PDP and its chairmen

Ordinarily there wouldn’t have been any problem with the high turnover but the fact that six out of the seven chairmen were made to vacate office unceremoniously as a result of one presidential anger or the other. Except for Colonel Ahmadu Ali, there was no other chairman of the party that left as at when […]

Ordinarily there wouldn’t have been any problem with the high turnover but the fact that six out of the seven chairmen were made to vacate office unceremoniously as a result of one presidential anger or the other. Except for Colonel Ahmadu Ali, there was no other chairman of the party that left as at when due.
Starting with the Late Solomon Lar who was the party’s first chairman after the Jos convention to the last, Bamanga Tukur who was late in his life edged out by the share crises that he created on the belief that at over eighty years he had some strength in the reservoir to play the errand for a sitting president against the components of the Nigerian federation.
I knew Bamanga wasn’t going to last the very time he made confrontation with the party’s governors his priority. This though was the major landmark that in the first place encouraged the Jonathan’s armature political think tank to settle for the octogenarian in whom they saw an octopus who had the credentials to trim to size the wings of those governors who have always determined the direction that the party and government took.
Bamanga suspended and even expelled governors from the party. He wasn’t elected; he was simply confirmed by a national convention. In fact he lost the preliminary shadow elections in the North East but when they came to Abuja, he was anointed. He reigned supreme and the sole purpose of all his bravado was that he would arm-twist the governors of the party and give Goodluck Jonathan a second term ticket. What a syllabus of error!
In the beginning, the Late Lar become too independent and felt too old to be toyed by the Obasanjo presidency and not sooner than the government was formed, he was removed and replaced. Barnabas Gemade was there, so was Audu Ogbe, A FANTASTIC POLITICIAN I USE TO ADMIRE SINCE MY UNIVERSITY DAYS when he was one of the youngest and certainly the most vibrant minister of the Shagari administration in early 1980s. They all were removed by the president for reasons that were personal to President Obasanjo. Ahmadu Ali came, saw and played it right as they always did with his boss, General Obasanjo.
An election was conducted in 2007 and their candidate was a sick man while the deputy was not any healthier as my elder brother Timawus Matthias would say, Nigeria was left with a president without a kidney and a vice without a liver. The president died and the vice became.
It was only during the short stay of Umaru Yar’adua that the PDP remained for upward of two years with one chairman.
Soon after Yar’adua passed away, Jonathan and his men removed Vincent Ogbulafor for daring to say the slot was for the North. Soon after, he was replaced with a fine politician and a medical doctor, Okwesilize Nwodo who again could not see the light of the day because he thought he could redeem the image of the PDP and make them do elections and respect Nigerians. He was removed and long after, the erstwhile Bamanga Tukur was brought who unfortunately was forced out due to crises he created and his erroneous reading of contemporary Nigerian politics.
Whatever the case may be, the high turnover of chairmen for the PDP is a major political scandal and a minus and possibly complete negation to their claims of who they say they are. One thing that has remained incontrovertible is that it is the most unstable political party in Africa that has run through elections and completely diminished the meaning of party politics on Nigeria’s political landscape.
I have no choice as a student of political science than to pay attention and interest on what is happening in the PDP because it controls all the levels of government in my country. I told Ahmadu Muazu a long time ago that what I read in information super highway for a long time was that young Nigerians kept praying that Bamanga Tukur was not removed and Ahmadu made the PDP chairman. The reason was simple that Ahmadu could right some wrongs if eventually appointed and what that means is that the party could make some impact in 2015.
Today he is the chairman but after what one may call an irreparable damage has been made to the party. A very difficult job to accomplish. I am sure Dr Muazu must have seen the grave damage that his predecessor in cohort with presidential rabbits have done to their party. How could any sensible party man shamelessly face the nation and say the defection of five governors from high density voter states and a former vice president was of no consequence to the party? Are they telling us that they are going to rig the 2015 elections so it does not matter who is where?
I am worried and one of the issues that I raise consistently even before the 2011 charade was that I never had any issue with the person and personality of Mr. Jonathan but one fact is that has been clear that he wasn’t simply ready for Nigeria’s problems. I am and all those who think or thought like me are vindicated today because what we see all over the place is rot and backwardness.
I hope Muazu succeeds where six others failed. One thing that is clear though is that the PDP is facing a natural turn around which must respond to the law of motion. There is little any individual or group could do to salvage it from capsizing. The law motion predicts a time of boom, recession, doom, recovery and boom again, eventually. What I see in the PDP today is that is in recession and no amount of religion or any other fault line is likely to see it back at the moment more so that it has performed woefully at the center.