Abiodun Salau

“The number one cause of bankruptcy is bad strategy.”
-Rich Horwath (Three Common Mistakes in Strategic Planning)

Quite a number of untidy campaign strategies and planning deployed since the commencement of electioneering ahead of the November 21 governorship poll in Kogi State appear to have gone sour for the All Progressives Congress, APC, and its candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu.
Notable among others, are the decision to withhold bailout funds due to Kogi State, Audu’s choice of running mate and the defection of Jibrin Isah, a.k.a. Echocho. Too many wrong calculations by the APC egg heads in Abuja and at Kogi State, have turned out to be monumental mistakes which, rather than work for the party are working against it.
Beyond his famous infrastructural feats, sweet mouthed to prodigal fullness, matters arising in the campaigns, lately, weigh in largely on the serial faux pas, which, unfortunately, may work against Audu. The Eid-el-Fitri prayer incident at Ogbonicha, which was Audu’s first outing after his emergence as the APC flag bearer, coalesce with a host of other germane factors to impede, rather than enhance Audu’s chances.
Indeed, the very glaring absence of President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the self-styled APC grand rally in Lokoja, the failed rally in Ajaokuta local government area, and the Kotonkarfe misadventure, viewed against the background of his pathological disrespect for time, for people, for the traditional institution, equally undermine, rather than improve Audu’s political goodwill.
Similarly, Audu’s attack on the person and office of Mr. President, faulting the nomination of James Ocholi, SAN, as Minister, hinged on the presumptuous claim that he was not consulted by the president before Ocholi’s nomination and his vow not to congratulate the minister, is surely less than strategic.
Below are some consequential, strategic errors which may accelerate APC’s self-immolation, ahead of the November 21 governorship election in Kogi State:
Non-Release of Bailout Funds to Kogi Workers…
It is left to be seen how the dehumanising ‘strategy’ to withhold the bailout funds to workers in Kogi State is helping the cause of the APC gubernatorial candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu. The insinuation that APC is at the root of the non-release of bailout funds to Kogi State, a truism authenticated by campaign spokesman, Tom Ohikere is the biggest mistake thought to be a strategy. It started like a rumour, but the growing speculation that Kogi would be denied the bailout funds, thus denying Governor Wada the opportunity of paying outstanding salaries of workers in a way to score cheap political points, is a colossal mistake.
While the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says it has approved the sum of N50 billion as bailout to Kogi State and published same, attributing the delay in the release of the money to other reasons, it is not the business of the Prince Abubakar Audu Campaign Organization, PAACO, to have aligned itself with the non-release of the fund. It is akin to saying ‘Yes, we did it. We told them to withhold the fund. It will not be released now, willy-nilly!’
Ohikere in a vain attempt to rationalize his egregious mistake is alleged to have said Kogi didn’t apply for the funds and that if released now, Wada will steal it. Where APC goofed logically, is failing to state the auspicious time to release the fund! If it will be released after the election, for instance, is it not the same Wada who would superintend over the appropriation? Or, will the payment of workers’ salaries be deferred till the APC candidate wins and resumes office in January 2016? Come to think of it, even if Wada loses the election, he remains governor until January 27, 2016. Is Ohikere implying that the workers’ entitlement and livelihood should be delayed until January next year?
With Ohikere displaying good knowledge and understanding of how the fund could be looted by others, can he and his candidate, former Governor Audu who is standing trial for embezzlement of N11bn Kogi State funds while he was in charge, be trusted with the keys to the vault? Where is the good reasoning here and how strategic to the marketing of his candidate to the anguished workers?
No matter how potent the argument, you are bound to incur the wrath of a group of hungry, battered and earnestly expectant workers, looking them in the face and telling them you are behind the decision to deny them their livelihoods. It is not done. But this is what Kogi APC has just done to itself.
Workers in Kogi know Wada is not in the habit of owing them, so the kite that Wada would not pay them if the fund is released to him cannot fly. Hence, the goal the APC set out to achieve backfired with the one-day warning strike called by labour in Kogi and subsequently called off in sympathy with the state government.
Of course the people of the state know the forces holding on to the bailout fund. It is thus needless to attempt to shift the blame for the delay in the release of the fund on the state government. Better still; the issue of bailout fund should not have been politicized.
Citizen Olu John, in his recent article titled “Hunger Knows No Party”, noted as follows: “This is the time all Kogites must unite to ensure the welfare of our workers are cater for. Salary default is not a political or geographical issue, but the failure of the system. Virtually all the states of the federation are affected by the problem. If any APC group must lecture us on how states can avoid owing workers, we urge them to first offer the advice to Osun, Oyo and Kwara States. Almost all APC states owe workers.
Kogi State is paying one of the most generous salaries in the federation today and state civil servants are only owed a month’s salary. The problem is with the Local Government employees and teachers, hence the need for the bailout to offset the debt.
Kogi State has met all the conditions set for accessing the bailout and we hope the Central Bank of Nigeria will refuse to yield to the antics of politicians who are working against the release of the bailout for political reasons.
The CBN belongs to all Nigerians. It is a national bank and not a political party. The APC having publicly campaigned against the release of the fund at their rallies, is not a good publicity for Buhari and CBN. It tends to dent the good image of the CBN by saying things that will make the Kogi people think CBN is a branch of APC.”
Governor Idris Wada, on Africa Independent Television, sounded believable when he questioned the decision of CBN to include Kogi State on the list of beneficiary states and made public the amount approved.
“So, anyone saying Kogi did not apply for bailout is nothing but a complete liar!”
Choice of Running Mate…
The first problem with very decision to go out of Kogi State to pick a running mate is that, among the vast majority of party men and women based at home in the state, there is simply no such thing as quality or competence. The choice of James Abiodun Faleke, known to have served twice as a council chairman and who is a serving federal legislator in Lagos State has become a dialectical matter. Faleke originally hails from Ekinrin Adde, Ijumu local government area in Kogi West, but he holds a Lagos State certificate of origin. This explains why he was able to serve as a council chairman and currently, as federal legislator representing a constituency in Lagos.
The expediency and propriety of the choice of a “virtual foreigner”, as one heard it with one ear, is ‘strategically’ plotted to woo the APC leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu to deploy his huge war-chest as bailout for a bankrupt PAACO, in exchange for offering Kogi as a platform for Tinubu to extend his political tentacles to the North Central geopolitical zone, using Kogi as in-road. This is akin to a regurgitation of the failed bid to achieve a similar feat through the neighbouring Kwara!
But it turned out a concatenation of bad strategies. Like a fairytale, sequel to Audu’s emergence as the APC flag bearer against all odds, the help of a seer is not needed to fathom that the time of the APC doomsday in Kogi had been concealed from the Faleke strategy. So many things wrong with that strategy: Its novelty colluded with the curiosity of a discombobulated Kogi people left wondering why something of this nature should happen at all, for lack of the kind of sophistication available in the South West which is used to such practices.
There is the perception of an average Kogi person about a possible changing status of the state to a toll paying annex to foreign states and Kogi’s heterogeneous complexity, which makes the introduction of such unusual occurrences to our polity, a subject of suspicion, all combined to rubbish that strategy. Audu’s recent justification of his choice of Faleke in an interview, accentuated, rather than assuaged the wounds of the aggrieved home-based party men and women.
Audu had said inter alia: “I have tried home-based people as my running mates in the past and they all brought disappointment to our team, so I felt I should look out for someone with a wider horizon and one who understands the concept of development and has bundles of experience in same. I got Faleke after a thorough search.”
The choice of Faleke rankles deep among Audu’s erstwhile associates in the APC. Dino Melaye, senator representing Kogi West, is said to be miffed that apart from the fact that he was not taken into confidence by Audu on the matter, Faleke’s emergence is a tacit ploy to upset his (Melaye’s) political fiefdom. Faleke originally hails from Ijumu Local Government Area, where Melaye also comes from. Melaye’s predecessor, Senator Smart Adeyemi, incidentally another Ijumu political heavyweight, who has maintained a distance from the Wada campaign made a surprise appearance at Wada’s rally in Ijumu, early this week, apparently to express his resentment to the emergence of a potential challenger of his political space, in the running mate to Audu.
Faleke’s emergence is also causing fissures in Kogi West which had always been a united political block. Yagba Federal Constituency which is made up of Mopamuro, Yagba East and Yagba West LGAs, consider the Faleke project a brazen attempt to rob them of the deputy governorship, a position they have held through Yomi Awoniyi, since January 27, 2012.

