In the halcyon days of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when it thought power sat well with it, no matter how procured, the slogan-and-response was thunderous: PDP … Power!
Now, in the power wilderness, just for two years, and another kind of thunder is ravaging the party: Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam! The post-power PDP appears to have locked itself in that unenviable mystic plane, where it is self-fated to utter destruction, in the most brutal and spectacular of manners
How did Hardball arrive at this rather grave conclusion? Well, events of the last few days, aftermaths of a well-reported reconciliation meeting to fix the party, which former President Goodluck Jonathan arranged. Somewhat, PDP appeared even more irreconciled — or is it irreconcilable? — before the so-called reconciliation palaver. Sad!
Well, the brickbats have, to say the least, not been funny. For allegedly denying him the “right” to address the gathering as “national chairman”, Ali Modu Sheriff aka SAS, launched an early bazooka, that would have blown up everyone in the hall, even before the meeting folded up.
He was the present real deal, he grumbled to the media. Jonathan was a loser and albatross, under who the party lost power, after 16 years. So, how dare he prevent him from addressing the gathering — he, the saviour come to salvage the beleaguered party?
Later he would tell both Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike and Ekiti Governor, Ayo Fayose, former sweet collaborators now turned bitter antagonists, they were free to leave the party, if they wouldn’t stop allegedly plotting to derail it.
Then SAS’s atomic bomb, dropped on the PDP Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Jonathan allegedly collected a cool N50 million from Wike to organise the botched talk shop, wondering why such princely Rivers money should be blown on piffle! That has sent the other side ga-ga!
Wike growled: “Sheriff is a mole of the APC who is being sponsored by the Federal Government. They are sponsoring Sheriff because of the crisis in the APC.”
Talk of clearing the speck in others’ eye, when yours was jammed with a log!
Fayose bleated, through Lere Olayinka, his sidekick and alter-ego in speaking before thinking: “If Sheriff has taken his desperation to serve his paymasters in the APC to the level of accusing Jonathan of being bribed to organise a peace meeting for the PDP, there is no reason for any sane mind to continue to respond to the continuous advertisement of his political insanity.”
Ouch! But when did the uncouth Team Fayose start respecting anyone? And ay, when did that team, doing its wild gutter talks, start discriminating between political sanity and insanity?
But lest we forget: both Wike and Fayose, in their characteristic ‘unreflectiveness’, were boisterous champions of SAS before, as the Yoruba would say, the sweet song of yore became today’s hideous proverb!
As for their allegation of APC manipulations, well you won’t put anything past anyone in the murky waters of Nigerian politics. Still, these men should record their pro-SAS thunder of yore and their present anti-SAS bickering, play them before their own children, and see the innocent looks on their innocent faces! Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!
But APC will do well to learn from the PDP fate. You don’t betray the trust of your people, run a once vibrant economy aground, make sleaze the only serious business of government and expect there won’t be stiff consequences!
It would appear PDP would not rest until it thoroughly consumes itself — and just as well!
Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!