The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has not yet imploded; but it could do so in the coming months if the cracks in the party are further widened by insensitivity and mismanagement. As a few of its leading lights have warned, the crisis in the party could lead to its disintegration. It is not yet known whether those alleged by President Goodluck Jonathan camp to be behind the crisis anticipate the severity of the cracks and the turbulent course it is taking; what is, however, evident at the moment is that the disquiet felt by party leaders when the drama began is gradually yielding to panic as the disagreement worsens and spreads further afield than they initially foresaw. The president is thoroughly miffed by the crisis and is getting increasingly desperate; chairman of the party, Bamanga Tukur, who had long acted as a medieval tyrant, but is now talking like a modern autocrat, has become even more censorious; and other party elders have either seemed to snicker behind closed doors or chafe hypocritically to convey impression of concern.
It is hard to determine right now whether the PDP will survive this turbulence, the worst since its formation, or since the party and its leadership were hijacked by the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and his scheming and fawning aides. What is apparent, however, is that even if it survives, the party is unlikely to retain the ferocious determination that has seen it talk and act recklessly against the constitution and public interest. A few of its leaders suggest the party will emerge from the present crisis stronger and more united. But already, its confidence has been shaken, and party bosses, like autocrats everywhere, have spoken temptingly of using the security forces against the breakaway factional leaders whom they describe as traitors and common felons. Given the points on which the two camps disagree, and the violent rhetoric deployed by them in digging in their heels, a rapprochement would almost certainly involve a loss of face on either side, if not political suicide.
The war in the PDP may still be at its infancy, and may not yet manifest definite frontlines, but the demands of the two camps are at least candidly self-centred enough to enable a fair assessment of what the problem is and where the crisis seems headed. The breakaway faction led by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Kawu Baraje demands the ousting of the party chairman, Alhaji Tukur, the resolution of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) in favour of the Governor Rotimi Amaechi faction, cessation of EFCC harassment, and the exclusion of Dr Jonathan from the 2015 presidential race. The Jonathan/Tukur faction disdainfully declines to negotiate Dr Jonathan’s right to contest in 2015, and more peremptorily demands the dissolution of the Atiku/Baraje faction and subjection of the faction to PDP rules and conflict resolution mechanisms.
On the surface, it would seem these mutually antagonistic positions are the bane of the current PDP crisis, or civil war, as some have colourfully put it. After many interventions by top party officials and former presidents, and perhaps some cynically disinterested discussions between the warring camps, the stalemate has remained unbroken. No one had the right to insist Dr Jonathan could not exercise his constitutional right to run for the presidency in 2015, the president’s aides and supporters said forcefully. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) could not be prevailed upon not to perform its lawful functions, others said in response to the demands of the Atiku/Baraje camp. Alhaji Tukur could not be sacked without recourse to due party process, his camp said triumphantly. As hardline as these positions are, they are, in my view, neither the cause nor the trigger of the current PDP crisis, nor yet the reasons for the trenchancy of the disagreements and the irreconcilability of the two positions. They are merely symptoms of a deeper, underlying morass that has eroded the foundation of the party and corroded the fabric that previously knit its members together.
The party has not only split temporarily, and its top leaders shown little interest in reconciliation, it is also reported, subject to final corroboration, that seven governors, about 20 senators and 57 members of the Lower House have also indicated they were breaking ranks with the Jonathan/Tukur camp. This may be unsettling and irritating to the Jonathan rerun agenda. But even if reconciliation were to be secured in the coming weeks in spite of the undeniable acerbity of the two camps, it would still not solve the structural and leadership anomalies eating up the party and making it dysfunctional. Sooner or later the party was bound to implode. That that implosion seems to be coming earlier than expected merely underscores the gravity of the contradictions within the party, contradictions that were conceived, enacted and reinforced during the Obasanjo years. Three fundamental reasons account for the severity of the PDP crisis, and may explain why the crisis may be intractable at best or insoluble at worst.
