PDP not (yet) on suicide watch

Well, it appears that the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, has not prepared for the deluge of members that flocked into it and is not managing the headache like a party that is prepared to grow in leaps and bounds.Many among those who have defected to the APC including several of the governors are flip-floppers, […]

Well, it appears that the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, has not prepared for the deluge of members that flocked into it and is not managing the headache like a party that is prepared to grow in leaps and bounds.
Many among those who have defected to the APC including several of the governors are flip-floppers, who have been in the ANPP, the PDP, the NPP, CPC, AG, AD, ACN and now the APC. These politicians have moved so much around that one begins to wonder what they are really looking for in politics. But they remain relevant anyway.
 For example, I used to see the incumbent Governor Aliyu Mgatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto State as one of the most politically astute men in the country, because he has won elections on both party tickets and probably knows politics better than anyone at any university can teach and distil. He resigned from his position as Deputy Governor, contested against the candidate of his principal and won, and became the first to swing the entire northwest from the ANPP which used to control the zone as its stronghold to the PDP and once again to the APC. It is a feat that the likes of Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa would have loved to claim on their political CV, but not today. Wamakko achieved it with the snap of his fingers.
I don’t particularly like Attahiru Bafarawa because of his utterances, and I suspect that the feeling is mutual because of my opinion. But whenever we meet at social functions, or our common friends draw us near each other, and there are many of those, we smile and shake hands. I happen, always, to be the inconsequential number in the arrangement because Bafarawa in his usual manner hardly notices that I was always a fly in his ointment. But we exchange greetings because it is better than wringing one another’s necks. Bafarawa had made such utterances that would make Nasiru el Rufai, who is reported to have said that even his corpse would not be comfortable rejoining PDP, cringe with disgust; but he is one of the biggest backers of the PDP today.
It is no surprise also that since he joined the party it has been in turmoil. In fact the candidate of the PDP for governorship in Sokoto state had once accused Bafarawa of being sent to destroy the party. But he is not the only former opponent of the party that is entrenched in it. Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State pushed the current PDP national chairman, Ahmed Adamu Muazu, and his motley crew, out of Bauchi state on an ANPP Trojan horse. Then he clinched his second term on the PDP ticket but now he is at loggerheads with PDP bigwigs including his former aide and incumbent minister of the FCT Bala Mohammed. Ex-Kano governor, Ibrahim Shekarau is another big fish that left the APC for the PDP, apart from Senator Ali Sheriff (SAS).
President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is said not to be a man who forgives those who gave him pain in the past. Somehow that doesn’t quite square with the man who has been exchanging pleasantries with former rivals of his party, like Femi Fani-Kayode, who is spearheading the presidential campaign at the media level. Their union further concretizes the axiom that in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies but permanent interests.
However, there is something fundamentally wrong with the opposition APC that it cannot seem to get its act together when so many in the electorate are hurting to join it and the leadership coming from the PDP is so dismal. There was a time when I wrote on this page that the APC needed its own story tellers. It is yet to find them. Example, a simple issue as the secondary school certificate of its candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, is taking the entire party to the cleaners.
I spoke to someone deep inside the party who told me, “The certificate thing is no big thing. I then said to him: “The lawyers are coming. Can you guys realistically come face to face with the law courts and explain, when legal acrobatics begin to play out unequivocally that perjury has been committed and that the candidate you are presenting has a case to answer?”
He responded: “It is going to be difficult.” I was a bit dismayed, even as I was no mere tyro having reported politics over the years beginning from when I was political editor of Thisday way back to the last century. Then I called one of my PDP friends, a man deep inside the party. And he declared, “Barkindo, there is no way that we are going to lose the next elections. I have APC friends, as you know, and they know it too. So do not put PDP on your suicide watch list yet.”