By Tiko Okoye
It is an undisputable fact that Ndigbo constitute the backbone of the Nigerian economy and represent the second largest non-indigenous population outside the South-East. Whenever Ndigbo perform their ritualistic mass return to their homesteads during the Christmas/New Year festive season, large geographical swathes across the rest of the nation usually wear the forlorn look of ghost towns!
It is therefore most ironic and tragic that a people that continue to demonstrate such uncommon expertise and resilience in business and commerce act like zombies once it comes to politics. Just how can a people with such political (voting power across Nigeria) and economic power be happy to perennially play the two-bit role of a courtesan or so-called ‘beautiful bride’ that learns no self-preservation lessons after each cycle of being used, raped and dumped? It beggars belief!
Truth is that PDP needs Ndigbo more than Ndigbo need PDP. But to hear a vast majority of Ndigbo write and talk – both the hoi polloi and intelligentsia alike – one would be led to believe that PDP existed long before Ndigbo. As a matter of fact, the impression is generally being conveyed that Ndigbo cannot exist without PDP, rather than the other way around.
Umahi would most assuredly enter the record books as the “Conscience of Ndigbo in the PDP,” and it is very unfortunate that at a time when Igbo leaders of thought should have rallied around him to pile additional pressure on the PDP to do what is right they chose instead to vilify him for being ‘selfish.’ Selling fish to who and for whom?
An unwritten convention was introduced into the polity right from the return of civil rule in 1999 to rotate the presidency between the North and the South in order to instil a sense of belonging and buy-in to Project Nigeria in the constituent major ethnic nationalities. It would thus be the ‘turn’ of the South to produce the next president after Muhammadu Buhari leaves office in 2023. Umahi’s position is that in the South, the South-West has had its ‘turn’ with Olusegun Obasanjo while the South-South has had its ‘turn’ with Goodluck Jonathan, leaving the South-East in pole position.
Given the reality that only the South-East has not produced a president from the South, it should have been a relatively easy matter for the party to kill two birds with one stone very early in the day. The PDP could easily have achieved this objective by rewarding a zone that has been the safest haven for its candidates and extinguishing the marginalisation fears of a key section of the nation. But truth be told, the game of politics is not as simple and straightforward as A-B-C and 1-2-3.
There is no gainsaying that Umahi’s ultimatum clearly discomfited and rattled the PDP. But rather than squarely address the misgivings of Umahi, PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, who earlier conceded that the governor raised “credible concerns,” shaded him as “a lonely man in the party who ought to be strictly pitied.”
It ought to be very self-evident by now that the PDP has decided to perish the thought of zoning the presidency to the South in 2023 as the new thinking is that giving it instead to the North – either to Atiku Abubakar with a running mate from the South-West or Tambuwal with Wike as his running mate – would vastly improve its chances of locking in the rich vein of the Northern vote and take it to Aso Rock Villa. Men and women of good conscience would find such a change of rules repulsive but not the PDP that is scheming to win back the presidency at any cost after just five years of wilderness experience!
The insincerity of the PDP vis-à-vis the zoning of its presidential ticket in 2023 is clearly evidenced in its NWC’s very hasty decision to dissolve all Ward, Local Government and State Executive Committees of its Ebonyi chapter as soon as Umahi announced his defection and it is already creating a lot of confusion. The bad-tempered dissolution has created two factions of the party in the state. One faction is led by the 7-man Caretaker Committee named by the NWC while the second comprises the purportedly dissolved State Executive Committee that refuses to recognise the validity of the dissolution notice. The latter maintains that it is preposterous and an exercise in futility to seek to dissolve a validly constituted party organ whose tenure is yet to expire simply because “the governor or a few individuals left the party.”
While insisting that its tenure will elapse in 2024, the faction has already announced the suspension of majority of the state’s National Assembly members in conjunction with members of the Caretaker Committee appointed by the NWC. Expect to see a lot of legal fireworks ahead as I already foresee an exact replay of the messy long-running legal battles between the NWC and the late Sen. Buruji Kashamu-led faction that culminated in a fractionated and underperforming PDP in Ogun State. Like the adage says, “Those who sow the wind must be prepared to reap the whirlwind!”
One thing I am very certain about is that Umahi did not decide to defect without first discussing the bold and fine prints with Buhari. Unlike Ayo Fayose, Wike and several others, Umahi distinguished himself as a PDP governor who never hurled abuses or invectives at the president. As a matter of fact, he openly referred to Buhari as his “father” and “employer” whom he has the “utmost respect” for. It is therefore to be expected that he enjoys the enormous goodwill of the presidency.
So, did Umahi defect upon procuring Buhari’s one-on-one endorsement? It seems very likely. But what does it then mean for Bola Tinubu and the South-West? Would the votes of the core-North alone take Umahi to Aso Rock Villa or would it turn out to be a grotesque misadventure. If the incidence of Umahi’s defection is adroitly managed it would present the APC with a particularly astute manoeuvre to retain the presidency in 2023, but the party would certainly lose power to the PDP and implode if it is not deftly and sensitively handled.
One-time deputy governor of Abia and current Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe was quoted as saying that “Umahi’s exit from the PDP is neither of any consequence nor a big deal to attract more attention than it deserves,” before predicting that Umahi’s defection “will fizzle out like that of Godswill Akpabio.” But are these not clichéd statements that busybodies predictably make when they are confronted by unsettling spectacles like Umahi’s defection?
Only time will tell whether Umahi, not the PDP, is on an island and if he will be the object of pity, and if his defection is of no significance and will fizzle out before anyone can shout “Abakaliki!” But in the meantime, Wike, Abaribe, Amaechi, Ezeife, Ologbondiyan and their co-travellers should just let Gov. Dave Umahi be!
· Concluded
Tiko Okoye, a Boston University Hubert Humphrey Fellow, wrote in from Abuja (tkooziks@gmail.com)
