Re:Why CPC should be wary of defectors

The last couple of months have witnessed a flurry of activities in the media as hardly a week passes without one opinion piece or another appearing in the print media questioning former House of Representatives Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari’s motive in dumping the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) for the Congress for Progressive Change […]

The last couple of months have witnessed a flurry of activities in the media as hardly a week passes without one opinion piece or another appearing in the print media questioning former House of Representatives Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari’s motive in dumping the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). All of these write-ups came out in the guise of sincere advice to the CPC. In truth though, they are everything but.
Two of such pieces are: “Why CPC should be wary of defectors”, written by one Benjamin Ede from Kaduna and published in the September 4th edition of Weekly Trust, and “Re- Why CPC should be wary of defectors”, penned, in apparent agreement with Benjamin, by one Labaran Ademu from  Kano, published in the September 25th edition of Weekly Trust.  These “advices” are suspect for two reasons. In the first place, all the write-ups focus on the decampees in Katsina state, when the phenomenon is sweeping the whole country with not one single state unaffected. Secondly, apart from alluding to some hypothetical “fears being entertained by party faithful”, on account of what others did elsewhere, the writers, like others before them, have failed to explain what Masari or any of his fellow decampees, including former Senate Leader Muhammad Tukur Liman, Senator Abdu Umar Yandoma, Hon. Abubakar Saddiq  Yar’adua and Dr. Mustafa Inuwa, among others, did wilfully, in their public or even private life, to warrant the undue alarm being raised against them.
Labaran Ademu and Benjamin Ede submit that “the mass exodus of top members of other parties to CPC especially from the ruling party has created fears among party members that the crises that dogged such massive cross carpeting to ANPP may rear their ugly heads in the new party. These fears are not unconnected with the highjacking of the party by the new members who have the resources and clout to do so. Another fear being entertained by party faithful is the likelyhood of PDP planting them in the new party so as to destablise it as was the case with the ANPP”.
In the last paragraph of his article, Labaran Ademu urges CPC “to be watchful and careful of the category of people it opens its doors for in the wave of defection that is sweeping through other parties”. 
Obviously, the aim of these attempts at cheap blackmail 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. However, this crass playing- to- the-gallery, if anything, only succeeded in exposing the writers’ ignorance of the political dynamics that played out in “the massive cross carpeting to ANPP” they alluded to earlier. This was a drama which script was penned in the highest reaches of the PDP leadership, with the complicity of its suspect ANPP counterpart, and acted by unscrupulous two-bit players, whose raison d’etre for politics is to get power at all cost. In any case, the so-called “massive cross carpeting to ANPP” was limited to only one state.
Suggesting that Masari and his fellow decampees might act similarly, 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 decampees might have been accepted into the CPC on account of their resources and clout, which they could use to highjack the party. In any case, neither Masari nor any member of his group has the “resources and clout” or, for that matter, the political savvy to highjack the CPC from its founding members. 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, as affirmed by Labaran Ademu in the following statement:  “CPC is a fall-out of the power struggle that dogged the ANPP. It was registered to accommodate the former leader and his supporters who were aggrieved because of the way the General was treated during the last presidential election and how the ANPP was run”.
Masari similarly left the PDP because he has realised that its leadership has irredeemably lost focus, and having done his best to reverse the rot without success, he rightly concluded that there was no moral reason for him to remain in its fold any longer. Both writers also said that “honesty in governance, discipline in civil life, credibility in holding public trust” were the “clear-cut ideological base” of the CPC. They ought to have added ‘unwavering courage of conviction’ to that, because it is a virtue General Buhari also easily symbolizes. And Masari, too. Throughout his time in public service, which spans a period of three decades, the former Speaker was never  found wanting in any of the virtues that constitute the “clear-cut ideological base” of the CPC and what General Buhari symbolizes. In fact, he is very much the archetype of what the party wants in its leaders; “trustworthy with proven integrity and with track records of performance”. The writer may wish to recall that it was Speaker Masari’s principled stand which made him challenge Obasanjo’s third term scheme, long before it captured the imagination of and engaged the attention of the nation. Masari’s leadership in the House of Representatives is inarguably the most focused, disciplined and proactive yet in the current republic.
The writers questioned what “a former PDP member has to offer the new party”. General Buhari, Dr. Sule Hamman and other leaders and founding members of the CPC have said time and again that corrupt people would find no accommodation in the party. The General is not a person who goes back on his words. That Masari has been appointed the Chairman of the Contact and Mobilisation Committee of the CPC, says a lot about the esteem, trust and confidence with which the party’s leadership holds him. Obfuscating the issue through the use of crass language against superiors is typical of hired pens.
Bature Sani wrote from 3, Moses A. Makonjodunmi Crescent, Utako, Abuja