Between the old and the New PDP

As a student of power and politics, I have always known that policies are double edged swords. Everyone is affected one way or the other. One is either a beneficiary or a victim of policy as such what is happening around you either or must be of tremendous concern to you.A few months ago I […]

As a student of power and politics, I have always known that policies are double edged swords. Everyone is affected one way or the other. One is either a beneficiary or a victim of policy as such what is happening around you either or must be of tremendous concern to you.
A few months ago I wrote a piece titled, Now that the PDP s dying’ and several other commentators who see the party as the realization of certain pecuniary ends turned the matter upside down and thought otherwise. This is not to say that even now, people like Ahmed Gulak, President Jonathan’s erstwhile political advisor would not retain his narrow held view that the crisis is a not a major issue.
Since its formation and eventual surrender to General Obasanjo who as pitifully elected the president after the 1999 polls through the share sympathy of the military, it was clear that the PDP had lost focus, direction and wisdom and thus endangering the nation’s body politics. This matter has since come to pass and the party in its way to the grave for permanent rest either in peace or in pieces.
What has remained very clear since the machinations and the short circuiting began has been the faith in several citizens that the only thing that lasts is sincerity and I do not know why most Nigerian politicians especially of the old PDP extraction have maintained so much distance between what they do and minimal level of integrity.
When the party selected its leaders at every turn in the corner one feature predominated – the will of those at the top of the hierarchy. Nigerians have preached severally on the need for internal party democracy but at every turn in the corner again, the PDP would come out with new tricks to deal with the will of the people.
We have said time without number that the implication of such actions would definitely come to pass but that has never been listened to until Bamanga Tukur was hoisted on the party sometime last year. The old man since then assumed maximum power and was ready to deal brutally with any decent from any quarters within the space of the party.
He moved like a soldier. We thought Ahmadu Ali was cruel until we came face to face with Bamanga Tukur. He run the party as a section of his business empire and all must comply otherwise they are either suspended or expelled from the party.
I am sure in the months that Bamanga held forth, more people were either suspended, expelled from the party than new members that came in. what a leader! What a party!
There was this young man I was reading on Facebook recently who prayed fervently that any attempt to remove Bamanga as the Chairman of the PDP should not succeed because according to him any sensible replacement may mean correcting the PDP and to him that is what the nation desires at this material time after the party has failed the nation in the last over fourteen years.
Now that the party has broken down into two, the message is clear! Nigerians must join hands to deal with the old order and bring forth a new one. The old order of course as we all know represents backwardness and incapacity. There is the need to move this nation forward so that all and sundry could drink form the fountain of plenty that the nation is blessed with.
I thump up for the new PDP and enjoin all and sundry who are truly lovers of democracy to join in the struggle for liberating Nigeria from the clutches of those who have made things not just difficult it impossible so that our children can inherit a system that is functional, selfless and orderly as against this trash that the old order has perpetrated in our dear country Nigeria.
The 7 Governors that led the rebellion are heroic. It was Frantz Fanon who said that ‘Each generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it’ I believe that the task ahead of this PDP 7 is to rid the nation of the rascality that the PDP has put us in.
Let me again use this opportunity to issue a word of warning to the G7. This is politics. There is no way you can have any meaningful reconciliation under the current order. The president and his men may even go on their knees to beg and pretend that there will be no negative repercussion in the event that peace is made.
I say loud and clear that it is a lie. If you doubt me, ask Atiku Abubakar! The battle to save your party and Nigeria as a whole has just begun and it must be democratic means. Anything short of that will not augur well for you and for Nigeria.
The mess created in the last few years has been traumatic and it will take years of sensible leadership to right these wrongs. We cannot afford to look the other way when ‘lesser mortals’ all over the continent are getting their acts together and doing things right. On our own case, things are falling from bad to worst. This we cannot afford to continue with and change thus becomes inevitable.
Nigerians must support the new order to rid the nation of these pests. If schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure are functioning, we will all be the beneficiaries. Now that they are not working we all are the losers. Our children are suffering and we are suffocating their tomorrow just for the grid of our today.
Religion, region and tribe are colloquial issues that they use often to seek political support and legitimize those illegitimate political gains that they force out of people. Good governance is the answer. We need power, roads, schools, hospitals and other basic socio-economic and political infrastructure that would support life and activity.
We welcome the new initiative.