PDP: In a world of their own
Battered and pauperized by a string of failed political transition programs supervised by the regime of former head of state General Ibrahim Babangida, the political class was understandably wary of accepting to participate in any further political transitions by the military. Some, like Shehu Musa Yar’adua lost their lives, some, like MKO Abiola were in […]
Battered and pauperized by a string of failed political transition programs supervised by the regime of former head of state General Ibrahim Babangida, the political class was understandably wary of accepting to participate in any further political transitions by the military. Some, like Shehu Musa Yar’adua lost their lives, some, like MKO Abiola were in jail, while several others had had been financially crippled such that they couldn’t participate in any political activity even if they wanted to.
On the other hand there was General Abubakar, under pressure from the international community led by Britain and America to announce when he would return the country to civil rule, and a relentless attack from political dissidents under the auspices of NADECO, demanding that Abiola must be given his mandate which they felt he won in the 1993 elections. Then suddenly Abiola dropped dead, with no apparent cause. The South West went up in flames, with thousands of Nigerians of northern extraction killed in an orgy of ethnic violence that was not seen since the civil war of 1967-70.
It was in the middle of this turbulence that General Abubakar had had to convince the political class to believe in him, set up political parties and trust his promises that he would midwife an honest transition to civil rule that would be completed in seven months.
Strange bedfellows tentatively came together and half-heatedly formed political groupings, the most prominent among them being the PDP, the APP (which later became ANPP), and the AD with base in the south west.
Thrown together by one word: ‘survival’; the PDP drew all but a few of the national political heavyweights into it’s fold and eventually won the presidential election through Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who was seen as the closest to a nationalist and most acceptable national figure at the time.
No sooner had the PDP government taken off them the latent political and even personality differences among the founding members of the PDP started emerging. The internal conflict within the PDP reached it’s zenith when they started killing each other. At a point Professor Wole Soyinka described the PDP as “a nest of killers”. It was then generally believed that the implosion of the PDP was just a matter of Time.
But those that predicted an early death for the PDP didn’t reckon with two powerful factors: the strong determination of Obasanjo to use the party as his tool for political control of national politics; and the timelessness of the need for survival as the most important determinant of political behavior in Nigerian politics. Within the space of the first two elections between 1999 and 2003, the politically wise among the political class realized that there was only one sure way of winning elections: joining the PDP; on it’s part the party realized that regardless of it’s internal problems, so long as it can retain power at the centre–and hence control of the the instruments of coercion such as the armed forces, the police, the SSS and INEC–it can always wade through it’s internal crisis.
This is a strategy that has kept the party alive for the last fourteen years, beating the prediction of pundits that it wouldn’t last longer than the 2007 general elections. To further drive home the point, defectors from as high as former vice president Atiku Abubakar found themselves sheepishly returning back with a wide, insincere smile and declaring that “they are back home”.
All of these flashed through my mind as I watched the PDP crowd in Birnin Kebbi last Thursday flagging off the re-run election campaign of Kebbi’s erstwhile governor, Saidu Nasamu Dakingari. In attendance were the President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan ( Kebbi’s is not a Boko Haram catchment area), Vice President Namadi Sambo, Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the governors of Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto and the Acting Chairman of the party, Abubakar Baraje, among others.
Looking at them, I wondered if they see the world the way the rest of us see it; I wondered if they worry about little things such as integrity, justice, pride, principles, morality, consistency, legacy etc in the same way that other people such as late Chief Sunday Awoniyi (a founding member of the party), or General Muhammadu Buhari worry about them. When it was the turn of Adamu Aliero to speak, I watched with keener interest to see if he would falter, or exhibit some sign that he knew what he was doing and he was sorry he had to do it. Nothing doing. The former governor, former senator former minister; former member of the ANPP, PDP, CPC who has just returned again to the PDP made his speech with a straight face and finished with a “bye bye to CPC”. Just like that, and, according to him, he had “ instructed” his followers to follow him. You have to give it to this guy; he has no qualms, and he does symbolize the PDP in all its infamous glory.
These people are definitely different from the rest of us, I concluded. They are probably wiser or smarter; or maybe they have more guts than the rest of us. Or perhaps they have something some of us who think they are different do not have: they have the gene that is responsible for surprising the pangs of conscience. Conscience, by the way, is a noun defined as “Motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person’s thoughts and actions”.
Why do all of this matter? Because the PDP by hook or crook is control of our lives, and the future of our children. By now the party would have elected a new set of national executives, which would confirm that they are indeed who they are; and which would confirm that we are who think we are not: a conquered people.