WE are told that a steering committee set up by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is working on an agenda called “Restart PDP Project”. The committee, we are also told, has identified a number of factors that led to the party’s loss of the control of the central government at the 2015 general elections. Some of the identified challenges include imposition of candidates, lack of internal democracy, seizure and manipulation of party structures by state governors, and poor reward system, among others.
The steering committee, no doubt, has a job to do and should be encouraged by lovers of democracy to find ways and means to make the country’s largest political party to be more disposed to time-honoured democratic tenets. Some, but certainly not all, of the aforementioned factors may have affected the fortunes of the party in the last elections, one way or another. Many readily point to imposition of candidates which actually means the same thing as lack of internal democracy as the major reason for the floundering of the PDP. They may have a point here. But it can still be safely said that neither this factor nor the others already mentioned was really responsible for the party’s ouster from the Presidency.
We say so because the party that took over, the All Progressives Congress (APC), does not parade better democratic credentials than the PDP. The APC is as guilty as the PDP when the issue of internal democracy comes up for mention. Certainly, the other drawbacks which were said to have affected the fortunes of PDP will come to afflict the APC now that it is at the commanding heights at the Presidency. We should expect the APC to exhibit the PDP tendencies because there is nothing fundamentally different between the two parties. Both are peopled by persons of similar political backgrounds. Most of the people who lead the APC today are renegades from the PDP. What may have changed about them may be their political platform but not their political persuasion or disposition. All of them are still, largely, birds of identical plumage.
This notwithstanding, the PDP as a political party can go ahead to restart itself in whatever way it deems fit. It is a worthwhile venture. Our democracy will have a lot to benefit from a reformed PDP. The new PDP, if it will ever emerge, will take itself a lot more seriously because it will do battle with another behemoth called the APC. Since one is as formidable as the other, none will be cavalier in its approach to power. The PDP must have come to terms with the fact that it did not realise when the rain began to beat it and therefore did not know when it got wet. That, certainly, is the reason for its frenetic moves to reclaim power at the centre.
But while embarking on this journey, the starting point of which may be the project embarked upon by the steering committee, the PDP must still come around to face the true facts that militated against it in the last general elections. The point to note here is that the PDP was overpowered by sabotage in the 2015 elections. A sizable majority of the party’s power brokers constituted themselves into a gang of conspirators whose sole agenda was to ensure that the apple carte was upset. The apple carte in this case was the Jonathan Presidency, no more, no less. The PDP, strictly speaking, was not the target. President Goodluck Jonathan was the object that was targeted for a fall. But the PDP had to be affected because the fall of the presidency under Jonathan meant the same thing as the fall of the PDP, the party that formed the government that was programmed for defeat.
It was not expected, within the fold of committed PDP members that Jonathan would fall. But the plot against the Jonathan presidency worked for two major reasons. First, those who were poised for a continuation of the Jonathan presidency were unaware of the level of conspiracy that was being directed at Jonathan. Their attention was diverted by overconfidence. They were confident because they were supporters of a sitting president who has enormous powers to turn the tide in his favour. But unknown to the Jonathan enthusiasts and optimists, while the party’s leadership campaigned, some key elements among them were grinning at Jonathan and whatever he represented. They brandished PDP tags in the day but wore APC togas at night. That was why they did not campaign for him in the actual sense of the word.
They were not vibrant at PDP campaign rallies. They never joined issues with the opposition even in the face of brutal vilification of their party. They maintained a studied silence. The result was that the APC assumed the moral high ground and seized the stage. PDP, the ruling party, began to gasp for breath. The APC became the moral compass which pointed the way. In all of this, PDP groped in the dark. It was under this cover that the conspirators masked their disdain for Jonathan. They avoided the route of open repugnance so as to escape stigmatization should Jonathan win reelection. Adamu Mu’azu, then then national chairman of the party, was the most notorious face of this deceit.
Second, President Jonathan’s disposition to the office he occupied created a lot of room for manipulation and sabotage. As president, Jonathan did not take as much charge as he ought to. He was a god man who wanted to give everybody around him a chance and a voice. That, in itself, was not bad. But he did not know when and where to draw the line. He was considerate to a fault. That was why the conspirators infiltrated his ranks. That was why they were able to pull the rug off his feet while he was still seated. Jonathan did not understand that politics is the most treacherous enterprise that anybody can embark upon. Once you are in politics, you must be prepared to face betrayal and abandonment from even your most trusted allies.
Nigerian politics is as terrible as that. Jonathan was a stranger to this fact. He was so relaxed about it all to the extent that Professor Attahiru Jega, the man he appointed to deliver a credible election, was busy thwarting the process and the president did not call him to order. Jonathan felt that if he tried to rein Jega in, his opponents would cash in on that and accuse him of plotting to rig the election. He did not want to be accused. He wanted to remain decent even while he was vying for the highest political office in the land. That was a tragic error.
Now that the plot against Jonathan has worked, largely out of his own making, the saboteurs that sold PDP to the power mongers on the other side of the spectrum may now beat a retreat. They are likely to return to PDP since their objective has been achieved. Those of them who found their way to the then opposition APC may feel ill at ease remaining within the party’s fold owing to the challenge of reintegration. While the elections lasted, the APC needed all the PDP renegades in this world to give it electoral advantage. But now that the election has been won and lost, the original owners of APC are no longer comfortable in the midst of the strange bedfellows.
A fight has since ensued between the strange elements that coalesced to give the APC a fighting chance and eventual victory at the polls. That explains why the National Assembly became the hotbed of controversy as soon as APC took over the reins of governance. The combatants may have sheathed their swords momentarily. But the monster will certainly rear its ugly head again. PDP’s journey of rediscovery could benefit from the cracks within APC if it (PDP) has a sense of direction.
Culled from the DAILY SUN
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