Has ‘fresh air’ reached Sokoto?

The PDP has always scuttled any attempt that Nigerians have made to get the process of democracy right. Between 1999 and 2005 for example, the party was made to change its leadership about five times. During the same period, we saw how five Senate Presidents emerged from the South-East geo-political zone, availing all of the […]

The PDP has always scuttled any attempt that Nigerians have made to get the process of democracy right. Between 1999 and 2005 for example, the party was made to change its leadership about five times. During the same period, we saw how five Senate Presidents emerged from the South-East geo-political zone, availing all of the states in that zone a touch and feel of the office, all at the expense of the nation’s democracy.

Between 2003 and 2007, Nigerians saw the manner in which the leadership of the country through the instrumentality of the party removed, illegally, several governors in the name of corruption. We also saw how the Supreme Court declared the action illegal. We saw how in 2003, President Obasanjo ransacked all the states in the South-West by deploying soldiers and police to stop serving governors from casting their votes because the PDP wanted to rig. They did rig, and took over all the states in the zone, except for Lagos where it was volatile thus impossible. Nigeria experienced some relief when President Yar’adua became busy, battling with his health so to a large degree, the PDP menace was temporarily suspended.

After the removal of Ogbulafor, we also saw the way the next Chairman, Okwesilizi Nwodo was removed on the convention grounds of the party. This, in my view, is a clear example of how the nation and its ruling party were sliding into darkness more and more.

President Jonathan used the governors to break the laws of his party by disregarding the zoning arrangement when he contested the 2011 presidential elections. This is no longer news because we all saw what happened and what is now happening. The same president and his party were shameless enough to return to us speaking about zoning, when the posts in the National Assembly were to be shared. Many Nigerians laughed and saw the government’s true colour.

Now that some elections are to be held to fill vacancies in states where elections were annulled after the 2007 charade, the party and the presidency are again deploying unholy strategies to draw back the hands of the nation’s polity into those dark days of Obasanjo’s fundamentalist politics. We all saw how Timipriye Sylva, the Governor of Bayelsa State was through the use of force removed from his party’s ballot. Presidential aides are desperately defending their boss as unrelated to the Bayelsa PDP crisis.

I do not know Sylva personally, but I do know Henry Dickson, the beneficiary, very well. My complaint is on the strategy that the government has adopted in delisting Sylva and replacing him with Dickson. The strategy is unorthodox and a sad reminder of what Nigeria underwent during the eight years of General Obasanjo. The party and government seem to have succeeded in Bayelsa. The strategy now is to deploy some to other states in the country where the governors are not on the favored list.

The next bus stop, I hear is Sokoto, where the sins of the governor are that he was indifferent when his representative in the House of Reps insisted on the call of his colleagues to contest for the Speakership of the House. Governor Wammako has since been seen by the Villa as the culprit behind the scene but the missing point here is that just as the government did deploy all its powers and resources and failed in the Speakership battle in the House of Reps, so it shall woefully fail in Sokoto.

I understand that the Minister of Sports is being drafted to do that presidential bidding in Sokoto. It will be unfortunate if Yusuf Sulaiman will honor that request because, he should know more than any of them in Abuja, that it will be an impossible task. In any case, the belief of the supreme power of state negatively deployed will again be defeated.

I’m of the view that the government may succeed in Bayelsa and maybe elsewhere, but I am sure, like the Tambuwal project, it will be another defeat for the Aso Villa. I wish to point out to the PDP and its government that they are taking the whole nation for a ride by abusing our sensibilities. It is high time the party and its government allow natural political air blow across the land. I don’t know if this is the brand of fresh air which the current government promised to give Nigerians.