Abeokuta, Nigeria
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| Apagun |
In a virtual interview with the crew of HOTNEWS Naija, Apagun Olaolu Samuel bared his mind on the strange development in the Labour Party, the systemic administrative coup through harmonization process after the convention held at Umuahia ratified and validated the National Working Committee, all congresses and revoking all congresses conducted by Abure as witnessed by INEC. What is happening now is a symptom of a diseased, strangulated and a choked dying party
Democracy dies not with a bang, but with the quiet stroke of a pen replacing what the people have already chosen. What we are witnessing in the actions of the National Working Committee is not party administration. It is the deliberate erasure of due process and the substitution of the will of the people with the convenience of a few.
Congresses were held. Delegates gathered. INEC officials monitored and certified the process. The DSS and the Nigerian Police were present as witnesses to ensure order and legality. The results were clear, the elected State Working Committee members emerged through a process recognized by law and witnessed by the state itself.
Yet now, names are being swapped. Individuals who never contested, never participated, never faced the scrutiny of a congress, some were not even a registered member of the party by the day of the Congress are being imposed on structures they did not build, a structure built by our struggles with evidences by the total dominance across the twenty local government. This is not reconciliation. This is substitution. It tells every party member that your vote, your participation, and your sacrifice mean nothing if you are not favored by the power drunken leaders.
When a party leadership can override legally conducted congresses and replace elected officials with handpicked loyalists, it sets a dangerous precedent. Today it is the State Working Committee. Tomorrow it will be candidate selection, then the congresses themselves, until the entire structure becomes a mere extension of one office.
The danger is not just to one state or one chapter. The danger is to the very idea that internal democracy matters. If the rules can be bent at will, then no member is safe, and no process is sacred. Apathy grows where trust dies. And a political party without the trust of its members is a shell waiting to collapse.
History is clear on this: organizations that abandon their own rules to reward convenience over legitimacy do not survive the storm. They may hold power for a season, and a reason best known to their sponsors, but they lose the moral authority to lead. The rank and file see it. The public sees it. And when the next election comes, that betrayal is remembered.
The looming doom is not from an external enemy. It is from within, from the choice to value control over credibility, and imposition over process. If this path continues, we will not need an opposition to defeat us. We will have done it to ourselves.
The question before the National Working Committee is simple: will you uphold the congresses you supervised and conducted through the committee constituted by your office with their report? Will you substitute an INEC observed, monitored and supervised Congress with their full report transmitted to the INEC headquarters Abuja, where eight officers of the EPM department were present with two coming from national headquarters? Or will you bury them for the sake of expediency? The answer will determine whether the party survives as a democratic institution or becomes another cautionary tale of self-sabotage.
What do you think would be the most effective way for party members to push back against this kind of replacement without tearing the party apart? When a neighbour eats an infected garden eggs with pleasure without being cautioned, by the time he is unable to sleep, don't you think deep sleep might be eroded from you also?
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