The desperate dream to revive ANPP

After four years on the drive seat of Nigeria’s once formidable opposition party, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke recently handed over to a new national chairman. In his time, the party slipped in territorial control and character quotient.

The new helmsman, Chief Ogbonnonya Onu is now spearheading a drive to revive the fortunes, of the party. In this piece, Vanguard Politics examines what Onu inherited and how he is going about the Herculean task.
How would one score Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke’s stewardship of Nigeria’s once vibrant opposition party, the  All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP)? From controlling six Government Houses in 2006 when he took over the control of the party, Ume-Ezeoke left the saddle with just only three governors flying the party flag.
In the same period the party lost almost half of its members in the National Assembly to other political parties.
But the greatest loss of the period under Ume-Ezeoke is generally beleived to be the loss of self-esteem and character of the opposition as evidenced in the lack of vibrancy at the time the erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives stepped down from the chairmanship of what was once Nigeria’s second largest party.
In 1999, ANPP  swept  the governorship seats of Jigawa, Borno, Gombe and Yobe in the North East  zone and produced Governors in Zamfara, Kebbi  Kano and Sokoto  in the Northwest. In Middle Belt the party equally produced governors in Kogi and Kwara States.
As it went to the first election in 2003 the party lost three governors in an election that was largely characterised by irregularities. The loss of Gombe, Kwara and Kogi was not without a fight under the leadership of another controversial leadership headed by Chief Don Etiebet.
From the six States he received from Etiebet, Ume-Ezeoke, however, could save only three, namely Borno, Kano and Yobe.
Ume_Ezeoke’s leadership brought a strange and curious relationship between the ANPP and the ruling PDP, in which his son, Prince Chineme Ume_Ezeoke serving as Special Adviser to the President on Relations with Civil Society  in a  Government of National Unity (GNU).
Read more: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/11/the-desperate-dream-to-revive-anpp/