APC Convention: Beautiful Venue, Ugly Experience

The All Progressives Congress held its 4th national convention at Eagles Square, Abuja, on Friday. It should have been a straightforward affair ,party faithful gather, speeches are made, officers are elected, and everyone goes home.

But whoever was in charge of logistics for this convention clearly did not think things through. And for hundreds of delegates, journalists, and party members, what should have been a routine political gathering turned into a bruising, dehumanising ordeal that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with incompetence.

Let me start with what happened at the gate. Eagles Square, for those who have attended events there, has multiple entry points. That is how it has always worked. Multiple gates, multiple screening points, crowd dispersal across several access routes. It is common sense. But on Friday, the organisers in their infinite wisdom decided that every single person ;delegates from 36 states, journalists, party officials, and everyone in between should funnel through one gate. One. Let that sink in.

Imagine thousands of people, many of them elderly, many of them women, all dressed in party regalia under the scorching Abuja sun, being forced to squeeze through a single entry point barely wide enough for two people to pass through at the same time. I was there. I was pushed. I was shoved. By the time I finally made it inside, I was physically drained and mentally exhausted, and the convention had not even started.

But here is the thing ,I was one of the lucky ones. Those who came after me had it far worse. Security agents — police, DSS, Civil Defence were not just screening people. They were brutalising them. Tear gas was fired into the crowd at the gate. Tear gas. At a party convention. Not a protest. Not a riot. A political convention of the ruling party of Nigeria. The recklessness of that single act is staggering. In a crowd that dense, with people pressing against each other from every direction, tear gas could have triggered a stampede. People could have died. And for what?

Accreditation tags meant nothing. Identity cards were waved away. Journalists who had been duly accredited were treated like gate crashers. A senior journalist, was literally lifted off the ground by thugs near the gate and thrown onto other people. They accused him of blocking their “Oga.” When he landed, others tried to search his pockets. It was only when police officers intervened, pointing out that the man was elderly, that he was allowed through. This is a man with proper accreditation, doing his job, covering a national event. That is how we treat the press in this country.

And the thugs where do I even begin? For all the layers of security screening, for all the harassment delegates endured at the gate, street urchins and hoodlums had no trouble getting inside Eagles Square. They were everywhere-snatching phones, stealing handbags, and grabbing eyeglasses off people’s faces. It was a harvest for criminals. So the security apparatus that tear-gassed legitimate delegates and manhandled accredited journalists somehow could not keep out pickpockets and drug-addled area boys. Make it make sense.

Another journalist posted his experience on social media and it mirrored what many of us went through. He wrote that if he had any premonition that the event would be this chaotic, he would not have bothered showing up. He lost his glasses and nearly lost his phone.

When you create a situation where thousands of people are crammed into a space designed for dozens, desperation takes over. And desperation, as we all know, does not discriminate between party faithful and street criminals.

I left the convention early with three colleagues. We had seen enough. And the experience getting out was just as terrible as getting in. One entry, one exit.For a venue of that size, hosting an event of that magnitude. Whoever made that decision should be held accountable because people’s lives were genuinely at risk on Friday.

Now, I will give credit where it is due. If I score the security and organisation of the convention zero out of ten, the decoration inside the venue deserves a perfect ten. I have attended many events at Eagles Square over the years, and I have never seen the place look that beautiful. Whoever handled the aesthetics did an outstanding job. It is a pity that the experience of getting in to see it was so traumatic that many people could not even appreciate the effort.

On to the substance of the convention itself. President Bola Tinubu used the occasion to remind the party that its strength lies not in numbers but in unity of purpose. Fair point. He warned against ego overriding ideology and ambition replacing discipline, cautioning that political parties do not fail only through electoral defeats but also when individual interests threaten the collective good.

He also moved to allay fears that his government intends to turn Nigeria into a one-party state, insisting that the APC was founded not as a vehicle for ambitious politicians but as a platform for national transformation.

The convention itself was largely a consensus affair. The National Legal Adviser moved a motion for the dissolution of the National Working Committee, and Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna seconded it. National Chairman Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda and the rest of the NWC were re-elected through affirmation. No drama on the floor. No contested elections. No surprises.

The party presented a picture of internal cohesion, with every NWC position returned unopposed. Deputy National Chairman (North) Abubakar Dalori from Borno, National Secretary Ajibola Basiru, and the six zonal vice chairmen all sailed through without contest.

On paper, this was a united front. The real drama, however, had already happened at the gate. And that is what should concern the APC leadership more than any speech or resolution.

The security agencies also have questions to answer. The deployment of tear gas in a congested civilian space is not just excessive ,it is dangerous. It shows a mentality where force is the default response to every situation, even when the “situation” is just too many people trying to get through a badly designed entry point. Our security forces seem incapable of distinguishing between crowd management and crowd suppression.

There is a difference between maintaining order and creating chaos, and on Friday, the security agents created far more chaos than they prevented.

The party’s National Working Committee, its governors, and its ministers all got in through VIP access. They did not experience what ordinary delegates experienced. And that, in a nutshell, is the story of Nigeria. The elite are insulated from the consequences of their own incompetence while the regular people suffer the fallout.

Friday’s convention will be remembered not for the speeches or the elections or the beautiful decorations. It will be remembered for the tear gas, the stolen phones, the brutalised journalists, and the single gate that almost became a death trap.