Central have recently risen in unison against what they call the near default zoning of the national chairmanship of ruling political parties to them once it is the turn of the North while the other two geopolitical zones (GPZs) rotate and savour the two highest jobs. There is now a groundswell of support for such bodies as the North Central Renaissance Movement (NCRM) which campaigns to withdraw the zone’s support from any party that dumps the chairmanship on them again on the journey to 2023. Of course, one cannot blame the people of the zone. The premise is that parties send their national chairmanship position to the zone they want to exclude, ab initio, from the presidential race, and a people is entitled, not only to wonder why they must always be the ones to get the short end of that stick but to reject it as the pendulum starts to oscillate towards them again.
To further underlay their seriousness on this matter the region, which hosts the Federal Capital Territory, has promised to rally with their votes to the party which puts one of them on the ballot for the Presidency. As all political parties know, the North Central owns the second largest voting turnout among Nigeria’s geopolitical zones, going by the 2019 presidential elections. Thus, their threat or discontent on this matter of a national chairman should not be trifled with, at least not by the APC to which they gave nearly half a million more votes in 2019 than they gave the PDP.

Moreover, if INEC is to be believed, electoral votes have become too organic and too technical to be manipulated on any scale large enough to affect electoral outcomes. With the barrage of citizen advocates and groups springing up all over the region around this cause, the APC must not dismiss their threats lightly or it may end up discovering that they were serious the hard way. In fact, it would be most unwise for the party to toy with the disenchantment of a zone where five APC states effectively encircle the PDP’s sole outpost.

Wide-ranging logic and strategy, not sentiments, are therefore the best tools to use in choosing a national chairman for the APC that will be acceptable to all the differing positions. While 2023 presidential permutations alone may not be the most compelling argument for where its national chairman should come from, it should not be lost on the APC that this is a strong factor that will affect voting patterns in the 2023 Presidential race.

I hope the APC leadership right up to the President is serious about winning elections and not just playing to the shifting galleries of parochial opinions. If they are, they will take this free counsel to heart. If not, the party might as well start now to pack her load out of Aso Rock Presidential Villa.
Abubakar Kago writes from ABU Zaria, Kaduna State.

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