Wednesday August 4th, 2021 was beautiful. To the glory of God, we stepped out publicly for the first time, to identify with the All Progressives Congress (APC), my chosen party at the Stakeholders’ Meeting of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter of the party. I thank thousands of followers who registered their support for the move and those who volunteered their comments on this page.
From the comments posted on this page, 80% of commentators endorsed steps taken so far. About 10 percent are skeptical while the rest 10 percent are opposed. Of the ones opposed a very few were abusive of the code of engagement on this page which is decency and respect for other people’s opinion even as you express yours.
All the same, I am grateful for all the contributions, for and against. I have been associated with politics since I was 15 years old as we pasted posters and cheered politicians of the progressive fold in the early 1980’s.
In the mid 1980’s, I stepped into activism and pro democracy struggles against the military government and was under solitary confinement in 1989.
In 1996, during the botched Abacha transition programme, I was elected National Publicity Secretary of National Democratic Labour Party. Abacha did not register our party so we teamed up with the Social Progressive Party led by late Kano state Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Chief Solomon Lar, Dr. Ezekiel Ezeogu and others.
Abacha eventually died and with great leaders like Dr. Alex Ekwueme, the former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, a former Central Bank Governor, Alhaji Abubarkar Rimi, Chief Solomon Lar, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Prof. Jerry Gana and others, we formed the largest party in Africa in 1998, PDP and I was elected its first Deputy National Publicity Secretary.
Unfortunately, those of us who were idealistic about the much better country we wanted to build were quickly shoved aside by other more ready to kill, maim, blackmail, bribe and hijack power. A lot of these honorable founders of the party, left piecemeal, some died in frustration, and I eventually resigned from the PDP in 2006.
The rest is now history as we continued to experiment with the formation of new parties, hoping they will be eventually better until I took a break from politics in 2007 and lived in the United Kingdom for 8 years, and in Dubai for 2 years before my return to Nigeria early 2016.
In order to appraise the political environment, I settled for one of the small parties and poured a lot of resources in it. The party gathered momentum and suddenly the real owners of the party showed up after we had created structures everywhere, they were happy to kill the party as it was going to a direction they did not want.
The bitter truth I found out in our last political outing was that most of the small parties are registered as fallback position by the different factions of the two big parties.
Apart from picking some small seats or the other on such platforms, there is nothing fundamentally meaningful that they were designed for. We had to face the reality that we needed to make a pick between APC and PDP.
I dare say for the record, at the risk of being immodest, that in today’s Nigeria there are very few living politicians that have accumulated experience in politics as I have done, and one stubborn truth is that at the end of the day, it is the personal integrity of the politician that is more important. No party is perfect and the more of credible people who aggregate on a given platform, the greater likelihood that, that platform will be the platform for a new Nigeria.
I have made my choice and I urge all my followers to come with me.
Let us be the true Core Progressive Wing of the APC that will revive values and ideologies of individuals in politics, as you have the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in America.
God bless you! God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim
