Tag: BUHARI

In his response to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) name-calling and blame game over the judicial reversals in Akwa Ibom and Rivers, Lai Mohammed, the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman and now minister-designate, suggested that rather than whining, the PDP should rebrand and repackage itself to appeal to the electorate. That was what the APC did last year, swore Alhaji Mohammed, and that was why the party won the 2015 polls. That the APC won the polls is not in dispute; and that it repackaged itself, especially assembling a viable though tentative coalition, is also not controversial. What is in dispute is why the APC won. Indeed, it appears overall that the APC won the poll because the PDP first lost it. Alhaji Mohammed must put things in perspective.

However, there is no argument whatsoever that the PDP needs to repackage itself in order to reclaim its former appeal. As the APC spokesman correctly observed, PDP’s 16 years in office and four electoral victories were achieved on false foundations. Its ideology was suspect, and its methods, not to say its competence in office, were abysmal. It subscribed to no inspiring ethical mantra, and it had very little vision of where Nigeria should be and its place in the world. It therefore won elections dubiously and malevolently. It muscled the system, corrupted everything it touched, and entrenched a most vicious culture of doing business, practicing law, and securing the country. In fact, the PDP had no pretext to be called a party; and when it ruled, for that was what it did, it also had no pretext to be called a government.

It is therefore not surprising that in two separate statements last week the PDP blamed everybody but itself for its electoral debacle and its inability to sustain the victories it managed to coax from the country’s compromised law enforcement agencies and lax electoral system. The PDP argument and suppositions, as rendered by both its publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, and national secretary, Wale Oladipo, are untenable. In Prof Oladipo’s words last Thursday: “The undue interferences by the executive arm of government in the activities of the judiciary, legislature and INEC, using the Department of States Service (DSS), is clearly unacceptable to the PDP as well as the Nigerian people, and the party has resolved to vigorously resist such. The PDP finds it offensive and provocative the judiciary’s handling of cases involving it in election tribunals in some states, particularly Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Imo, Taraba, Ogun, Plateau and Lagos. The tainted judgments of these tribunals, which are evidently products of arm-twisting from the nation’s security operatives under the direct command of an APC member, remains unacceptable to us.”

Advocating and instigating Nigerians “to rise and use all lawful means to resist anti-democratic forces now using the judiciary and security agencies in their desperate scheme to subvert the will of the people and destroy the nation’s democracy,” the more acerbic Mr Metuh further suggested very strongly: “Let it be known, and clearly too, that no matter the strong-arm, threats and manipulations by the APC government, the PDP is not willing to and will never surrender the mandate freely given to us by the people in states where we won in the last general election, neither are the people of those states willing to allow sectional invaders to exert influence on those to be in charge of their affairs.”

He then adds: “In the last five months, after conceding defeat at the presidential elections and other polls where we lost, Nigerians are witnesses to the fact that the PDP has remained calm and steadfast to its commitment to providing mature, decent and civil opposition with more interest in the peace, unity and corporate interest of our dear nation. However, the ruling party and the APC Federal Government in their dictatorial inclinations are much more interested in playing crude, selfish and sectional politics and trying to use manipulation of judicial processes to forcefully take over states where we genuinely won in the elections.”

The old guard still directing the affairs of the PDP appears dead set against reality and change. They have sought to divert attention away from their incompetence and unethical politics. They will continue to resist the change, remoulding and renewal their party needs to confront the APC now and in the future. Without reforming itself and restructuring its operations, without changing its leadership in a revolutionary sweep of the Augean stables, it is impossible for the party to midwife the positive outcomes it dreams of. Until a group of idealists within the party —  probably young men in their forties, digitally inspired, brilliant and ethical — take over the leadership of the PDP, the already ossified party will continue to atrophy and die. It is in the interest of Nigeria for the PDP to renew its strength and anchor itself on an inspiring and lofty foundation in order to offer the alternative that many well-wishers think it capable of. The country needs it; the APC, whether it agrees or not, also needs a strong and healthy opposition; and the PDP itself needs to be a healthy and vibrant opposition to sustain its own life.

Except it tells itself a horrendous lie, most of the victories it procured in past elections were manipulated. The unraveling taking place at the moment is not orchestrated by the judiciary, as the PDP falsely suggests. It is the right thing to happen; and if the PDP will look at the positive side, the process of electoral reversal is helping the party to shed weight and to rediscover its real self and where its strength lies. It does not need the so-called wealthy states of Akwa Ibom and Rivers to function and remake its image. What it needs are the right and revolutionary ideas, bright young men and women able to seize the moment, and a sense of being that is transcendental, unflappable and almost immortal. This column is directly calling for a revolution in the PDP to snatch the party from the hands of the indolent and visionless masters that had constrained its future for far too long.

The PDP and Nigeria need this change in the opposition party simply because despite the enormous goodwill that swept APC into office a few months ago, the ruling party has been unable to pull its weight. It has proved lax in controlling its men, and its highly vaunted social and economic road map has become an archival document ignored and disdained by its leaders. Its dominance in the National Assembly has led the party, not to lofty deeds, but to opprobrious manifestation of discord and aimlessness. For a party that evinced vigour and audacity late last year and early this year, it has appeared today like a man without a soul, enervated, absentminded and fractious. Its number one citizen, President Muhammadu Buhari, though it is an exaggeration to say he is dictatorial as the PDP argues, has been unable to rise to the pedestal the last electioneering anticipated.

If the PDP can reform, renew and measure up to the hopes of the electorate, and if the APC is unable to articulate the lofty vision contained in its founding documents, nor redeem the utopia it eagerly philosophised about many months back, then the opposition can indeed flower and offer perhaps the real change that the change party can’t seem to comprehend. It is not true, as the PDP fallaciously reasons, that President Buhari can’t lead as a democrat in a democracy. What is, however, true is that so far, President Buhari seems paralysed by either his anxieties over democracy or inundated by the shenanigans in his party, or both. He will have to come out of his shell, avoid making the kind of plaintive statements he made last week about a broken and fallen economy, and boldly and courageously enunciate the requisite vision and structure that will reinvigorate Nigeria. But if he will not do it, and cannot be compelled, then let a reformed and renewed PDP seize the high ground and orchestrate a new age of enlightenment, the nirvana of Nigerians’ hopes and dreams.