The tragedy of the Peoples Democratic Party( PDP) as a credible opposition party is the absence of a father-figure leadership, with a moral authority to command a earned respect of members of a party, once touted to be the biggest in Africa whose rulership was to last till the fabled second coming of Jesus christ.
And this is in spite of the fact that the party had given the Nigerian state three presidents in the course of the 4th Republic that birthed in 1999.
But one critical question that is in need of an answer is: were the men that occupied Aso Rock, Nigeria seat of power, under PDP, were what the country deserved, or were they deserving of the power and responsibility bestowed on each of them at different times of this on-going supposed democratic journey? .
Truth is, with a compromised and pliant parliament democracy loses its major ingredient in a democratic stew.To be clear, the difference between dictatorship and democracy is the absence of the legislature, precisely the reason the parliament is sacked as soon as a military coup, ousting a democratic elected government, succeeds.
The new men in power do not have any problem combining their newly acquired Executive power to the power of law making because members of cabinet, except in a parliamentary democracy, are non- elected members of government.Under a military administration, judiciary as an arm of government is barely tolerated, with the courts operating under many ‘ouster clauses’ in military- fashioned decrees to put the judges in tow
Olusegun Obasanjo, the pioneer 4th Republic president of the country, was drafted into office by a regional caucus with vested interest in post June 12, 1993 annulment of the result of a presidential election.
An Obasanjo candidacy was to ensure that a regional interest was short-circuited, even as the country seek compensation for a region wronged with brazen injustice.He did not seek power, therefore, did not prepare for it.
Indeed, he was in not in any position, psychologically, to seek to be president of a post- military Nigerian state, haven just survived the execution by firing squad prepared for him by General Abacha.
Even when he had once occupied the office of Nigeria power sanctuary, it was under a different dispensation.Nigeria civil dispensation was alien to his brash personality, horned under a dictatorial military template.
Regrettably, haven found himself in office, albeit an unprepared Stallion, he was more interested in self- perpetuation.And to achieve this he needed to demobilize and demarketed a prepared and studied lieutenant.
In spite of what may be his limitations, Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s vice president, once nursed an ambition to be president as he was on the card of Social Democratic Party( SDP) as a presidential candidate, vying on the wings of a very formidable political platform, called Peoples Democratic Movement( PDM) under the leadership of Shehu Yar’adua, a strong member of the fabled Kaduna Mafia.He was ‘ordered’ to step down for Moshood Abiola, a business mogul whose link with the Nigeria politics and power house was no more than his friendship with the military behometh for purely pecuniary benefits, with no known political structure of his own.Not even in his own South-West geopolitical zone of the Yoruba people.
To be clear, Atiku forced-concession to Abiola as candidate was a strategic move in enlightened self interest. As a political chess player, he is well acquinted with sacrificing some pawns with the hope of taking a knight.He didn’t intend to lose the support of his political base, the PDM, a group he would eventually inherit its well- oiled structure after its charismatic leader was done away with by General Sanni Abacha, the monster that inherited the corpse of an assassinated 3rd Republic by his comrade in arms, General Ibrahim Babangida.This was the man and his superintended structure that Obasanjo had on his side for the battle formation for the capture of Nigeria seat of power.
By the time Atiku was drafted to be Obasanjo’s running mate, he was already a Governor- elect of Adamawa State, even when Obasanjo was not sure of winning any election in his Owu-Abeokuta, Ogun State constituency.
He would later be trounced at the polling unit behind his Ita-Eko residence in Abeokuta by Chief Olu Falae, the Akure-born candidate of the Afenifere-sponsored political party, the Alliance for Democracy (AD)
Ordinarily, in normal political calculation, Atiku, as two-term vice- president of a country, under a ruling party, was a putative candidate of his party in a succession plan, and ought to have the choice of first refusal.
But an unprepared and drafted Olusegun Obasanjo had tasted the delicious meal of power, and the glutton in him has fully developed a culinary etiquette for tasteful food.
He wanted to permanently perpetuate himself under the guise of a fortuitous 3rd Term, as president of Nigeria. Haven been forced to relinquish power by an adroitous Senate, he knew he had lost the moral authority to command any respect within the PDP family fold, even as the Chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees( BoT).But the last shred of his state power was deployed to ensure that Atiku did not inherit his discarded mantle.Against all those that expressed interest in the presidency as successor, he chose to pick Musa Yar’adua, the younger sibling of his deputy when he was the country’s military Head of State.
State power players had suggested,in various pontifications, that the choice of Yar’adua was Obasanjo’s way to enjoy a denied 3rd Term in office by a Ken Nnamani- led Senate because he knew the health situation of his putative successor whom he expected to rely more on him, and on those he had plan to plant in the presidency in different capacity as presidential aides
Fast- forward, Yar’adua expired under the weight of his well- known medical infirmy, and Goodluck Jonathan, another political upstart whose in-road to political office was through the search for a pliant deputy who was not politically ambitious, therefore, was not expected to give Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the governor of Bayelsa state in 1999 any trouble for power.Thus, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was plucked from his comfort zone in the Civil Service of Bayelsa state.
He became a politically untested and unprepared deputy governor in an oil-rich state of Bayelsa.But fate, to be manipulated for selfish political end by an unrelieved power monger, had a different plan for him.His boss was impeached by an ambushed, disarmed and manacled House of Assembly under the High Command of Obasanjo under the pretext of fighting corruption, an ever-present monster around him, and with him as a hypocritical corruption zoo keeper.So, Jonathan, with the good luck of destiny, was propelled into the governor’s seat on the flappy wings of fate. He would, later, in his own right as a sitting governor, seek office. He won. But the puppeteer in Aso-Rock was still at work, with a mission to remain in office as a proxy president, with power without responsibility, as it was in the days of colonial rule in Nigeria, running an indirect rule administrative structure in the regions.
