PDP VP: Again, South East used and dumped?

By Oguwike Nwachuku
The intrigues over which geopolitical zone will produce the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s vice presidential candidate in 2019 is already raging. Many believe the slot will go the South East zone.
While names of PDP members from the South East such as that of former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, former Senate President and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ayim Pius Ayim are being bandied, there are indications the intrigue has also caught up with the South West zone, particularly after the recently held National Convention of the PDP which produced someone from the South South.
Though some people are thinking that it may be too early in the day to start drawing inferences, perhaps, there may also be no better time to see the South East as the fall guy going by the pre and post PDP Convention deals which at the end of the day, may lead to the VP slot being denied the zone in 2019. I will expatiate on this shortly.
My initial take after the elective National Convention of the opposition PDP on December 9 that produced Uche Secondus from Rivers State of the South South geopolitical zone was that the South East geopolitical zone had been rigged out again.
That deduction is inevitable going by the trend I saw last year when the PDP announced its zoning arrangement after the bloody nose it got from the All Progressive Congress (APC) in 2015, and the efforts the party eventually made to right certain wrongs that unfortunately led to its being snookered in 2015.
Last year, the PDP tried to strike a balance in its allocation of offices after it became obvious that its failure to deal decisively with that prior to the 2015 election due to the selfish ambition of former President Goodluck Jonathan and his lackeys became the party’s albatross and eventual defeat in 2015.
Therefore, one of such steps taken in 2016 was to share offices in such ways that will generously accommodate the North, the zone perceived to be instrumental to the abysmal trashing of the PDP a year earlier.
Not only was the PDP chairmanship zoned in 2016 to the North, the presidency was also zoned to the area in 2019. That arrangement left the South East, South West and South South jostling for the remaining few relevant positions.
At the end, it was that 2016 zoning arrangement in the PDP that brought the controversial era of former governor Ali Modu Sherriff of Borno State to be the chairman of the party into focus.
Sherriff was anointed by the usual PDP “kingmakers” to complete the tenure of former chairman, Adamu Muazu (North East) whose tenure went into history as the era that saw the fall of the behemoth called PDP; the largest party in Africa in the assessment of power hungry PDP hawks schooled in the act of fixing all manner of things, howbeit for the wrong reasons, in the country.
The offices as zoned then included: National Chairman (North East), Deputy National Chairman (South South), National Secretary (South West), Deputy National Secretary (North Central), National Legal Adviser (North West), and Deputy National Legal Adviser (South South).
National Treasurer (South South), Deputy National Treasurer (North West), National Financial Secretary (North Central) and Deputy National Financial Secretary (South East), and National Woman Leader (North-West),
Deputy National Woman Leader (South South), National Auditor (South West), Deputy National Auditor (North East), National Publicity Secretary (South West), and Deputy National Publicity Secretary (North Central), National Organising Secretary (South East), Deputy National Organising Secretary (North Central), National Youth Leader (South East), and Deputy National Youth Leader (North West).
What the PDP simply said with the offices allocated to the South East in 2016 which has not changed with the recent elective national convention is that the zone has little to contribute to its preparation for 2019.
In fact, it reinforces the thinking in many quarters that the South East was made more politically vulnerable with the 2016 zoning formula.
In that pre-Sherriff era’s zoning arrangement, the South East, a critical zone in the nation’s political history was tactically allocated some of the most inconsequential offices in the PDP executive, similar to what the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) did.
Yours sincerely did ask a pertinent question in one of his interventions in this column in May 2016 tagged, “Is South East still in PDP?”
No time in the political intrigues of the PDP and even other political parties in Nigeria has that question become more germane than now that the party has again come up with its “final” zoning arrangement for the newly elected offices under Secondus which automatically will determine what happens in 2019.
In the pre-Sherriff era and now Secondus, the South East was allocated the positions of the Deputy National Financial Secretary, the National Organising Secretary and the National Youth Leader. This is a zone where the PDP has three states in its kitty? The PDP controls five states in South South, one state in South West and two states in the entire north.
Unfortunately, it is the notion that PDP controls three states in the South East that makes my brothers and sisters in the party to bask in the euphoria that the Vice Presidential position would be given to the zone on a platter. As I asked then, “who says?” I am also asking again after carefully analysing what became of the intrigues that characterised the recent Convention.
Those who watched the developments that unfolded before, during and after the recently held PDP Convention will understand that the South South PDP governors ( Rivers, Delta, Cross River, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom) are today the determining factor in the affairs of the PDP, as regards who gets what.
And let no one make any mistake about it, they are enjoying their new status and the game that comes with it with the support of one or two governors, particularly Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State in South West, who is not only the chairman of PDP Governors Forum, but a man who has demonstrated incredible capacity for controversy, not only in his zone, but in other zones where issues on “behind the scene interest” of the new PDP grand masters are discussed.
Let us paint a few scenario. When the 2019 presidency and other offices were zoned to the North, the northern PDP leaders in their wisdom met to micro zone their offices according to the larger geographical spread of the North. That was a demonstration of political fidelity among the northern leaders of the party.
Unfortunately, for reasons known to the South where the position of the PDP National Chairman was zoned to, its leaders, obviously because most of them were working on already preconceived answer, decided not to meet to micro zone their own position. That to me was a deliberate ploy to manipulate opportunities ahead of 2019 for personal or micro-zonal interest.
Granted that some of the leaders were comfortable with the South West producing the PDP chairman having not had it before, the interest of others who are in the habit of doing deals that occasionally backfires became overriding, and at the end, the South South joined in the clamour for the position of the PDP chairmanship.
Their argument was that the position was zoned to the entire area. Mind you the South East was the only zone that kept off the national chairmanship contest, apparently in show of solidarity to the South West.
