PDP National Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, weathers the storm of the party’s intrigue-infested politics as governors on the platform of the party call for his sack, Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, writes.
Not many are actually surprised at the current heat on the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Adamu Mu’azu, and members of his National Working Committee (NWC). Following the relative poor outing of the party at the just concluded general elections, informed analysts had predicted that Mu’azu and his colleagues would certainly be on rough ride in the party’s traditional high-wire politics.
Signs of the unfolding impasse began to emerge, when shortly after the election and faced with the unfancied opposition status of the party, anger began to rise among its rank and file, with members demanding the resignation of the NWC or its sack. Some particularly asked President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure the constitution of a caretaker committee to organise and reposition the party before handover.
The aggrieved members, had pointedly argued that the loss by the party at the election, was an indication that the NWC had failed and should give way for fresh hands. Membership of the NWC include: National Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu; Deputy National Chairman, Uche Secondus; National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh; National Legal Adviser, Olusola Oke; National Organising Secretary, Abubakar Mustapha; National Financial Secretary, Bolaji Anani; National Treasurer, Bala Kaoje; National Women’s Leader, Kema Chikwe; and National Youth Leader, Abdullahi Maibasira.and National Youth leader.
The grouse against the officers is that they did not present the president with the true state of the rot in the party before the election.
Metuh had initially denied the call on the party’s NWC to throw in the towel. But the angst at him began to take concrete shape last week when governors on the platform of the party reportedly walked him out of their meeting in Abuja, on the ground that they could no longer work with him.
The governors who met at the Akwa Ibom State Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro, Abuja, were said to have asked Mu’azu to excuse them, as he was not invited.
Their grouse, it was gathered, was that Mu’azu contributed to the party’s poor performance at the presidential, National Assembly and governorship elections. They also suspected Mu’azu of playing double role during the general election, particularly in refusing to attack the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari. Those raising this allegation recall that it was in Mu’azu’s home state, Bauchi, that Jonathan had what appeared as his most humiliating experience during the campaigns. Apart from the president’s convoy being pelted with stones and sachet water as in some other states in the North, Jonathan was also hugely embarrassed in Bauchi Stadium when it turned out that most of the guests had entered the venue flaunting APC insignias.
As if that was not enough, Bauchi, curiously, fell to APC, even as Mu’azu with the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Bala Mohammed, and other high profile members of the party, hail from the state. What was further considered intriguing was that Mu’azu was at a time a governor in the state. Also, the current governor, Isa Yuguda, belongs to PDP.
Other governors from the party have not found the loss of Bauchi to APC funny, hence they are calling for Mu’azu’s head. TheNiche, however, learnt that beyond the party’s outing at the poll that is readily touted as the reason for the onslaught at the national chairman, forces against him see the prevailing circumstances as providing opportunities for them to deal with him over what they dismiss as his cocky and arrogant posture.
Jonathan’s foot soldiers, for example, are said to hold issues against Mu’azu over the way he was literally forced on the president at a time heat was on Bamanga Tukur, his ally. In their interpretation, the former Bauchi governor and his governor-colleagues orchestrated the problem that characterised the greater part of Tukur’s era to blackmail the president.
This bad blood, incidentally, began to percolate shortly after Tukur’s election at the party’s March 24, 2012 National Convention in Abuja.
At the convention, major positions were parcelled out to favoured candidates of the president in a consensus arrangement that analysts considered highly undemocratic.
Tukur was among the beneficiaries of the bizarre exercise. Incidentally, while preparations for the convention peaked, the party hierarchy had sold impressions of a party that had exited from its past which was characterised by intrigues in the conduct of its affairs. Even Jonathan had on occasions made pronouncements that tended to indicate that the party would conduct the exercise in line with standard practice.
Hopes of a reformed party were, however, dashed when, few hours to the convention, words filtered out that Tukur, the Aso Rock candidate, had been selected for the job. His position was merely affirmed at the convention ground.
The selection, it was learnt, did not go down well with some party chieftains, especially from the North, as well as the governors on the platform of the party.
For the rest of his period of being in the saddle, Tukur battled with the governors and chieftains of the party who were clearly uncomfortable with his perceived closeness to the president.
Efforts by Jonathan to broker truce between Tukur and his opponents in the party did not yield the desired result. While the impasse lasted, it began to tell on the president’s second term ambition, especially with key members of the party leaving its fold. By 2014, it had become apparent to Jonathan that his re-election bid was becoming dicey if he did not do away with Tukur.
“That was when Mu’azu was literally imposed on him. He clearly was not the president’s choice. It was the governors who saw him as their former colleague that packaged and threw him at the president. And because he needed them for his nomination and election proper, he had to succumb to their pressure,” a source in PDP told our reporter.
Mu’azu on trial
It did not however take time before it became apparent that the relationship between Jonathan and Mu’azu was far from what was expected of a president and national chairman of a ruling party. There were for instance insinuations, at a time, that Mu’azu was eyeing the party’s presidential ticket. For Jonathan, who reportedly loathed any contest, no matter how feeble, for the PDP presidential ticket, the allegation against Mu’azu was considered a mortal sin.
TheNiche was told that it was at that moment that the PDP national chairman became a marked man that needed to be sidelined in the party’s affairs. Jonathan had his way in picking the ticket without any contest, but Mu’azu had his say on the intrigues in the party. At the December 8, 2014 special convention of the party for the ratification of Jonathan’s candidacy, the chairman delivered a speech that was seen as a direct attack on Jonathan. He specifically warned against the high incidence of favouritism in the party, describing it as culture of “Monkey de work, Baboon de chop”.
