Nigerians have not seen the last of PDP’s troubles
Not even the most audacious hater of the banal PDP could have , this time a year ago, conjectured that the political behemoth could come crashing so ignominiously under the sheer weight of its sins against Nigeria and Nigerians. The sins of biblical Sodom from which only Lot’s family escaped eternal judgment, would pale into literal insignificance compared to PDP’s banality which, in its mere fourteen years stranglehold over Nigeria reduced a resource –rich country, which should ordinarily have been the pride of black peoples all over the world, to an absolutely beggarly country wallowing in the lowest rungs of the world’s development index. In those fourteen years, the only time, as of recent, when a Nigerian can truly feel proud of this country is when our yet to be adulterated youth, win some sporting laurels far away from our shores; more from their own individual efforts than any deliberate policy of the PDP-controlled federal government.
Only recently, a Ghanaian minister lost her high office simply because she expressed a mere intent to have some huge amount of money at her disposal to politically control the people but here in an amoral PDP- controlled Nigeria, a minister continues to sit pretty in President Jonathan’s cabinet despite copious evidence of her moral, financial and constitutional derelictions and weeks after the president’s panel of inquiry set up, more to obfuscate than to adjudicate, had submitted its report. In like manner, the government has washed its hands clean of any responsibility to ensure that those who creamed off billions of naira through the oil subsidy scandal are promptly brought to book, merely by handing them over to the courts which is equally under its baleful control, sure the accused ones will, at best, be given a slap on the wrist. After all, children of PDP Chairmen, past and serving, are among. But presidential spokespersons will waste no time in telling you how the president does not control the judiciary. Nigerians, however, know better than the courts which unashamedly declare that there is no split in the PDP, in your face as it is, straight from the party’s Abuja mini convention.
Those who stole billions from the pension fund are not any different. Indeed, so horrible was the pension scam, and the government’s effort at cover up, that in spite of a court order to arrest him, the police claimed it could not locate an accused top gun in the pension’s department, who was, incidentally being guided round the clock by dozens from the same Nigeria Police until he was allegedly helped to escape from the country.
Given the above scenario many Nigerians have refused to be excited at the historic merger of a huge chunk of that same political party with the All Progressives Congress, claiming, indeed, that Nigerian politicians are all the same: what with ownership mentality, imposition of candidates and the fact that corruption is basically party- blind, though much more at home in the PDP.
My response to all these has been that although one individual Nigerian is hardly different from the other, PDP in its corporeal sense and dealings, is completely irredeemable, no matter how good its individual members may be. It was for this reason that Moremi Funmi Olayinka, the late Ekiti State Deputy Governor, used to liken it to a virus. The reader is certain to know a decent PDP member who is, however, party to the large scale treasury looting and perverse election rigging over which the government has superintended these many years. They are getting worse by the day.
Many have, therefore, wondered as to how these big guns ‘porting’ into the APC from PDP will not spoil the broth and my answer is two-fold; one, that the milieu is by far different. Whereas all those murky practices are more the directive policies of the PDP, a party from which you could hardly identify a lone biblical Lot for redemption, you will find among the APC leaders, individuals like its Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, General Buhari and many others, who are, indeed, Nigerian poster boys of the incorruptible. These two leaders have held high public offices and have been adjudged completely above board, leaving office in flying colours and with serial testaments to their patriotism and honesty. It is equally true that while accusations of imposition and the lot could hold true in smaller, regional parties, it is totally unthinkable that individuals, qua individuals, could exercise the same level of influence in a much bigger, national party, like the APC.
However, much more important is the fact that APC’s hope of rescuing Nigeria from the evil stranglehold of the PDP, rests mostly on comprehensively galvanising the people to make it a mass movement by aggressively pushing to the public space, PDP’s record of unprecedented corruption and non-performance since 1999; one that has no single redeeming feature, not even the GSM phenomenon wrongly attributed to Obasanjo but which the thoroughly disreputable Abacha regime had, in fact, initiated. APC should let the world know that PDP luxuriates in illegalities such as abrogating the electorate and robbing the treasury blind. These negativities should be comprehensively enumerated and their evil consequences brought home vividly to Nigerians. The APC must show, very clearly, how and why, these are the very reasons an otherwise blessed country like Nigeria is wallowing in the abyss of ignominy with the poverty level of its citizens in the high 70s. The recent resignation of the chairman of SURE-P, though allegedly for health-related reasons, should best be seen in the fact that the programme was fast becoming a cesspool of patronage and corruption with which the decent man will never ever be connected. These inglorious facts about the PDP, therefore, impose a moral obligation of probity on all levels of the APC membership: leaders, officials and ordinary members alike, if it must lay claim to any higher moral ground which is a sine qua non for victory.
Ever a master of self deceit and unprecedented rigging in whatever level of election, local, state or federal, the PDP had been loudest in proclaiming on roof tops, how the exit of no less than five state governors and sundry legislators at all levels would not affect it. I imagine, therefore, that even if, as a result of its many problems, President Jonathan decides to dump the party today, some jokers like Gulak would claim that nothing has happened as long as Chairman Tukur remains his rambunctious and all-conquering self. It can only be a shame that President Jonathan could not see the disaster Chairman Tukur had become to the PDP. A well-heeled and aristocratic former governor, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, unfortunately, sees the party only as an extension of his vast holdings where he is the undisputed authority. He could, therefore, not tolerate the elected party secretary, nor did it matter to him whether or not meetings of the national executive of the party, which he saw as no more than the nominal boards of his many companies, met as statutorily expected. Rather, it was game for him to summarily dissolve state executive committees which he replaced with some fringe, unpopular members as long as his word would be law. The result was that when concerned members, state governors inclusive, raised these troubling issues with the president who is the party leader, it mattered nothing. Indeed, to ensure he had his way, Alhaji Tukur went back many decades to drag the one and only Umaru Dikko, to head his self-appointed Disciplinary Committee; all these while the soporific PDP leadership slept. Today, they can only gnash their teeth as it matters nothing to them either if their party could no longer field a governorship candidate from within its own ranks but must go shopping for one in other political parties. Nigerians have certainly not seen the last of PDP’s troubles as the party’s winter is already here.