Against Peter Odili and Donald Duke, two tested governors of Rivers and Cross River states respectively, and others who showed interest in the vice-presidency, Obasanjo plucked Jonathan from his gubernatorial seat in Bayelsa and planted him in Aso Rock as Yar’adua’s running mate for the presidency.
With the benefits of security reports, he definitely had access to Yar’adua’s medical condition as a governor, and he knew his choice was not likely to be effective in office.
And fearing that if left alone, Yar’adua, known to possess a stubborn streak, may not be easily amenable to manipulation from outside, especially if solely surrounded by his own kinsmen from the North, Obasanjo needed a leg to ensure that the door was not totally closed in his face.
Jonathan, a man without his own incubated political structure, and one who may be president was a sure choice for a calculating Obasanjo, and the old fox from Owu would be Ebele’s structure in the Nigeria power dynamics.He was wrong because ‘it is our turn mentality’ of the Niger Deltans, under the leadership of Chief Edwin Clark, was never going to allow Obasanjo a free rein of influence on their own, an Ijaw son, from Bayelsa.
Fast forward, a frustrated Obasanjo resumed his temporarily abandoned vocation as a ‘letter writer’ to Nigeria political leaders, on whom he was losing influence, and he truly lost power of control over Goodluck Jonathan as president.Meanwhile, he had gotten an unthinking character to tear up his PDP membership card, signalling his decided severed relationship with the political party that gave him a platform to be the president of a democratic Nigeria.With that immoral action by an ungrateful Olusegun Obasanjo, PDP lost a godfather- trustee of a former president, imbued with a moral authority to keep the party focused, and away from its waywardness.Jonathan on being checked out of power by both external and internal forces that coalesced under a common umbrella of ethnic power- shift agenda, also decided to distance himself from the party, displaying an ungrateful disposition to a political platform that gave him the visibility he now enjoy as a leading Ambassador for Democracy on the world stage.
Regrettably, Atiku Abubakar, a founding member of the party, and a former Vice-president has been so much obsessed with Nigeria presidency that he has lost all sense of decency that principled consistency to group loyalty, over and above individual ambition, demand for building a cohesion in PDP.
He has kept jumping from one party to be other, leaving the stage for upstarts, with more state funds than sense and adroitness to manage a complex structure of a political party. It is to his eternal damnation that he be held responsible for bringing PDP to its present state of suspended animation, thus denying the country of steadier opposition to a ruling party, which body language and actions against dissenting voices, suggest a steady and determined movement to attain Hitlerariam, an absolute state capture under the veneer of a democratic dispensation.
Let us be clear about it, Adolf Hitler was an elected Chancellor of a German Reich, and he acquired his universal notoriourity in concert with a pliant and compromised parliament which acceded to his whims and caprices in legislations. Thus, Adolf Hitler acted under the laws of his land.
It is unfortunate that Atiku is still not ready to assume the leadership of his party, with a view to marshal together disorganised troops to a single fighting formation towards a territory recovery.And he is not going to be in any moral authority to stop this haemorrhage in PDP so long he remains one of the patients to be nursed.
With the notion of remaining in contention as a possible candidate of PDP in 2027, he is sure not to have the support of critical segments of the party to work for the revamping of a near desolate house. And so long as he is not ready to play the father- figure within PDP, the Wikes of the party, with much federal logistics, as agent provacateur, will remain the crooked firewood in the kitchen that would not allow the fire to burn, delaying the pounded yam, as the people famished because the yam remains undone
Unfortunately, for Atiku, even if he is able to waggle his way to pick the presidential ticket for 2027, he would lose, woefully, because internal opposition would redouble their efforts to render his campaign prostrate. To be clear, the South-West geopolitical electoral zone will be absent in its support for him, as Seyi Makinde, the governor of Oyo State, would relive his 2023 anti- party activity in support of a Yoruba presidency.And given the tempo of a heated politics of anti- Tinubu presidency by a section of the Northern elite, the Yoruba of the South- West may have a justification to ensure that ‘Omo wa ni’ gets a 2nd Term of the Nigeria rentier political arrangement, and this will be in spite of the ‘Ebi npawa’ orchestra, aftermath of the devastating fiscal and economic policies that rendered many a destitute
While PDP has lost a critical constituency in the South-East geopolitical voting population, the North is no safe for him either, as there are many who wishes that he retires and allow them a space to fly. In line with the ever present self- interest in political calculation in contestation for power, amongst Nigerian professional politicians, the former Governor of Sokoto state, Aminu Tambuwal, is not expected to wish his kinsman and elder colleague in the PDP family well in his quest for the presidency of Nigeria. Point is, an Atiku success at a future presidential election necessarily foreclose his own political ascendancy in a turn by turn prebendalist political leadership arrangement, where power is to be rotated amongst geopolitical power blocks
Let Atiku Abubakar strive to regain a part of his lost credibility, lost to his self- serving serial political alignments across political party platforms in search of a presidential ambition that may never be fulfilled. Let him, for once, admit to destiny of a no presidential attainment, and sit at the head of a conference table for the resolution of the crisis in PDP to enable the party assume its abandoned place as a leading and credible opposition party, and ensure that this fledgling dictatorship does not mature.It is mission PDP owes our democracy, snatched from the jaw of a rapacious and stone- age military dictator.
Whether the party would be fit enough to win election in the next round of electoral contest is its own internal concern. What is of importance to the rest of us is its responsibility to ensure that democracy is not derailed and be replaced with dictatorship by ensuring that the ruling party do recorgnise and appreciate the possibility of being kicked out of power, if it continues to mismanage our social contract.
