The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has proved correct many analysts who predicted that an implosion in it before 2015 would set the country and its people free. At the moment, the party’s leaders and technocrats are working out a formula to put together the broken pieces, but this appears an uphill task. The question being asked is whether Mr. Fix It can actually plough into his book of tricks to manufacture a solution. It has become the more difficult to handle because Baba Iyabo is also at work- behind the scenes.
Fortunately, President Goodluck Jonathan still has the Obasanjo scheme to follow. At a point when it was clear that Obasanjo was pursuing a third term dream as if his life depended on it, he kept denying the self-evident fact. He instructed those who kept the key of the treasury to release as much as could be needed to suborn the lawmakers. Each of those who indicated interest laughed all the way home with N50 million dropped in his account. Yet, he failed.
But, because Baba Iyabo made his move early enough through pliant legislators, he was able to deny ever nursing the ambition. Jonathan could yet adopt the same option. His aides have continued to deny his moves to contest the 2015presidential race. Rather, they have chosen to obfuscate issues by concentrating on his constitutional right to pick the PDP ticket and submit himself to the democratic process. On educational qualification, they are quick to point out that Dr. Jonathan is the first occupant of the presidential palace to hold a doctorate degree. This is sophistry at its worst. The wrong question is being asked and answered in a bid to confuse the people.
Back to the PDP, what is the way forward? The first step is to conduct a sincere soul searching. What went wrong? Where did the President and leaders go wrong? Only when the correct answers have been proffered can the next question-what is to be done be asked.
Dr. Jonathan missed the point when, upon trouncing more experienced politicians of Northern origin to emerge the presidential candidate of the party in 2011, he threw a bash believing all things had been put under his feet. Thereafter, he failed to do the needful by calming frayed nerves and reconciling warring groups. His supporters went about singing victory songs and some even said the North would never come near the epicenter of political power again.
The post-election violence that rocked many Northern towns was dismissed as child’s play, with his men threatening that the full weight of presidential power would be used to crush the opposition. The context encouraged breakdown of law and order in many parts of the country. Northern leaders looked on as agents of darkness descended on the land with fury. The audacious insurgents seized the country by the throat, struck at the Police Headquarters in Abuja, drew attention of the international community to the state of things by taking the war to the United Nations House in Abuja. They attacked churches in a bid to cause anarchy by promoting religious war and at a point took control of a number of towns in the far North. It took the declaration of a state of emergency that handed power to the military in the troubled states to restore some measure of normalcy.
Jonathan also engaged in a needless, naked display of power when he interfered in the affairs of the Nigerian Governors Forum; encouraged those he had procured to do the job rig an election that had transparently returned Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi to office and backed a spineless Plateau State Governor to pretend to leadership of the Forum. What did he achieve? He acquired more enemies and pointed the way to the opposition to come together and work for victory. Now, the PDP has three factions. There is the PDM, made up of loyal supporters of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and another, a group of seven disaffected governors have distanced themselves from developments in the party. The rump is as weak as a sheaf of papers. The factions have openly taken the battle to the party’s leaders and the attendant crisis can no longer be dismissed. A president who had been unwilling to sit with the “dissidents” suddenly found time to sit at crisis resolution meetings and sought to enlist ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to douse a raging fire that had already consumed the roof of the building.
Does Jonathan, with his famous Ph. D. have the capacity to read the handwriting on the wall, or does he have a Daniel who could decode the script? It appears that, by divine arrangement, the PDP’s time is up. The leaders need to look at the foundation of the house, realising that a building divided against itself cannot stand. Elders who could have been called upon to resolve the crisis are themselves aggrieved. Founding fathers like General T. Y. Danjuma, Alex Ekwueme, Solomon Lar, Jacob Nwokolo, among others are now in the cold.
The future is bleak. The light is merely blinking and the ship is sinking. Who shall save the House of PDP? Its friends can be counted on the fingers of one hand.