Chief Okoi Obono-Obla
By Akpan David, Calabar
The former personal assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on prosecution, Chief Okoi Obono-Obla has said that the All Progressives Congress lacks focus and strong leadership.
He has described the leaders of the national ruling party as selfish and people who strive on fractionalisation, adding that seven years after its formation it has no credible register of its members.
As a step forward by the new officers that would be elected at its forthcoming national Congress, membership must be issued, so that each member is issued with ID card from ward level for easy electoral transaction.
This lack of membership base, he said, has characterised the lawlessness, rancour and bitterness noticed in the party during election.
In a public statement titled
‘APC in Need of Rebranding’, the former chairman of presidential investigation panel on recovery of public properties who was allegedly relieved of his appointment on suspicion of corruption, said. “The APC has not been blessed with strong leadership since its inception. This has seen the fortunes of the party progressively declining.
“The party leaders and members strove on selfishness and fractionalization. It must bring together and make an effort to coalesce all the tendencies within the party into one strong united family.”
He said the party has been bedeviled by assorted and needless issues.
Obono-Obla also decried the system of levying political appointees and elected political officials to fund the party or relying on largesse from wealthy leaders of the party as unwholesome, adding “it is not healthy and responsible for some leaders of the party but engenders corruption.”
He was worried that the party has abandoned the ideals and philosophy of its founding leaders as a social-democratic party devoted to the advancement of the principles of democracy.
According to him, the party is now “a coalition of opportunists and political desperadoes who want to use all inferior methods to win elections, get into office, and appropriate public wealth for themselves and their coterie of associates to the detriment of the general populace.”
He said the current state of APC is worrisome and predicted that, “If the APC fails to reform, rebrand and reposition itself, it will send a message of gloom to Nigerians and will make selling the party in the next general election a daunting task.”
