Fortunes of opposition dwindle as cracks in PDP widen, Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, writes.
By the close of last week, it had become apparent that the leadership crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had gone beyond what could be dismissed as mere storm in a tea cup. If anything, the impasse had taken more uncertain dimensions and had in the process, put the country’s opposition politics on the cliff.
In what appeared more trouble for PDP, its national convention scheduled in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, last Wednesday, August 17, was aborted following the Police seal-off of the venue.
The Police in carrying out the action, said they were acting in line with a ruling, the previous day, in Abuja by Justice Okon Abang, stopping the party from holding its planned convention slated for the Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium (aka Sharks Stadium) in Port Harcourt. The order had also directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to monitor the exercise.
Justice Abang, who gave the interim order, said he did so in the interest of justice to both parties in a suit pending before him.
Since its woeful outing in the 2015 general elections, PDP had been hit by series of crisis at various levels.
Its problems started shortly after the elections when some chieftains of the party, especially from the south, alleged betrayal by their northern counterparts.
Fingers were particularly pointed at the then National Chairman of the party, Adamu Mu’azu, who was accused of secretly working for the election of President Muhammadu Buhari, his fellow northerner, against the candidate of his party, the then President Goodluck Jonathan, who was seeking re-election.
The crisis of confidence which expanded with time, saw some key figures in the party pushing for its radical overhaul in a bid to face the challenges of the future.
Part of their demand was that members of its National Working Committee (NWC), led by Mu’azu should vacate their seats.
The agitation eventually led to the resignation of the chairman, barely one month after the elections, though he cited health reasons for the action.
Muazu’s resignation paved way for the Deputy National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, from Rivers state to take over the leadership of the party.
Secondus’ tenure was however abridged when a former political adviser to Jonathan, Ahmed Gulak, obtained a court ruling sacking him as the acting National Chairman.
Enter Ali Modu Sheriff
The ensuing face-off resulted in the emergence of former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, as the Acting National Chairman of the party.
Sheriff’s emergence did not go down well with majority of the members. Those opposed to his candidacy for example, had recalled that the former governor had been a member of the defunct All Peoples Party (APP) and later All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) the greater part of his political career. Even in the current dispensation, he had had stint with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). They had thus argued that being relatively new in the party, entrusting him with such strategic office, would amount to a huge gamble.
However, elements in the party who supported his emergence, especially his former governor colleagues and those still in office, were of the view that the former senator had the financial war chest needed for opposition politics in Nigeria.
But as soon as Sheriff took over the reins of the party, insinuations ran high on his plots to transform into a substantive chairman of the party as a stepping stone towards going for his 2019 presidential ambition.
He was later sacked in a controversial National Convention of the party held in Port Harcourt which produced a new Caretaker Committee led by former Kaduna State governor, Ahmed Makarfi.
Sheriff however rejected his sack insisting that he remains the Acting National Chairman of the party till 2018. Various court rulings have upheld and also invalidated his removal from office.
Confusion in Port Harcourt
It was against this cloudy background that the Port Harcourt convention was trailed by huge apprehension even before the August 17 date.
Sheriff had, for instance, before the date, obtained a ruling from a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, nullifying the earlier convention that purportedly removed him from office.
In the ruling, Justice Abang, held that the May 21 convention of PDP that set up the Makarfi Committee was illegal and unlawfully constituted.
PDP had, remarkably, dismissed the ruling as questionable and strange, accusing the judge of “deliberately engaging in act of derailing the nation’s democracy”.
Events, however, began to take uncertain turns for the party when as early as 4.am last Wednesday, combat-ready Policemen and operatives of the Department of the State Service (DSS), began to take positions at strategic locations leading to and outside the venue of the convention.
Left without any other action, delegates relocated to the state secretariat of the party in the city, to hold the convention. At the secretariat, located on Aba Road, Makarfi, declared the convention open.
The convention approved the extension of the tenure of the caretaker committee by 12 months and also increased its membership from seven to 13. This was sequel to a motion moved by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and seconded by a former Minister of Women Affairs, Hajia Zainab Maina.
Markarfi, who addressed the convention after the extension of his committee’s tenure, assured the delegates that his committee would effectively position the party for 2019 and would organise another convention within the period. The convention also stressed that no member of the care taker committee would vie for any national office of the party.
With this assurance and other messages of goodwill from the party’s elders, delegates left with some feeling of satisfaction. Or so it seemed.
