While the presidential campaign of ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar has waned somewhat, some of his leading supporters have become more strident in denouncing the opposition and warning of doomsday should the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) be returned to office in 2023. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is almost irreconcilably fractured, and it has been the bad fortune of Alhaji Atiku to carry a banner stained by intrigues and bitter and acrimonious in-fighting. In an attempt to coax unity out of their disparateness, party gladiators and leaders have shouted themselves hoarse within the party. Recognising that they were not making any headway, however, they have turned their guns on external foes whom they describe as remorseless enemies of the republic.
Two of those party leaders are Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State and Presidential Campaign Council Director of Strategic Communications, Dele Momodu. Mr Momodu focuses more on the APC presidential candidate, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, whom he unflatteringly describes both as a budding dictator incapable of keeping friends and mentees and a manifesto voyeur who abjured originality in favour of adopting and adapting MKO Abiola’s Hope ’93 manifesto. His only evidence for describing Asiwaju Tinubu as a potential dictator rests dubiously on the APC candidate’s fractious relationship with his mentees. And as for the allegation of ‘adaptation’, no evidence was supplied other than the word ‘Hope’ used in the APC 2023 presidential campaign manifesto entitled ‘Renewed Hope’. Mr Momodu does not show whether the word has been patented by anybody or political party. Nor has he shown which programme or promise was taken from Chief Abiola’s Hope ’93 manifesto and not attributed.
If Mr Momodu’s long history of association with Asiwaju Tinubu makes his denunciation of the APC candidate somewhat unnatural and disturbing, and his logic tantamounts to straining at a gnat, Governor Obaseki’s hysterical outbursts were, on the contrary, more robust, more convincing, but infinitely more revealing of the speciousness that has characterised his politics since he detoured into the PDP and split it right down the middle. His verbosity deserves some amplification. Hear him: “This 2023 election will be won by what we do now, not what we do on election day. I believe this will be an easy election for us as a party if we campaign. Our heads should be examined if the All Progressives Congress (APC) wins. God forbid, but should APC win and come to power in 2023, this country will break. APC has done much damage to this country. Our debt is growing to N60 trillion every (month) and yet we continue printing money. They have destroyed this country. APC has threatened the survival and existence of this country.”
The problem is not just that a governor is capable of such hysteria and excesses; the real issue is that Mr Obaseki was himself a member of the APC until internal crisis forced him to the PDP. And as a governor conversant with the history of political parties winning and losing elections all the time, regardless of their affiliations and sometimes the integrity or lack thereof of their candidates, it is not clear what convinced him that one more loss or victory would be sufficient to doom the country. And here is a governor who has ruled for about four years with a minority legislature, having willfully and unconstitutionally refused to inaugurate the majority; and here also is a governor who has kept the legislative building in perpetual state of disrepair, without consequence it seems. If his second term of four broken and wasteful years has not been sufficient to doom Edo, why does he think the APC would break the country should it retain office in 2023?
Mr Obaseki is unable to unite the Edo PDP behind himself; and the presidential candidate whom he tries so extravagantly and hysterically to sell to the electorate has been unable to unite the national PDP behind himself due mainly to his failure to honour agreements. If despite these failings their party has not collapsed, would it make sense to extrapolate that should the PDP win – just on account of their winning, and nothing else – the country would collapse? Mr Obaseki is fond of hyperbole, a style he deployed with damaging and apocalyptic effect during his campaign for second term. It is dismaying that as a governor with perhaps more stake in the unity and stability of Nigeria than the ordinary citizen, he could lapse into whipping up sentiments and hysteria to frighten the electorate into doing his bidding. He has been roundly condemned for his excessive use of words, and perhaps there is little more anyone can do, not even the law enforcement and security agencies. As far as he is concerned, he is playing politics. But quite apart from his ineffectiveness as governor, not to say his extremely modest achievements in eight years of misruling Edo, it is damning of his person, politics and psychology that he lacks the wisdom and moderation to rule anything, let alone a state like Edo.
Read Also: EIU et al and doomsday prophecies
Increasingly, the PDP may find itself contending with a dearth of reasonable and trustworthy men and leaders in its bid to regain office. Alhaji Atiku promises the presidential succession to as many people as catches his fancy should he win the presidency in 2023. Whether the recipients of his promises trust him is another thing. Mr Momodu also makes wild generalisations without a shred of supporting evidence. And Mr Obaseki now threatens apocalypse in the event of losing the presidency, even insisting that the heads of his party members be examined should that loss occur. With men like Mr Obaseki who speak from both sides of their mouth without batting an eyelid and are threatening hell and brimstone should they not gain their utopia, the PDP will virtually have to recreate the human race to find credible defenders of its blighted worldview.
FG, ASUU and IPPIS again
There is probably no one in the country who thought that the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) suspended their action because they struck a definitive agreement with the federal government. No, there was no real agreement. There was an understanding brokered by Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila. The legislator staked his reputation on the vexing strike by promising the university teachers that grey areas would be straightened out in a matter of weeks. Prompted by a curious court judgement, ASUU brought the prolonged academic disruption to a temporary end. It was indeed a sad case in which Hon Gbajabiamila cried more than the bereaved, for neither the cantankerous Labour and somnolent Education ministries nor the presidency was keen to bring the matter to a rest.
The strike lasted for a grueling eight months. Last week when Hon Gbajabiamila met with the relevant federal officials to smoothen the rough edges of the tentative understanding in order to secure a lasting peace, it turned out that some of the key issues in dispute had not even been considered at all, let alone an understanding reached. One of the problematic issues is the notoriously dissonant Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS). Hear the Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Silvia Okoliaboh: “…I have made this commitment and I repeat it that we in the Accountant General office are going to accommodate all the legitimate peculiarities of ASUU and the university community. That’s just the way to go. The challenge is if you allow ASUU to have their own, you are going to have the Colleges of Education…polytechnics, unity schools, everybody coming with their own… We will sit down together, look at all the issues we have, we list them, as we are addressing them, we are ticking them. We are not going to ask you to accept until you are sure we have addressed them…Whatever level of complications it may be, I believe that in three months, we should be able to clear this. We will continue to pay ASUU because they need their money.”
So, what on earth was the government doing for eight months, when they are just coming to this very basic understanding of what needs to be done?