Anybody who had watched the APC Caucus meeting held in Abuja last Monday on television, would think that the people who spoke at that meeting belonged to some opposition political parties, not knowing that they were all members of the political party in government.
Any such a person would earnestly pray that the crop of people who currently preside over the affairs of the ruling party in Nigeria should never again be given the opportunity to come close to any government in the country.
Almost everybody who spoke at that APC Caucus meeting were full of disappointments, beginning from the party chairman himself, Adams Oshiomole, who virtually had accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of working for the opposition, to President Muhammadu Buhari, who accused the electoral body of incompetence, and issued a shoot-on-sight order on ballot box snatchers, without telling us what would happen to those who disfigure the card readers, or those who manipulate figures at collation centres.
Instead of accepting responsibility for their failure, apologize to Nigerians and the international community for the pains and inconveniences they had inflicted on them, and then plead for their forgiveness, the APC members resorted to their usual blame games.
The vituperations against INEC by the APC top notchers over the aborted February 16 Presidential and National Assembly elections, gave us the impression that the party in power was never charge, or that it had something up its sleeves, but which had failed to materialize.
How would a political party like the APC that is in power be behaving as if it was in opposition? How would they be deriding, criticizing and castigating the very institution which they had set up, and which is under their firm control? Why can’t the APC for once accept responsibility? Why always play the ostrich?
Are the APC members, by their actions, not trying to erode on the confidence, the credibility of the electoral umpire, so that Nigerians, and even the international community, would question whatever would be the outcome of the election exercise?
In theory, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is an independent body, and that the government does not interfere in its day to day operations, but we us know that some agencies of government exercises oversight controls over the electoral body, so that if there are lapses in any of its operations, the government takes a huge chunk of the blame.
Each time you try to challenge the APC led federal government for failing to perform, they will blame it on the 16 years of PDP misrule. They will tell you that the problem they inherited was so enormous that they found it difficult to perform. A bad workman, they say, always quarrels with his tools.
Whatever embarrassments Nigerians and the international community had suffered as a result of the last minute postponement of elections last Saturday, should be squarely laid on the feet of the political party in power in Nigeria for failing to do what it was supposed to do.
