The ripple effects of the defections that upended political calculations in Delta State and the country as a whole will continue to manifest for some time until and after the 2027 poll. Any analysis of the ripple effects will, however, be done piecemeal until the next election is done and perhaps forgotten. As most commentators have noted, the Delta defections, which involved nearly everyone that mattered in the PDP, were unprecedented and cataclysmic. The governor defected, his predecessor defected, their estranged mentor is rumoured to be preparing to defect, and it is a shame that, going by the fever burning the state, traditional rulers could not follow suit because they are culturally and constitutionally insulated from politics.
Two or three fallout present themselves boldly to the analyst, not necessarily because they are the most impactful or volcanic, but because they simply seem remarkable in the way they have presented to the public. Much more than Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, who pulled the whole edifice down on his former party, former governor Ifeanyi Okowa gave what seemed to be the most colourful, robust and enthusiastic account of the defections, including their justifications and future outcomes. Not only did he second-guess the political intentions of former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who was the PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 poll, he also denounced his motives and political judgement. Alhaji Atiku, Dr Okowa groaned, regrettably vied for the presidency when the mood of the country was for a southern candidate in line with the party’s informal rotational policy. He also scoffed his association with that deviant step against the wishes of Deltans. He did not say whether if the ticket had won the presidential poll he would entertain any doubt or remorse – in short whether he was not just being wise after the event.
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And to add insult to injury, Dr Okowa predicted that that the former vice president was also probably on his way out of the PDP, making it difficult for the serial presidential contender to cavil at his former running mate’s joyous leap into the embrace of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Were the feelings of Alhaji Atiku injured by the apostasy of his former comrade-in-arms? He was actually sanguine about his former comrade’s defection, perhaps because his own fateful leap was pending. It turned out, though it was not initially clear, that Dr Okowa had alerted the former vice president of his plan to jettison the PDP. He did not say whether he told his former leader that he was headed for the hated APC. Nor was it clear at first whether Alhaji Atiku grasped the seismic import of the defections, and how insanely speculative and scurrilous a section of the public would be once the news got out. Now, if the former vice president planned to leap into a chasm of his own making, it would certainly be impolitic to begin castigating those who do, especially seeing that he had been a serial and enthusiastic defector, the leaping cat of the Federal Republic.
Summing up why he was remorseless about defecting, Dr Okowa suggested that once it was clear that the PDP Governors’ Forum had rebuffed Alhaji Atiku’s newfangled coalition, he knew that the game was up. Whatever other motives a skeptical public had read into Dr Okowa’s defection, once the PDP governors made short shrift of the plot to assemble a coalition to face the APC, it would amount to tilting at the windmill to continue hoping for a miracle mediated by the leading opposition party. Everyone, except perhaps the former presidential candidate himself, knew that 2023 was his best chance to win the presidency. But characteristic of his poor judgement and consistent poor calls, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He stood pat on the issue of rejigging the party’s zoning arrangement, remained intransigent on the subject of pacifying the G-5 PDP governors who broke ranks with him over his decision on the party’s zoning arrangement, trusted the wrong journeymen in the presidency who promised him support, and reposed unalloyed faith in the marabouts who promised him a rosy and glorious future on the throne.
Who could have predicted also that in his response to the Delta defections, former senate president Bukola Saraki would sanctimoniously condemn Mr Oborevwori and his retinue for abandoning the PDP ship in the middle of the ocean? But he did, and piquantly for that matter, on his X handle two Thursdays ago. Sneering at the defectors, he said, “Yes, it is unbecoming and shocking for the running mate to the standard-bearer of a leading party to abandon ship to join the ruling party. This is unprecedented and nobody should try to justify such an act with the talk of being put under pressure. It is simply a sign of how low we have sunk as a polity.” He concluded with innuendoes by admonishing party faithful to stay the course. “The PDP is better with fewer members who are loyal, sincere, determined, dedicated, and committed to its ideals than with many who lack conviction,” he exhaled. He made no reference to his own past defections and political indiscretions, preferring instead to interpret the Delta defections from his episodic view of history, viewing them almost as a series of discontinuities.
PDP chieftains, at least such among them as remained in the party, will buoy up themselves by exaggerating their capacity to reinvent their party. But they have had more than a decade to reform and reinvent their party, and they had before and after every electoral defeat spurned the need to engage in the customary and ineluctable introspection needed to reposition their party. Suddenly, the politically nomadic Dr Saraki has begun to believe that a reformation appears possible, and has glowingly spoken of that possibility in the context of the principles and nuances of democracy. He said with flourish: “Let the rest of us who want to stay concentrate on rebuilding the party and refocusing it to play the role of a viable opposition…Our democracy can only thrive with a strong opposition capable of holding the ruling party accountable and providing credible alternatives to the electorate.” Some people think it is a little too late for the PDP, which has now yielded so much space to the APC thereby strangulating itself. With double the number of states to the PDP’s, however, the APC must caution itself against any kind of exuberance. Today’s ruling party was once nearly down and out in their various legacy parties’ redoubts, as the PDP controlled about 28 governorship seats. The mill of justice grinds slowly, it is said, but it grinds finely. Nothing must ever be ruled out completely, not even when the polity is visited with volcanic eruptions of the kind that has sent Delta and the country reeling.
