Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, examines the latest rumbling in the PDP, submitting that the infighting is the outcome of the seed of injustice sowed by its leadership.
There is no end to the crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It is obvious that no one needed the gift of prophecy to sense that the PDP, given its character of impunity over the years, only needed time to snowball into an implosion.
Having been in control of federal power in the last 16 years, a period most Nigerians have described as the years of locust, PDP appears to be a party on a self-destruct sojourn, unable to seize the momentum of its election victories to manage power due to self-seeking internal crisis.
The party, going by some of its actions, seems to have jettisoned the philosophy of its founding fathers, and what the country is witnessing today, analysts believe, appears to be crisis foretold.
Observers agree that the party has consistently toed ignoble path, and that history has never been kind to those who toed such pathway.
It is natural that the recent poor outing of the PDP, particularly the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan during the presidential election on March 28 is beginning to bring to the fore some of the under-currents now resulting in buckpassing, accusations and counter-accusations threatening the party’s survival.
It is not surprising that the media, during the week, was awash with PDP members’ act of washing of their dirty linen in the public.
Uncovering latest storm
The party leadership, no doubt, is facing intense heat: failure to ensure Jonathan’s election success and mismanagement or misapplication of party funds.
The latest tale is that the leadership of the PDP has washed its hands of the defeat of Jonathan in the last presidential election, blaming it on what it described as the tactlessness of the president’s hand-picked campaign team that was led by Ahmadu Ali. The party said it was sidelined during the campaigns, and that “overzealous” persons were allowed to run a hate campaign against the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), thereby making the former military ruler more popular.
Addressing journalists on Monday, May 4, in Abuja, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, while exonerating the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) members from being responsible for Jonathan’s failure, traced the defeat to the exclusion of the party and its leadership from running of the campaign. He said even their advice was ignored by those that ran the campaign.
“Members of the NWC did not play any significant part in the 2015 presidential campaign of the party,” Metuh had submitted.
Defending campaign funds sleaze
There is intense controversy regarding how campaign funds of the party were spent. PDP governors and other party stakeholders have continued to express anger over the way and manner money was spent during the election without due process and without getting the desired result.
There are even calls for the resignation of PDP National Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, as well as other NWC members.
Metuh, speaking on behalf of the NWC, dismissed reports of profiting from the N9 billion raised for the party’s campaigns, affirming its readiness to defend the N30 million paid to each NWC member which it claimed was approved by the president.
He said the party, out of the money generated, donated N500 million to the presidential campaign fund last December and gave out N100 million to each of the 29 governorship candidates on the April 11 governorship election.
“We sponsored our House of Assembly candidates. The money was passed through the governors or through ministers and gubernatorial candidates in states where PDP has no sitting governor.
“For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state categorically that this national leadership has remained very transparent in all its dealings since coming into office.
“No NWC member has been involved in any way in any sleaze or embezzlement of party funds. Also, no member of the NWC has ever been accused of embezzlement of funds in any ministry, department or agency of government at any level whatsoever,” he said.
According to him, the NWC is willing and ready to make its account public in line with the Freedom of Information (FoI) law, just as he said bad elements in the party were fuelling the campaign of calumny against the party leadership.
Metuh explained further: “In the attempt to discredit the NWC, those bad elements pushed out series of misleading information to the unsuspecting public, alleging that the party leadership mismanaged the presidential campaign funds, leading to the poor performance in the polls and as such NWC should be made to resign.
“When this wicked and baseless allegation was debunked by the NWC, which publicly clarified that it was not involved in the handling of the campaign and its funding, and that such were exclusively managed by the Presidential Campaign Organisation appointed by the president, these divisive elements, in their desperation, came up with another allegation claiming that the leadership embezzled funds belonging to the party.
“Even after the NWC also debunked this despicable allegation, showing that the party’s funds were judiciously appropriated for our state election campaigns, this group resorted to labelling the NWC, in the attempt to instigate President Jonathan, PDP governors and other well-meaning members of our party against the national leadership.”
Metuh said the Jerry Gana-led fund-raising campaign committee generated about N21 billion which it spent without involving the NWC members.
However, Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has challenged Metuh to show evidence that money was given to him during the election.
Impunity galore
Starting with the Olusegun Obasanjo regime in 1999 when the PDP took over power, there has been no PDP national chairman that left office, if not in regrets.
Perhaps it may be during the brief tenure of the late Umaru Yar’Adua that the party had little respite, given that his health condition was almost all the time taking him out of the country .
All of the former national chairmen of the party had trodden on one banana peel or another leading to his booting out of office.