Though Jonathan pledged to make amends, it was obvious to perceptive observers that a battle line had been drawn between his followers and the national chairman.
Governors on rampage
For the party’s governors who met in Abuja last week, the uncertain developments in the party’s politics had provided an opportunity for pay-back at Mu’azu. Most of the governors, incidentally, are those who do not fail at any given moment to advertise their loyalty to the president.
Besides, many of them are serving out their terms. While some would be going to the Senate, others lost in their bid to do so. Having a say in the affairs of the party, therefore, means a lot to them, hence they may not risk having a chairman that they do not see as being on the same page with them. The matter is expected to come at the party’s NWC meeting during the week.
Like Mu’azu, like previous PDP chairmen
Mu’azu’s fate as PDP chairman, thus, hangs on the balance. It will be surprising if he survives the storm. If he does not, it would not be spectacular; he would rather be falling into the pattern of those who had left before him.
With possible exception of Ahmadu Ali, successive PDP chairmen had had issues while in office. They were virtually swept aside in hazy circumstances. Even those who came before him had some sore stories to tell. Apart from Second Republic Vice President, Alex Ekwueme, who served in acting capacity and later relinquished the job to former Plateau State governor, Solomon Lar, to vie for the presidential ticket of the party in 1999, Dr. Barnabas Gemade and Audu Ogbeh had ended their tenures in circumstances that spoke volumes in the suffocating grip of former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the party. Gemade and Ogbeh incidentally owed their ascension to power to the machinations of the former president.
Having successfully piloted the party to victory in the 1999 general elections, the late Lar’s supporters had looked forward to confirmation and consolidation of his tenure as a deserving reward. However, his perceived independent-mindedness and rich democratic credentials, which ordinarily should have counted in his favour, turned out to be his greatest undoing before Obasanjo.
The former military ruler, who barely concealed his disdain for contrary views, saw in Lar a chairman that would stand against his intention at appropriating the entire levers of the decision-making processes of the party.
Thus, before the party’s convention later in the year, Obasanjo had stealthily begun shopping for a more pliable chairman. This he found in Gemade.
Remarkably, days before the convention, the prevailing sentiments had weighed in favour of the late Sunday Awoniyi. Many factors counted for him. He was considered a gentleman and thoroughbred politician. Within the party circles, he was seen as a stranger to controversies. More so, his Kogi background easily advertised him as both Yoruba and a Northerner. Again, he had no dent of having served under the military, especially the loathed General Sani Abacha administration.
Before the contest, Awoniyi had secured the endorsement of members of the National Assembly. Again, coming from the platform of the defunct All Nigeria Congress (ANC), one of the political groupings that constituted the PDP, his candidacy seemed to be on an easy ride. This optimism was further reinforced by the fact that the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), the platform on which Obasanjo’s candidacy was sold to PDP, did not show opposition to his aspiration.
But the former president had a different agenda. Contrary to the overwhelming permutations of party chieftains, he settled for Gemade, incidentally, one of the leaders of the defunct political parties that had pleaded with the late Abacha to transform to civilian president.
The convention, which took place at Eagle Square, Abuja, witnessed heavy deployment of state machinery in actualising the former president’s agenda. Those that witnessed the exercise described it as a charade. In fact, at a time during the contest, notable party chieftains walked out of the arena. But Obasanjo had his way.
Initially, he and Gemade had a smooth working relationship. Midway into the journey, however, it became apparent that a huge crack had developed between them. At the 2002 National Convention of the party, therefore, it was obvious that the presidency was already disenchanted with Gemade. But Gemade, now a senator, thinking that he could make it on his own, limped into the race on an obviously fractured footing. Expectedly, Ogbeh, Obasanjo’s man for the job, picked the crown with ease.
Months later, Obasanjo and Ogbeh fell apart on account of crisis then ravaging Anambra State and other partisan issues. By December 2004, their fragile relationship eventually crashed, forcing Ogbeh to throw in a resignation letter on January 9, 2005 – 10 months ahead the expiration of his term. Gemade and Ogbeh are now chieftains of the APC.
Ali was enthroned, initially, in acting capacity, but at the controversial November affirmative convention of the year, his tenure was ratified. He, it was, that served out his tenure.
In the current dispensation, Vincent Ogbulafor and Okwesilieze Nwodo had sipped from the poisoned chalice of PDP chairmanship politics. Ogbulafor incurred the wrath of party hawks, when, shortly after the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua, he remarked that Jonathan would only serve out the remaining two years of the deceased president and give way for a Northerner in line with PDP rotation principle.
For that singular comment, which was interpreted as an effrontery on Jonathan’s interest, Ogbulafor became a marked man. From the shelves, a corruption case that had been levelled against him in his days as minister was retrieved. Jonathan promptly latched onto that to cry that he would not be comfortable working with somebody with credibility baggage.
That was how Nwodo was erected. But along the line, there were suspicions that he might be having an agenda that ran contrary to that of the president, especially as the 2011 convention drew closer. What provided an excuse to move against him was a court ruling against his headship of the party. He has since been playing from the sidelines.
Mu’azu, the game changer as his party men call him, it is feared, may be toeing the same line.