How far can PDP go?
But even as members laboured to sell the impression of not bothered by the setback in Rivers, analyst express fears that the untoward development last week, may mark the beginning of the end of the party.
PDP chieftains are for example, not known for being effective crisis managers. Rarely had the party resolved issues affecting its members and chapters at any level, without some people being handed the wrong end of the stick. That, on its own, had always had telling effects on the party – often resulting in exodus of members.
Back to the ugly past
Among concerned PDP members, current developments in the party are bringing to memory petty politics that characterised the party’s 2012 Abuja convention that witnessed the controversial selection of Bamanga Tukur as its national chairman and its heady days after wards.
That opaque exercise is what analysts locate as the root of the crisis that led to the party’s poor showing in 2015 elections.
At the March 24, 2012, National Convention of the party, major positions were parceled out to favoured candidates of Jonathan in a consensus arrangement that analysts considered highly undemocratic.
Curiously, while preparations for the convention peaked, the party hierarchy had sold impressions of a party that had exited from its past that was characterised by intrigues in the conduct of its affair.
Even, Jonathan had assured that the party would conduct the exercise in line with standard practice. Though there were doubts in some quarters on him matching his words with actions, there was visible air of enthusiasm among ordinary party members that the years of imposition in its fold were gone.
Hopes of a reformed party were however dashed when few hours to the convention, words filtered out that Tukur, Aso Rock candidate, had been selected for the job. His position was merely affirmed at the convention ground. The party never recovered from that outing.
Subsequent developments saw it losing five governors on its platform to the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that later merged with other parties to form APC. These were Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), Magatakarda Wamakko (Sokoto) and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (Kano).
As in 2012, there are already fears of the setback in Port Harcourt affecting the fortunes of the party ahead 2019. Mass movement from the party is already being speculated, within the 12 months that the Makarfi committee would be in the saddle. What lends weight to this fear is the fact of PDP chieftains not having the discipline and temperament for being out of power for too long.
“Just as we say of APC currently being held together by their being in power at the national level, what essentially seemed to make PDP appear as a family was because they were in power from 1999 to 2015. Yes, there were some of the members like Alex Ekwueme, Sunday Awoniyi, Abubakar Rimi and others who believed in the party. But many of them are no longer with the party. Some have died, while those who are alive have been clobbered into irrelevance in its activities since the vindictive days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Most of those still remaining in the party now are schemers that are merely fending for themselves on the platform of the party. I see them leaving in the dry days ahead”, volunteered a Senior Lecturer in History at Lagos State University, Ojo.
True to his analysis, since PDP lost power to APC last year, key figures in its fold, had dumped it for the APC, while others have decided to quit partisan politics entirely. These include Obasanjo, former Anambra State governor, Jim Nwobodo, Mu’azu, Tukur, former National Secretary, Olagunsoye Oyinloya among others.
Whither the opposition?
The fear of more leaving still looms. But the greater concern with the untidy state of affairs in PDP, is that as the party falters, the fortunes of opposition politics will dwindle further. Opposition had scored great feat in the build-up to 2015 general elections when the hitherto strange bed fellows closed ranks for a common agenda – to wrest power from PDP.
Before then, enlightened commentators had with benefit of hindsight, taken a look at the opposition political parties and literally dismissed them as lacking in cohesion to carry out the task they had claimed to map out for themselves. The doubt was not without facts.
Earlier in the life of the current dispensation for instance, there was the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), an amalgam of over 21 political parties that had come together in what was advertised as an attempt to check the excesses of the PDP. Prominent members of the CNPP were All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, Alliance for Democracy, AD, (later Action Congress, AC and eventually (ACN), Peoples Redemption Party, (PRP), and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). There were other parties. Though each party had its own agenda and in that case was essentially in competition with one another, they had claimed playing down their individual differences in an effort to provide a united front against the over bearing tendencies of the then ruling PDP.
With time however, internal crisis hit most of the CNPP members, paving the way for PDP to coast home to victory in 2003, 2007 and 2011. However, in 2015, ACN, ANPP, CPC and some elements from APGA came together to form APC with which they routed PDP.
Hopes had been on the rise that with PDP pledging to play robust opposition politics, APC would be put on its toes. This is especially as critics allege that some of its actions so far, do not portray it as really knowing what it intends to do with power. But with the disturbing dimensions of the PDP crisis, those hopes may end up forlorn.