It is on record that Barnabas Gemade, Ahmadu Ali, Audu Ogbeh, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo, Bello Haliru Mohammed and Bamanga Tukur, all former national chairmen, were “humiliated out of office, after serving as errand boys”.
Thomas Uduma, a legal practitioner, told TheNiche that the president in power, depending on his disposition, just use and dump the national chairman of the party at will. He said such was unthinkable in the days of the late Obafemi Awolowo (UPN), Adisa Akinloye, Shehu Shagari (NPN), Nnamdi Azikiwe (NPP), Aminu Kano (PRP), Waziri Ibrahim (GNPP) etc. when the party was supreme and above any member, unlike what obtains now where the president calls the shot at the centre as the national leader and the governors hold sway in their various states.
TheNiche checks revealed that the power equation in Nigeria allows the sitting president to assume full leadership of the party, an opportunity they have always abused.
In this country, it may take a weakling of a president to cede authority to someone else.
Said Uduma: “There is no national chairman of the PDP that was not disgraced out of office, depending on when the sitting president finds it necessary to dispose of the person.
“Unlike what we are witnessing today, during the time of Awo, Zik of Africa, Aminu Kano, Shagari etc, the party was supreme; but today they have messed it up because the president is now the leader of the party at the national level while the governors take charge as leaders in the states. They just do anything they want.”
For instance, there was trumped up charges for the trial of Ogbulafor, PDP national chairman under Obasanjo’s administration.
Ogbulafor, Emeka Ebilah and Jude Nwokolo were dragged before the court by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) on a 17-count charge bordering on fraud to the tune of N170 million.
At different occasions, the case was stalled at the Abuja High Court, as the trial judge, Justice Ishaq Bello, most times was absent. At the end, nothing came out of the case and Ogbulafor was disgraced out.
Ogbeh, it was reliably gathered, resigned from the party leadership because Obasanjo wanted him to resign by all means. He was quoted as saying after the press conference announcing his resignation that he had no choice but to allow Obasanjo have his way.
“I am not in any contest for power or supremacy with the president,” he added.
Ogbeh said the president became unrelenting after two failed attempts to get the PDP National Executive Committee (NEC) to remove him as chairman.
He disclosed that the pressure got to a time he told the president that he had always been ready to go, since he does not consider his stay as party chairman a do-or-die affair.
Said Ogbeh: “I’m tired of a party which, instead of talking on issues of education, health and so on which will impact on the lives of the people, is scheming to get somebody out of office by all means.”
The sin of Ogbeh was when he wrote a letter to Obasanjo warning him of the dangers inherent in the unresolved political crisis that had engulfed Anambra State since the failed attempt to forcefully remove Governor Chris Ngige from office on July 10, 2003.
Also, Tukur told a court that he was forced to resign his position as the national chairman of the party. He exposed this in a counter-affidavit he swore to a suit instituted by an aspirant to the House of Representatives in Adamawa State, Aliyu Gurin.
Tukur said a lot of pressures were mounted on Jonathan by the seven governors who defected to the major opposition party, APC, to remove him. And it came to pass.
In all its conventions, the PDP leadership continued to perfect the culture of imposition, impunity and the injustice it has created in the polity continue to haunt the party. The result is that those cheated out now resolve to fight back, ensuring that the party is destroyed: what the party is reaping at the moment.
The Obasanjo’s exit
PDP has been so careless as to allow some of its key members to defect to the opposition. The defection of prominent members like former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and some governors dealt a serious blow on the image of the party.
Particularly the exit of Obasanjo, political observers agree, worsened the crisis in PDP and might have sounded the death knell for the ruling party as a behemoth that has allowed internal squabbles to destroy it, thereby giving the opposition a good opportunity to take over power in the last election.
Commentators are of the opinion that a party that can allow five governors, House of Representatives Speaker, and a former president to leave its fold has not only sent out a distress signal, it has also almost announced itself as unworthy of holding on to power at the centre.
Senate President David Mark said the PDP is heading for self-destruction and alarted that the party may be heading for a final ruin if the infighting among its leaders was not immediately resolved.
Mark, who made the observation while receiving the Senator Ike Ekweremadu-led PDP post-election assessment committee in his office during the week, described the continued acrimony between factions in the party as dangerous.
Said Mark: “The PDP is already haemorrhaging, unless we halt the bleeding and find the necessary therapy, we may be heading for the final burial of the party.
“The party is already in a comatose status and we should do all we can to resuscitate the party, rather than this unnecessary rancour and buck-passing. The emerging factions are absolutely unnecessary. The combatants must sheathe their swords and embrace dialogue.”