PDP as a house of scorpions

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is now bound to the bed of afflictions. No thanks to familiar spirits, to use a Pentecostal terminology, or  scorpions, who emit venom into the body of the previously robust party. The PDP looks terminally ill, breathing with difficulty. For those who witnessed the glory of the former PDP, its pitiable sight is a source of sorrow. The title of this column was a regular refrain at the PDP in 2005 when this writer passed through the party, like a passing glance. At the time, party chieftains expressed the fear that desperate wrestle for power had turned the party into a ‘house of scorpions.’ Scorpions are venomous and potentially deadly, so a house of scorpions suggested how hazardous, threatening, or volatile the PDP would become.

The ‘civil war’ in the party was difficult to stop

Even way back in 2005, party officials at Wadata Plaza in Wuse Zone 5, Abuja, operated with suspicion among themselves. The ‘civil war’ in the party was difficult to stop. Party officials and staff served the interests of competing governors. The management staff  stole and squeezed intelligence into the pockets of politicians with deep pockets. Nothing was truly top secret at the PDP. Decisions by the party’s organs were quickly leaked and shared among opposing forces who strategized to thwart or scuttle them, no matter the good intentions behind such decisions.

I fell into a hole of scorpions one day. How? A politician submitted a petition to the National Chairman through my office. All I did was to submit the document and its attachments. But by the next morning, rumour had spread that I was among the party’s officials recruited to unseat the governor of Anambra State. In honesty, I did not receive a dime from the person who submitted the petition. But no one would believe me; no party official would submit a petition to the appropriate quarters without being paid!  I then realized why the lifestyle of the tiniest officer could be glamorous. Staff members who did not seem to earn much from the party could breeze into the secretariat in a flashy car that would incite one to harass his luck.   Some acquired glistering assets.  Others possessed a stream of cashflow that enabled them to fly to foreign countries on holiday.  They used their positions and privileges to hunt for money from competing politicians who strategized to control the party.

File Photo: Acting National Chairman of the PDP, Ambassador Illya Umar Damagum

Twenty years ago, the party had been fragmented, with parts stuffed into the back pockets of political heavyweights who used it to negotiate power-sharing formula with presidents and governors. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in an attempt to put the party under his armpit, in 2005, nullified all membership cards held by party members. From Abuja to hamlets and wards across the country, the party engaged in grassroots mobilization for a new crop of leaders who were to be loyal to Obasanjo. The fresh registration put the party’s membership cards in the hands of a network tied to a chain held by the president in Aso Rock Presidential Villa. It effectively displaced other party chieftains whose loyalty to Obasanjo was in doubt. The rivalry was so intense that for every PDP election, there were conflicting lists of candidates and delegates. Powerplay coupled with hide-and-seek games marred the credibility of every electoral process and outcome. But after 2007, Obasanjo lost hold of the rudder and the hull of the ship. New masters wrestled them from him.

Unity has lost its denotative and connotative meaning in the PDP. ‘Progress’ is now visible in the party’s decline

The PDP lost its sail, not because it lost elections to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The party has lost its inner strength to scorpions who chased away genuine leaders and made nonsense of the mission and vision of the party. It is no longer  known for any ideology, though it claims to propound the principles of  social democracy, and its motor is ‘Justice, Unity, and Progress’. Justice is now a scarce virtue in the party. Unity has lost its denotative and connotative meaning in the PDP. ‘Progress’ is now visible in the party’s decline.

The party transports characters to visibility and political power; thereafter it consumes them. Today, out of the 18 former chairmen of the party, not up to three are proud to identify with the PDP. The late Chief Alex Ekwueme, the first chairman of the party, who was  credited with crafting the constitution of the PDP,  abandoned the party in bitterness, after being stabbed in the back in the contest for 2003 presidential ticket. Crying ‘betrayal’ Ekwueme scolded away from his Abuja residence newsmen who sought his comments on the election  after the 2003 party primaries. He then literally kept the party at ten arms length.

