On December 13, General Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) for the 2011 poll and also chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees inaugurated a renewal committee meant to embark on a membership drive targeting four million Nigerians – with Nasir el-Rufai as chairman. While the party’s leadership has admitted having some internal problems, SHUAIB SHUAIB looks at other issues raised and obstacles the committee could encounter along the way.
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The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) is a two-year old political party; yet it has on several occasions come close to pressing the self-destruct button. In those two years, a whole lot has happened and in the words of its national chairman: “We came out, a newly registered party with so much good will and public support. We challenged the existing order even as we were making all efforts to establish a robust political structure nationwide. Being a young party that was compelled by circumstances to contest elections within 10 months of its registration, the CPC naturally had to face challenges.
“We were saddled with conflicts, litigations and even outright sabotage and anti-party activities during the election. With the PDP plainly waging a war on our party, our situation remained precarious, to say the least. We have witnessed gross misconduct, outright disregard for party rules and constitution. A number of party members have also decamped to our major opponents, giving us reason to believe they were most likely fifth columnists all along deliberately deployed to CPC to destabilize the party. To those people, I say good riddance.”
The party is now seeking to turn a leaf with the inauguration of a renewal committee to be headed by former FCT Minster, Nasir el-Rufai. The committee is meant to chart a new way forward and more importantly, bring aggrieved members back into the fold. But some of those aggrieved have already dismissed the task of the committee as a futile exercise. A former national publicity secretary of the party, Dennis Aghanya, who along with the party’s first national chairman, Rufai Hanga, have carved out a faction for themselves believing the inauguration is nothing but a jamboree and an exercise in futility. Aghanya said: “As long as the root cause of the crisis in the party is not addressed by the people who are in the best position to do so, no amount of steps towards repositioning the party would yield any positive result. What they are trying to do is to use the appointment of prominent party members into such a committee to appease them and get them confused from seeing the realities on ground. The root of the matter is that there was no convention that purportedly ushered in a new NEC as being touted by Tony Momoh and his NEC because the process that brought them in was flawed with violations of the party’s constitution, the electoral guidelines for the convention as formulated by our NEC.”
In inaugurating the committee, these were some of the issues that its Board of Trustees chairman, Gen Muhammadu Buhari brought up. While emphasizing that the renewal committee has to focus on rebranding and repositioning the party into a highly effective and efficient political organization using the constitutionally entrenched structures of the party to achieve its goals, Buhari said: “According to the Electoral Act, the party had to go through four fundamental aspects of the law to qualify for, to participate in the general elections. First of all, it had to get registered; secondly, to conduct congresses; thirdly to conduct a convention and fourthly, to conduct primaries and then go into the election.
“You know what happened in your constituencies. In fact, you are supposed to know better than myself, what happened. Those four fundamental things, registration, congresses, convention and primaries are supposed to be done once and for all. How many times did we do them in the CPC, in the respective states? We have in the CPC, a situation where members in the same constituency took each other to court. Members of the CPC took the party to court. The CPC itself is in court from the house of assembly to the presidency.
“And then you know the position of the judiciary constitutionally. If you feel that I have not been talking, it is because of these two aspects. The inter-party and the intra-party judicial squabbles do not allow me to speak publicly. Which side should I take? And the judiciary, whatever is before them, you dare not say anything about it for good or for ill, unless you want to be permanently in trouble with the judiciary. I do not think I am permanently in trouble with the judiciary, but I have been in court for 50 months between 2003 and December 12, 2008.”
The problems of the party however, go beyond the internal squabbles. At present the party revolves around the person of Buhari, without whom there is no CPC. It has been reported over and over again that CPC has no party structure but instead thrives on the integrity of Gen Buhari which a number of commentators have said, can only take you so far in Nigerian politics. Even prominent party members, at every opportunity testify to what the driving force of the CPC is.
At the inauguration of the renewal committee, the vice presidential candidate of the party in the last election, Pastor Tunde Bakare said, “I joined politics because Gen Buhari asked me to. No other person in Nigeria could have done that. I believe in his integrity, his honesty, his dedication to the cause of Nigeria. And I trust that sooner than later, it will be clear to all Nigerians who were robbed of the opportunity of the great service he is still able to render to our nation.
“I remember pressmen challenging me when I spoke about Gen Buhari in the open. I said I have been privileged to serve with leaders. As an active legal practitioner, I served with Chief Rotimi Williams and Chief Gani Faweyemi of blessed memory. As a young pastor, I served with Brother Kumuyi and Pastor Adeboye. And in all life, while serving with men I have not found any other person, when it comes to integrity, better than Gen Buhari. I stand by those words, the dead cannot challenge me and the living cannot dare. I trust that we value what we have and we leverage on it to rescue Nigeria.”
Nasir el-Rufai who is the chairman of the renewal committee believes the party should take advantage of Buhari’s integrity and institutionalize the popularity of the former military ruler in the party. El-Rufai has also had to respond to allegations that the renewal committee is more about hijacking the party for his own personal ambition in 2015. Dennis Aghanya said:
“In as much as we respect el-Rufai as a man of honour, rumors are already making round that he is trying to hijack our party through the back in preparation for his presidential? ambition come 2015.”
In response to the allegation, el-Rufai said, “I have never had any political ambition. My job is to build the party. Personal ambition always comes in the way of building institutions. If you look at my record in public service, I have never had personal ambitions or lobbied for a job. I have always been called and given difficult assignments to do and this is the third one that I hope to discharge of.” El-Rufai went on to observe on the structure and alleged hijacking of the party:? “What is there to hijack? Right now, the party consists of Gen Buhari and nothing else. It is when we? build a party that those that want to hijack it can come and hijack and they are free to come and hijack as long as they hijack it for the purposes of serving Nigerians, promoting social justice and equal opportunity for all.
“We do not care who hijacks what we build. But right now, there is nothing to hijack because there is nothing there except the integrity and profile of Gen Buhari and a few of the leaders. Those that claim to be founders of the party should come and tell us who the founders are? This party is Gen. Buhari and nothing more. Until it is built and his popularity is institutionalized into the party, all those that are making noise about hijacking are agents of the PDP to bring disaffection into the party.”
The CPC has been known to have a problem of funding. It is governing only one state and the experiences of the former governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa with the Democratic People’s Party and that of Orji Uzor Kalu of the Progressive People’s Alliance have shown that a handful of individuals cannot fund a party and successfully sustain it.
While some analysts have suggested that even the political profile of the former governor of Lagos, Ahmed Tinubu and his ACN will suffer a set back if all the monthly privileges and lucrative contracts were suddenly cut off.
El-Rufai however, has a different model of how a political party should be funded and it is not what is prevalent in today’s Nigeria. He said: “In the past, in the sixties and seventies, parties were funded by members of the party. People do not join political parties to get paid by the party. This is the PDP system of patronage and distribution. The Action Group and NEPU were funded by members paying two pennies, three pennies that was how the operations of the party were funded. If you have a million members and each one of them gives N1,000, that is N1 billion for the party.
“That is how parties should be funded, not to go to the treasury and take money and use that to fund a party, it is criminal. It is unconstitutional and it is wrong. It is the PDP system that has made this the way of life. We have many Nigerians that are sympathetic to the CPC and we are hoping that those Nigerians care enough about the future of their country to actually be members of the party and pay a modest subscription to keep the party going. We do not intend to operate a party in which the treasury will be looted to keep the party going. That is not our type of politics; that is PDP type of politics.”