Unfolding developments in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), since it took over government on May 29, 2015 have indicated that the party is still struggling to have a coherent leadership at the party level and the National Assembly.

Few weeks after the APC-led government under the presidency of President Muhammadu Buhari was inaugurated, the party got enmeshed in some crises over the way the leadership of the National Assembly, where it controlled the majority, emerged. This was particularly the manner the President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, one of the pillars of the party emerged, along with his deputy, Ike Ekeremadu of the rival Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Thereafter, it also witnessed another crisis with the leadership of the National Assembly over issues on the 2016 budget, which was delayed. The new crisis confronting it is the budget padding in which the leadership of the House of Representatives has been asked to step down.

Reacting to the development, the Lagos State Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe blamed composition of leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives for the present economic crisis in the country.

Speaking on a TVC television programme monitored in Lagos yesterday, Igbokwe said the party was not comfortable with the emergence of Ekeremadu, as deputy Senate President boasting that: “the party would by any means get him out of his position.”

He accused Saraki of forming an alliance with the PDP, which he alleged ran the nation’s economy aground because he wanted to be the Senate President “that is the problem we are having and we must deal with that problem and get him out. Anybody that underrates the APC government does that to his own peril.”

The Lagos APC spokesman further bragged that the party must use what it has to get what it wanted, saying: “the presidency, the leadership of the National Assemblies must be under the APC’s control.”

Reacting on the insinuation that the present leadership of the APC controlled National Assembly could be blamed for the lackluster performance of the Buhari administration and party’s failure to fulfill its ‘change agenda’, Igbokwe said, “The president is working with an unfriendly National Assembly, an environment of corruption, the presidency and the National Assembly are not on the same page for the president to deliver what he promised Nigerians.”

He said despite the propaganda that nothing was happening, which he attributed to the enemies of change agenda and progress of the country, “a lot is happening. You will not see what the President is doing if you don’t have the top eye, you may not feel it now, but you will feel it tomorrow; a journey of a thousand mile must begin with a step, if you don’t know that this nation was plundered, you will never understand why we are in this position.”

He added: “A lot of Nigerian pretend they don’t know what is going on, they don’t know the amount of money we have recovered but the truth is many positive changes are taking place.

But in his reaction, a chieftain of the PDP in Ogun State, Mr. Segun Sowunmi countered Igbokwe’s allegation that the election of Ekweremadu as deputy Senate President was responsible for the problem in the senate.

According to him, “The problem with the APC is that it thinks it can play tricks, play with words instead of facing the issue of their disorganised party and their incompetent government.”

He wondered why the APC failed to get its Senators into the Senate chambers on time when the assembly was to be constituted, saying: “Instead of the APC to commend the PDP for not taking the carpet off its legs and produced both the Senate President and all the principal, it was going about to make fun of itself over the issue as if Ekweremadu has done anything out of the ordinary.

He said the APC was yet to come to terms with the fact that the business of selecting the leadership of a Senate and House of Representatives was purely the National Assembly business.

Recently, the Spokesman of the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Mr. Yinka Odumakin also faulted the leadership style of the APC, saying that beyond its demonstration of inconsistency, the leadership of the party has been in disarray since it took over power.

Odumakin wondered how a government, formed by one party like the APC could be inconsistent. The leadership of the party, the presidency and the National Assembly are APC controlled yet were operating at variance.