The cosmopolitan Lokoja/Kotonkarfe federal constituency which has serially brought significant numbers to the voting harvest of candidates backed by them in various elections over the years, are also up in arms against Audu and his running mate. They wonder why no consideration was given to their christian sons in Audu’s choice of running mate.

Senator representing Kogi Central, Mohammed Ohiare, has also been quoted as saying Audu will not get the support of his zone, particularly because they were not enlisted on the issue of Audu’s running mate. Ohiare’s position has been amplified by various interest groups in the zone who have wondered why the interests of Bello, Senator Usman Abatemi and Alhaji Abubakar Sanusi, all from Central, who emerged second, third and fourth respectively, at the APC primaries, were not accommodated in Audu’s choice of running mate.


The Echocho Romance…
One other critical aspect of Audu’s failed strategy is his romance with, a frontline governorship aspirant of the PDP, who recently defected to APC. A master stroke calculated to break Wada’s blossoming goodwill. It went sour as soon as it was supposedly perfected. To Audu’s chagrin, the pseudo supporters who were expected to gravitate to APC along with Echocho, opted to stay in the PDP and support Wada. It was no secret that Sunday Karimi, House of Representatives member representing Yagba Fed Constituency and Smart Adeyemi, a former senator representing Kogi West, both worked on the side of Echocho during the PDP primaries. Karimi has since reaffirmed his support for Wada by attending all rallies in the three local government areas he represents thus far, while Adeyemi also joined the campaign train in his Ijumu LGA. To underscore the failure of the strategy of Echocho’s romance, Echocho’s spokesman for six years who was by his side until the end of the PDP primaries, Phrank Shaibu declared allegiance to PDP!

He was immediately appointed Chief Communication Officer to Governor Wada!


www.thisdaylive.com/articles/apc-and-its-strategies-for-kogi-2015/225555/