The reason usually adduced by those who want to justify the near exclusion of the South East zone in the top hierarchy of decision makers in the APC government is that the South East zone of the Party did not contribute to the success of the Party at the polls and therefore not deserving of the spoils of victory. They hinge their argument on the street adage that “only he who works should eat”.
This position is as fallacious and ludicrous as any claim that the defensive line up of a soccer team contribute nothing to the success of the team on the premise that they contribute less goals. The purveyors of this mendacious narrative must have been good students of the notorious Nazi Chief Propagandist, Joseph Goebbels who postulated that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The reality however remains that no matter the sweet aroma of falsehood or its prominence, it dissolves to nothingness the moment it is subjected to fact-check. Goebbels himself acknowledged that “truth is the mortal enemy of the lie”.
It is worrisome that the leadership of the party appear to have encouraged this malignant falsehood by its seeming conspiracy of silence on the matter but more disturbing is the attitude of members of the party from the South East who either for lack of courage or ignorance acquiesced to the false narrative instead of putting the records straight. Unfortunately, because this erroneous claim was left unrefutted, it now assumed the toga of truth and has become a tool to deny the South East of their rights, always popping up each time the Zone make a demand for a position that ordinarily should be ceded to them without a fight. However, it has become imperative to deconstruct this festering lie and lay the facts bare once and for all.
Most political analysts and even politicians often have this misconception that the number of votes a candidate or party garners is all that is required to emerge victorious. That is far from the reality. What makes a particular candidate/party to win is a combination of the votes he/she is able to secure and the votes his/her opponent failed to secure. In other words, for you to win, you have to earn more votes while your opponent earns less votes. A candidate can score, say 10million votes in an election and still lose while if the election is reconducted, same constituency, a candidate can score 8million and be declared winner.
It is like a team in a football match. The defenders who frustrate the opponents from scoring play as much important role as the strikers that score the goals. But quite often than not, the strikers who score the goals are celebrated whilst the defenders that frustrated the opponents from scoring are neglected forgetting that if the defenders had failed to do their part, the opponent could have outscored them thereby rendering the goals scored by the strikers useless.
It is an indisputable fact that President Mohammadu Buhari and the APC could not have won the 2015 presidential election if not for the vital contributions of members of the party in the South East zone. This claim is backed with facts and figures.
In the 2011 presidential election when Buhari contested with the ticket of the defunct CPC and lost to Goodluck Jonathan, the PDP scored a total of 4,985,246 (four million, nine hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred and forty-six) votes in the five south eastern states alone while the combined votes of the three political parties that merged to form the APC (ANPP, CAN & CPC) amounted to a paltry 66,309 (sixty-six thousand, three hundred and nine). That means that the PDP secured in the South East alone a margin of 4,918,937 (four million, nine hundred and eighteen thousand nine hundred and thirty- seven) votes against the three legacy parties combined.
Fast-forward to 2015. The three major opposition parties came together with some notable South East politicians to form the APC. Buhari running on the ticket of the APC defeated the incumbent president with a margin of 2,571,759 (two million, five hundred and seventy-one thousand, seven hundred and nine) Although he still lost to Jonathan in the South East but the impact members of the party in the South East made was enough and pivotal to guarantee the victory of the APC. They were able to reduce PDP’s margin of victory against PMB in the zone. Buhari scored 198,248 while PDP scored 2, 464,906. PDP’s margin of lead was 2,266,658 ( two million, two hundred and sixty-six thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight)
What effect did the above have on APC’s victory? Recall that the margin between PDP and the three parties that formed APC in the 2011 presidential election was 4,918,937 but in 2015 the number was drastically reduced to 2,266,658. If you remove the 2015 margin from the 2011 margin it becomes obvious that the South East APC technically denied the PDP a total votes of 2,652,279 (two million, six hundred and fifty-two thousand, two hundred and seventy-nine) in the South East. If you juxtapose this with the fact that Buhari/APC won the election with a margin of 2,571,759 which is 80,520 less than the potential votes members of the APC denied the PDP in the South East, definitely you will agree that without the sacrifices of the South East. APC, the PMB/APC victory would have remained a mirage.
Having demonstrated the contributions of South East APC to the success of the party, it is right to argue that the Zone has paid its dues and therefore have equal stakes in the party’s success. Furthermore, given that the North West produced the president; the Southern West produced the Vice President; the North Central produced the outgoing Senate president; the North East produced the Speaker and Secretary to the federal government; while the South South produced the National Party Chairman, it is only fair and just that the Senate Presidency be zoned to the South East.
The party will be boosting its electoral fortunes and viability by doing the needful which is ensuring that one of her senators from the South East emerges the senate president. That is the least the party leadership can do towards the onerous but necessary task of disabusing the minds of South Easterners that APC is anti-Igbo. The party must shun sentiments and muster the needed political will to do the right thing.
~ Elton Onwu