The first is that once Chief Obasanjo and his aides supplanted the moral minority that formed the core of the party, and vitiated the principles and practices that were designed to ennoble the party and make it formidable, the party began to list dangerously. Some of the party’s early chairmen were not perfect, and in fact a few of them lent themselves to be used to validate Chief Obasanjo’s unprincipled and dishonest grab for absolute power. But they at least exuded a breath of fresh air and embraced the general principles of democracy. Even in the giddy early years of the PDP, it was hard, for instance, to imagine a Solomon Lar or an Audu Ogbeh act like a proponent of electoral chicanery of the first rank similar to the flip-flopping Vincent Ogbulafor or the ingratiating Ahmadu Ali. Within Chief Obasanjo’s two undistinguished terms in office, the party transformed from a gentle and grasping conservative group, gingerly upholding its own moral and ideological principles, to an aggressive, remorseless and fanatical reactionary animated by, and even proud of, electoral fraud and all the base emotions and practices humans are capable of.
Second is the simple fact that the anomalies and distortions first grafted into the country’s political system by Chief Obasanjo have been underscored, for 16 years, by varying degrees of political and especially electoral malfeasances which his successors perpetrated, from the wearied but now deceased Umaru Yar’Adua, to the distracted but disguisedly ruthless Dr Jonathan. By any stretch of imagination, it is hard to remedy 16 years of unbroken filth and falsehood. Indeed, as fate would have it, since 1999, Nigeria has been gifted three gentlemen who dedicated themselves, or were dedicated by their aides, to adding to the country’s misery. The present PDP crisis is, therefore, a culmination of 16 years of misery in the party, not just a haggle over 2015 presidential poll. I do not exaggerate.
Third and most important factor exacerbating the PDP crisis is the unqualifiedly misshapen Jonathan government, which seems more adroit in worsening bad things than in bettering good things, whether they are principles, values or honour. Like Chief Obasanjo before him, he has done nothing spectacular about roads worth anyone ascribing the label of a legacy, but of course his argument will always be that he was not the architect of the decay. He has not offered the country a specific vision of what education should be, nor has he bettered what he met. Instead, he has met the decline in education with his idiosyncratic lack of honour, refusing to uphold the agreement his predecessor and himself entered into with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in 2009 and 2010. It would ground the country, his Information minister said apocalyptically. Dr Jonathan has done much worse, of course. Not only is he himself uninspired, he has not inspired anyone, and has had little interaction with artists, poets, scientists, social scientists, and other noteworthy intellectuals, local and international.
It is this unremitting dullness of his government that has instigated revolt against him and the party, especially when patriots recoil in horror as they contemplate another four years of the Jonathan nightmare. Alhaji Tukur, I emphasise, is a mere cipher in the disagreement. I believe that if the Jonathan government had been spectacular in many respects and charismatic in more ways than one, few brave hearts would have had the courage to rise against him: indeed, it would have been suicidal. For then we would have had brilliant and unprecedented use of men and material, the forging of a stirring national identity that transcends tribe, religion and class, and the enactment of great policies driven by far-reaching visions of democracy, federalism, rule of law and public probity. Sadly for Dr Jonathan, any revolt against him now invariably acquires the distinct aura of patriotism, and rebel leaders, whether they fail or succeed, are likely to be canonised in the consciousness of the people. Rather than be chastened by the massiveness of the revolt against both his government and his person, Dr Jonathan and his doting aides appear set to go for broke by wielding state power against his opponents in absolute disregard of the constitution and elementary restraint and common sense.
But even if he were to overwhelm his opponents and the dissenters within his party, there is nothing he can do— partly because he is not capable of it – to mollify the rage against himself and his government. Worse, because the modest amount of principles and values that made the PDP to cohere in its early days have been denuded by years of incompetent rule, it is unlikely that victory over his enemies will be sufficient to snatch the party from the jaws of confusion and disintegration. I had hoped that for the sake of democracy we were on our way to a two-party system, especially with the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC). And though I concluded two weeks ago that the PDP was exhausted, I had nonetheless hoped that the muted patriots within its ranks could somehow rise up to retrieve the party from the hands of its charlatans. Now, I fear greatly that my hopes were misplaced, and that perhaps we would need to seek another party to duel with the APC, if the PDP and its leading lights cannot shake off the suicidal instinct to which their incompetence and sycophantic relationships seem to be leading them.