When the party lost power to the APC  in 2015, Ekwueme attributed the sorrowful outcome to the hijacking of the PDP by selfish interests: He had said, “We found it difficult to manage the party as a mass movement; unfortunately, some people who did not know how the party was formed turned it into a personal estate. They wanted to use my state, Anambra, to do re-registration, to exclude some people who did not agree with them. Others [political parties] were attracting new members; they [PDP leaders] were driving away members. The party lacked internal democracy.”

When the party lost power to the APC  in 2015, Ekwueme attributed the sorrowful outcome of the election to the hijacking of the PDP by selfish interests

Chief Barnabas Gemade who was a chairman for four years, from 2001 to 2004, is at present a chieftain of the All-Progressives Congress (APC). He was severely wounded by PDP’s scorpions. In his word: “When I ran the PDP, it was an excellent party. Thereafter, impunity took over and that is why so many of us left and went to other parties.” The late Vincent Ogbulafor, a former National Secretary and later National Chairman, was humiliated out of the party for insisting on the party’s rules. Okwesilizie Nwodo, Uche Secondus, Ahmed Makarfi, and  Ahmed Mu’azu all left the party’s chairmanship sad, cursing the PDP for violating their internal order of doing things to make room for desperate power mongers.

The face of once magisterial and powerful Bamanga Tukur is missing at the party’s meetings. Tukur was one of the authoritative chairmen to run the PDP at a period of chaos.  Now, he hardly attends the party’s meetings. The once towering Senator Ahmadu Ali, who led the party to massive  victory in 2007, has sunk into oblivion. Former President Obasanjo, the most influential president produced by the PDP,  has lost interest in the party that sponsored him to power for eight years! Even Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s voice has faded. Most of these political characters were bitten and scared away by the party’s scorpions; they are nursing their wounds; they are now wary of the PDP.

File photo: Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is now hardly involved in the PDP’s affairs

The party is in tatters today because its leadership violated one of the beautiful codes that distinguished the party: power rotation between North and South. Though advocates of ‘the best candidates should be elected as president’ see power rotation among the geopolitical zones as undemocratic, its adoption by the PDP in 1998 provided inclusiveness, in spite of numbers. The logic was that if the game of numbers is the only one played on the field of Nigerian politics, it follows that only the North, on account of its population, shall eternally produce the country’s president. Power rotation attracted the party to potential presidential aspirants from the North and the South.

The PDP was unable to resist a temptation that the APC rejected when governors of the APC threw out Buhari’s plot to impose Senator Ahmed Lawan on them

However, in 2023, this beautiful code, imitated by even the APC, was cast aside. That failure to reserve the 2023 presidential ticket for the South was the major trigger of the current decline and fading away of the PDP. So-called party chieftains injured the sensibility of party loyalists by handing over the presidential ticket to Atiku Abubakar, a Fulani, after a disastrous eight years of former President Muhammadu Buhari, also a Fulani from the North. The party should have fearlessly put the ticket on the table for aspirants from the southern half of the country. The PDP was unable to resist a temptation that the APC rejected when governors of the APC threw out Buhari’s plot to impose Senator Ahmed Lawan on them. The flame of anger from the South, due to the wrong judgement in 2023, is blazing and burning the PDP’s glory to ashes.

The party should fumigate its living room, bedrooms, kitchen, study, conference room, toilets, and the bush around its walls against the scorpions and scorplings that have converted the secretariat to their eternal abod

The party needs a man who can  trample upon scorpions that chase good fortunes away. In Luke 11:17 Jesus says clearly: “…Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.” The scorpions in the PDP are more ferocious and ruinous than the dragons charging at it from outside the party. It may be true, as the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party alleged recently,  that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s agents were stoking the downfall of the party. But if some double-facet insiders in the party did not sell-out there is no way Tinubu could penetrate and pull down the pillars of the PDP. The party should fumigate its living room, bedrooms, kitchen, study, conference room, toilets, and the bush around its walls against the scorpions and scorplings that have converted the secretariat to their eternal abode. The scorpions have overstayed their welcome after over two decades now. Someone should fumigate the party and sweep the mess from Wadata Plaza. Only then shall PDP breath like a living political party.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

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