What, perhaps, escaped the knowledge of most Southern PDP leaders was that two key dramatis personae – Governor Nyesom Wike and Fayose – have been the ones determining what goes on in the party for sometime now, particularly since the infamous Port Harcourt convention that was scuttled and later became a subject of many months of judicial adjudication.
Is it therefore surprising that Wike and Fayose’s names still rang bell in Abuja on December 9 where the South West PDP chairmanship candidates were elbowed out using the so-called “Unity List”, an expo paper that was handed over to the delegates willy-nilly because most of them lacked the capacity to memorise names of those contained in the list that their paymasters had asked them to vote for?
With the votes Secondus got after the exercise, there is no doubting the fact that virtually all the zones’ delegates cast their ballot for him minus the South West delegates that voted for the man who was touted to be the PDP chairman in the waiting, Professor Tunde Adeniran, after his other kinsmen in the same race stood down for him.
Fast forward to the ongoing reconciliation moves of the PDP after the December 9 convention led by Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State and the feelers coming therefrom, you will understand why no particular zone from the South may have been favoured to produce the vice presidential candidate for the 2019 election as the South East may be wont to think.
The South West is taking advantage of the treatment meted out to their candidates at the convention to make secret demands from the reconciliation team.
Yes, they have committed themselves to a one strong and indivisible PDP, but that commitment is never for free. They have given conditions like producing the vice presidential candidate as why their kits and kin from the zone would prefer the PDP presidential candidate to that of the APC in 2019.
Again, they want a vice presidential candidate that would be weighed side by side with the current vice president, Yemi Osinbajo who is from the zone. That game plan is the product of the reason the likes of Fayose and Wike have been working together. Against the party plan Fayose declared for presidency, a plan to negotiate for a position you will say.
Apart from Fayose, the candidates who ran for the PDP national chairmanship position are all men with political name recognition from the South West who, any presidential candidate would not ignore, if at all one or two of them will not be considered for VP slot.
Prior to the election of Secondus, former Minister of Works and chieftain of the PDP, Adeseye Ogunlewe who was one of the strong supporters of Bode George for the post of PDP chairman, said apart from the South West producing the chairman of the PDP, the zone would also be seeking for the position of the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2019. Ogunlewe said so as a guest on Channels Television. Can you beat that? Good politics.
Now what is in 2019 for the South East? My brothers and sisters in the PDP were not just fixated on the vice presidential candidature as “promised” but allowed themselves to be used by Wike and Fayose to rubber stamp their selfish and zonal political interest.
By not fielding any candidate for the position of PDP national chairman, the South East members demonstrated perceived lack of capacity to provide leadership at that level. Secondly, by inadvertently allowing themselves to be dragged into the scheme of “Unity List” by Wike and Fayose, they curried the anger of South West members who now feel betrayed and today want to use blackmail to seek for the same position which South East is dreaming of – vice presidential candidate. Thirdly, at what meeting of the Southern PDP leaders was the South East promised that slot that no other zone can give it a shot? again to me that is Fayose and Wike’s joker. Fourthly, how united is the South East to seek for the position given that in the zone the PDP has been finding it difficult to come together under its umbrella?
The latter question is so critical because even the most favoured members of the PDP from the zone are sure going to have the worse of criticisms from within the South East when the time for their consideration is deemed ripe.
To also say that a ranking member of the party from the zone who is already occupying a critical position in the National Assembly wants to emerge as President of the Senate in 2019 makes the South East interest and quest for the slot of the vice presidential candidate more suspicious.
If his desire is acceded to, that would amount to the greatest betrayal from within the South East, but that is politics. No one would be surprised if that PDP chieftain was party to the “Unity list” and has been working with Wike and Fayose to satiate his own selfish political interest in the “interest of the South East”. After all, it is said that there is no smoke without fire.
Now let us reflect a little more on the excerpts from piece May last year.
“…It appears the PDP is yet to learn from its mistakes and from its new zoning formula, another fresh seed of crisis has been deliberately sowed or about to be sowed. And that is the thrust of my argument today.
“…the PDP is still far from being cured of the disease that befell it in the build up to the 2015 general election.
“The disease that afflicted the PDP in the past? Selfishness. Greed (Avarice). Inordinate ambition. Hatred. Ethnic and tribal bigotry. Godfatherism. Politics of imposition.
“These and others were the problems the APC saw as a window of opportunity and leveraged on to sell the dummy of change to Nigerians.
“It is said that a man who does not know when rain started to drench him may not know when it will stop.
“Many PDP chieftains are more interested in what comes to them, their camp or their zone rather than what is public good. They are in complete alignment with Elbert Hubbard’s thinking that, “power flows to the man who knows how, responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.”
“To them, they are the ones who know how power ought to flow as well as the ones ordained to shoulder others’ responsibilities without sparing a thought on how much damage they have done to the soul of the party.
“They have been doing it since 1999 and because it has become a habit, which dies hard when formed, they will continue at it.
“Now in interrogating the zoning arrangement, which has chiseled the Igbo, a major ethnic nationality in Nigeria, out of relevance in political dynamics of the PDP, what comes to mind is what the designers intend to achieve.
“Only three miserable offices – Deputy National Financial Secretary, National Organising Secretary and National Youth Leader – are assigned to Ndigbo.
“This is the same South East which, less than a year ago, provided the PDP with the shoulder it leaned on when all other zones plotted mischief that saw to the defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan in particular and, the fall of the PDP in general.
“The PDP is simply saying with the zoning that the South East has little to contribute to its preparation for 2019.
“The picture the PDP zoning arrangement presents is akin to what the APC did a few months ago.
“Rather than go for powerful positions that will enable them appear more relevant in 2019, South East PDP members kowtow to the whims and caprices of their colleagues from other zones thinking the vice presidency will come to them. Who says?”