Re- CPC and 2011: Crisis of popularity?
The last couple of months have seen a raft of opinion pieces appearing in the print media questioning the motive of some notable politicians such as the former House of Representatives Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari in dumping the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). One of such pieces […]
The last couple of months have seen a raft of opinion pieces appearing in the print media questioning the motive of some notable politicians such as the former House of Representatives Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari in dumping the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).
One of such pieces is; “CPC and 2011: Crisis of popularity?” written by one Mamman Baure from Funtua and published in the last week’s edition of Sunday Trust. As a new party soon to go into general elestions, CPC needs as many supporters as it can draw regardless of where from so long as there is no court pronouncement against them. But the writer does not want the CPC to be filled with the “alumni of the PDP” because that will threaten the ambition of his paymasters.
In the first place, the write-up focused on the decampees in Katsina state, when the phenomenum is sweeping the whole country with not one single state unaffected, so much that political observers have christened it a tsunami. Secondly, the writer has failed to explain what the decampees have willfully done to warrant the undue alarm being raised against them, apart from alluding to an alleged “palpable concern, if not alarm, that the attention of General Buhari has been captured by the politically ambitious newcomers whose interest in securing CPC ticket for contesting elections far outweighs loyalty to his personality or principles”. The writer has also alluded to what happened “after the 2007 elections in a state in the northeast zone”.
The aim of these attempts is to sow the seed of discord between the leadership of CPC and, in particular, the party’s presidential flagbearer, General Muhammadu Buhari and the new entrants, so as to discourage anyone among them from legitmately aspiring for any elective office on the party’s platform.
To suggest that the decampees might act as others did “in a state in the northeast zone”, is to impute that the CPC leadership is planted by the PDP to compromise the prospects of the upstart but promising party which looks set to give the ruling party a good run for its money in the 2011 general elections. It amounts to an insult to General Buhari and the likes of Dr. Sule Hamma, Alhaji Mamman Abubakar Danmusa, Engineer Buba Galadima, Senator Rufa’i Hanga and Dr. Almajiri Geidam, among others, to also suggest that the “dubiously wealthy newcomers” might have been accepted into the CPC on account of their resources, which they could use to highjack the party. Surely, leaving one political party on principle to join another one cannot be a political sin; because that is exactly what the founders of the CPC did when General Buhari and his multitude of associates and supporters left the ANPP to found the CPC. The decampees similarly left the PDP because they have realised that the party has irredeemably derailed from the ideals of its founding fathers, and having done the best they could do to reverse the rot without success, they rightly concluded that there was no moral reason for them to remain in its fold any longer.
The writer refferred to the “principles of credibility, transparency, accountability and clean record that General Buhari himself preached and practiced” as attributes that are expected of everyone joining the CPC. Indeed, it is not on record that the “prominent PDP leaders who decamped to the CPC in Katsina State” have ever been found wanting in what “Buhari preached and practised”. To be sure, the leader of the Katsina decampees, former Speaker Masari, is very much the archtype of what the party wants in its leaders. That Masari has been appointed the Chairman of the Contact and Mobilisation Commitee of the CPC, says alot about the esteem, trust and confidence with which the party’s leadership holds him.
It is not only impolitic but also reckless to consider every member of PDP as a dishonest and thieving person without the benefit of a court pronouncement. Even General Buhari would shy away from making such a blanket condemnation, because it is inconceivable that every member of the PDP is corrupt.
Since these political chalatants have not given any edifying reason why the decampees should be rejected by CPC, it would seem that their only sin is that some of them have the courage to indicate interest in aspiring for elective offices, which they are eminently qualified to vie for, on the platform of the CPC.
Having then realised that some of the new CPC members are by far of superior saleability to them, some of the so-called founding members have, in panic, resorted to raising issues in the media to chase the shadow rather than the substance in their inordinate ambition to rule Katsina state in 2011. Their only selling point being a dubious closeness to the leadership of the party, which, if anything, is more of a minus than a plus for CPC.
Bature Sani wrote from No 3, Moses A. Makonjodunmi Crescent, Utako, Abuja