By Hon. Chief Evance Ochuko Ivwurie
“Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less,” says John Maxwell. In political context, public acceptance of a political party grows from an aggregate positive influence of its leaders over time. The fear of one leader’s carefully grown grassroots political influence will not confer unmerited leadership influence on others who do not grow theirs to enrich the leadership space to the benefit of their party and society in general.
The foregoing is said in respect of recent concerns happening in the Delta State APC where the persistent targeting of one man who has done so much to deepen the political leadership capabilities and acceptability of the APC in Delta State is gradually assuming the dimension of an irritating norm. That man is the immediate past Deputy President of the Senate, Obarisi Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, CFR. Somehow, in it all, The Obarisi remains admirably calm. Such is the way of purpose-driven leaders whose worth are best expressed in concrete actions and outcomes rather than empty words that sometimes tend to undermine unity of purpose and great visions.
On September 3, 2024, the 21-member Olorogun O’tega Emerhor-led Reconciliation Committee was empaneled. This committee was tasked with identifying and reconciling leaders and members of the Delta APC who may have been aggrieved for different reasons after the 2023 general elections. What then did this Committee achieve?
By its own report (signed by only 12 of its 21 members), the Committee having spent 4 months and about N32 Million, could not name ANY leaders or members of the party who were previously at loggerheads that it reconciled. NONE! Rather the Emerhor O’tega Committee has ended up creating more feuds, conflicts and hostilities in the APC Delta State.
At best, the report says the Committee only “visited” some people, individually. Nothing more. It did not bring people together. In other words, the Olorogun Emerhor Committee admittedly failed fantastically and quite curiously in not achieving its single, narrow “RECONCILIATION” purpose. Time and money wasted! This is just unbelievable.
Having failed with regard to its publicly declared simple purpose of reconciling aggrieved people, the committee unilaterally defined a new power-grabbing role for itself. That role is to squarely assault the APC’s Constitution. That assault is manifest in both its own very report and the brazen coup against the Congress-elected leadership and orderly management of the party (on the day the report was supposedly presented).
By the report, the orchestra directors of the Emerhor Committee wish to impose an extra-constitutional control mechanism on the Delta APC under the pretext of a so-called ‘Leadership Council’. And somehow, they think that this is something true democrats and deft managers of political parties should applaud. A Council clearly designed to usurp and dwarf congress-elected executives of the party at all levels in Delta State. A Council of dictators. A Council that will usurp the constitutional powers of the grassroots of the party during congresses and primaries in the election of party executives and candidates, respectively. A form of all-powerful, all-knowing Russian-style “cult of the individual” that Joseph Stalin’s warned the world about years ago. A Council fashioned after the dictatorship of the Communist Party of China. A conclave of opportunists and slave masters who do not win elections in their very polling units but bent on dictating who gets what, when and how in the party. A wicked prescription to make members of the party permanent slaves in their own party!
The Emerhor Committee should know that its abhorrent suggestion is not grounded in the party’s constitution or law yet they don’t care about its dangerous, ominous and sweeping implications. And so they continue to irritate a great majority of the members of the party who are for strict adherence to constitutional principles in the affairs of the party. At least they just saw the strong counter response from the entire party in the failed coup to impose a constitutionally unfit element on the party as its interim chair in the continuing absence of Engr. Omeni Sobotie who is recovering but still undeniably too unwell to function even minimally as a State Chair of a vibrant party.
Yes, in its first attempt to bulldoze its way through with the now unveiled dangerous extra-constitutional prescription for only the Delta State APC (in the entire country), the Emerhor Committee chose to disrupt the existing proper and constitutional functioning of the State Executive Committee of APC in Delta State by helping to hastily elevate a Senatorial Vice Chairman of the party who could not win an election in his polling unit over and above the Deputy State Chairman of the party who has state-wide jurisdictional authority and responsibilities. This the Committee did because it was shopping for pliant and pliable characters who would easily do its bidding rather than respect the party’s established constitutional order. It was all trade by barter.
The Emerhor Committee’s report is nothing but an absolute constitutional aberration and a prescription for political leadership chaos and it should be treated as such with a decent burial in a dustbin. Rather than sticking to its terms of reference, the committee came all out to undermine the settled constitutional order in the management of the party in Delta State. That should not be countenanced at all. Doing otherwise will create a ripple effect across other chapters of the party in the country. That is too dangerous to even consider.
Wholly failing to reconcile supposed feuding members of the party and not armed with the requisite capacity to task Delta APC’s leaders across the board to positively grow their influence, it chose to go on a wild goose chase by trying to attack Senator Omo-Agege’s consolidated and growing leadership influence. That is a concerning disservice to the party and Deltans whose growing confidence in the APC must be respected and sustained.
Let this serve as a caveat against the creepy attempt to undermine APC’s constitutional framework in Delta State.
Hon. Chief Evance Ochuko Ivwurie
