PDP as alternative?!
During my recent trip to Miami, Florida, I felt the angst that most normal Americans must be feeling watching their TV stations. Everything was about Donald Trump and his many lies. While Fox News and some other conservative outlets tried to make a meaning of the daily missteps of the American president, the liberal media […]
During my recent trip to Miami, Florida, I felt the angst that most normal Americans must be feeling watching their TV stations. Everything was about Donald Trump and his many lies. While Fox News and some other conservative outlets tried to make a meaning of the daily missteps of the American president, the liberal media made a meal of his cluelessness and bigotry. You’d think they were talking about two separate countries. Even the entertainment slots have gone political. In search of breathing space, I switched my TV permanently to the crime channel where I reaped a bounty of stories on America’s favourite pastime of gun violence.
The clouds have been gathering over Trump’s head since he assumed office. Time will tell whether he will eventually be consumed by the probe into the Russian meddling in the last US presidential elections. The biggest winner in all of this is the diminutive, taciturn ex-spy, Vladimir Putin, who served America its own poison by doing to that country what it had done to many others in the past – influence the outcome of their presidential election.
In discussions with friends, one thing stood out: they took solace in the fact that their system was robust enough to take care of business no matter what happened. If the Republican Party failed, they had the Democratic party to look up to. And there are other smaller parties which stand for something but have no chance in hell to form government.
I wondered about my dear country, Nigeria, and honestly felt that the Americans are luckier. We have two frontline parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Ideologically, both are Siamese twins. The PDP governed for 16 years and was shown the door after it turned the national treasury to a gravy train. The APC is in power now but it has so far underachieved. The party has shown an incredible lack of cohesion since it mounted the saddle. However, the PDP itself has been drowning in its own internal problems, so the opposition has been tepid and disjointed.
One critic has observed that what brought the various elements in PDP together was loot sharing, and that if there was nothing to share, the party was bound to disintegrate. To put naysayers to shame, the party has recently been trying to reinvent itself. However, those hoping that the party would have learnt its lessons and opted for a radical change of personnel and style are set for disappointment.
There is no conscious effort to attract new blood, younger elements and fresh ideas into the PDP. All we have seen so far are the old potentates. Check out the list of chairmanship aspirants. The party is back to the days of old. The shout of “PDP-Power” is expected to translate into votes once that clarion call is oiled with Ghana-Must-Go bags of crisp Naira. No one has told the nation that the party intends to turn a new leaf – and indeed how it hopes to achieve that feat. All we are hearing are the same old tired slogans.
PDP must be calculating that it can woo back its former members who joined the APC before the last elections. With that done, so their thinking appears, they can coast home to victory. Pit that argument against the fact that APC was swept to power by a coalition spanning four out of the six zones of Nigeria. Can PDP turn the tables in, say, the Southwest or the North Central? The most charitable answer I can give is that it is not likely.
Perhaps enough attention is not being paid to the fact that Nigerians are not suffering from collective amnesia. Yes, the current government at the centre could have done better. There is a long list of things yet to be done. The engine ought to be revved up so things can happen faster – in realisation of which fact the president has promised to rejig his cabinet and fill vacancies in federal boards and parastatals. Call it job for the boys, but as far as Nigerian politics goes, that is an unmistakable signal that the quiet man from Daura is rallying his troops.
Nothing less than a comprehensive rebranding of PDP is required to give the party a fighting chance. That rebranding ought to start with a change of personnel across board. Within the party itself, there are decent people who could help chart a new course but it seems the field has been taken over by charlatans like Ayodele Fayose whose tenure as Governor of Ekiti State (with all perks, including immunity from prosecution) is about expiring. Having lied to the nation about so many things, including his allegation that President Buhari was on oxygen in the intensive care unit of a UK hospital, Fayose and his fellow low-lifers now have to contend with the fact that Buhari is alive and well.
I am aware of overtures being made to former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar to return to the PDP and throw his hat into the presidential ring with the hope that he can manage to swing a major zone – say, the Southwest, to cast its lot with him. Never say never. But I wonder what is in all this hoopla for the common man.
My contention at this point in time: It is desirable to have a viable standby alternative to APC. To arrive at that junction, PDP has many rivers to cross.