Why Politicians Are Running To APC Despite Insecurity

Despite the growing insecurity challenges in the country, most Nigerian politicians are making moves toward the 2023 elections. It is not a new thing. Since 1960, successive generations of these politicians have promised Nigerians a better country, but things have become worse instead.

Insecurity and its attendant propaganda seem to be a weapon in the political battle. From 2011 to 2015, Boko Haram-tagged insecurity stories were rampant. More than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the terrorist group and the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan could not rescue the innocent girls till 2015 when it lost power to the then opposition party, All Progressives Congress (APC). Of course, the government will always come with one defence or the other, reeling out efforts they made so far. Mere talk didn't cut it, Nigerian's rated the administration poorly on the scale of insecurity.

Though the current administration is a different party and has promised, several times that it will crush terrorism in the country, it has only succeeded in renaming it banditry.

READ ALSO: Nigerians Should Stand and Face Bandits When Attacked – Defence Minister Magashi

In all these, one wonders why politicians from the opposition parties are joining the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)?

Only in February 2021, former Governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel; former Chief of Army Staff to President Goodluck Jonathan, Azubuike Ihejirika; former Deputy Governor of Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore; two House of Representative Members, Senator Ken Nnamani’s daughter, Honorable Blessing Onu and Honorable Yakubu Shehu Abdullahi have joined the party.

And the APC has promised that more people will join its party from the opposition.

The logic is simple, just as before the election in 2015, the issue of insecurity was raised and the ruling APC argued that the then-incumbent President Jonathan was not capable of rescuing the kidnapped Chibok girls. So, the number of kidnapped Nigerians who were successfully released under the current administration will be at the forefront of the APC campaign in 2023.

If Kagara students were rescued, it would be the third of such kidnap-and-release success stories between 2018 and 2021. And there may be more before 2023.

The first was Dapchi in February/March in 2018, Kankara in December 2020 and Kagara in February 2021. In all of these, there have been no arrests and no trials.

In summary, one of the main reasons why politicians are running to join the ruling APC is that propaganda sells, and the books are getting filled for 2023.

One question lingers though: where is Leah Sharibu?