Titanic after the iceberg

Four of its governors went to show solidarity with the disfavoured governor and were pelted by thugs loyal to a minister; another set of four governors went to see a former president and current Presidency enemy who is chaffing on the sidelines; and then the party’s National Working Committee [NWC] engaged its Convention Planning Committee […]

Four of its governors went to show solidarity with the disfavoured governor and were pelted by thugs loyal to a minister; another set of four governors went to see a former president and current Presidency enemy who is chaffing on the sidelines; and then the party’s National Working Committee [NWC] engaged its Convention Planning Committee in a very public brawl. All within one week.
Since 1999 the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] has straddled the political space of this Republic like a colossus but looking at its current state reminds me of the great ocean liner Titanic shortly after it hit a giant iceberg in the North Atlantic Sea in 1912. PDP is yet to go through all the sorry stages of that colossal ship. It has not yet thrown off its luxury passengers into the icy waters, filled itself up with seawater, broken up in two and sank to the ocean bottom. The way it is going though, PDP may shortly join old Nigerian parties on the political equivalent of the sea floor.
Several party leaders and other persons closely associated with them have contributed to the navigational errors that have set the party on course to collide with a political iceberg. One of them is Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State. This man has not said much publicly about the nature of his quarrels with the Jonathan Presidency. He however acted more than he talked. He used his position as Nigeria Governors Forum [NGF] chairman to lampoon the presidency. He defeated its anointed candidate in the NGF election; he maintained firm control of the state assembly and party structures despite his suspension from the party; he refused to apologise as a condition for his return to the party, and he did not disown the Lamido/Amaechi 2015 posters that adorn several city streets.
Another man who poured fuel into the fire is Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike. Don’t blame old man Wike very much because right now, many ministers want the Presidency to snatch control of state party structures from incumbent governors and hand it over to them as a short cut to realizing governorship ambitions in 2015. Wike only got his own gift ahead of schedule.
Another man who stoked the fire is Bamanga Tukur. He knew that President Jonathan railroaded him into the party chairmanship for a reason. So far he has served that purpose but he also did other things, such as wholesale alienation of PDP’s governors and many party chieftains as well. He also snatched control of party structures in his home state and lately, he is up against other men who are also close to Jonathan.
One of such men is Chief Tony Anenih, who refuses to retire at 80. Anenih has been something of a poison in Nigerian politics. His specialty is to help incumbent presidents to remain in power using Richard Nixon’s old saying, “by hook or by crook, mostly the latter.” He shows them how presidential power can be abused, how state resources can be marshalled towards selfish political ends and how people can be railroaded to make way for the president’s ambitions. Every now and then, Anenih also throws in a statement that has the effect of disembowelling constitutional order, such as “no vacancy in Aso Rock.”
A recent enemy of Bamanga has been Professor Jerry Gana, chairman of the Convention Planning Committee who probably has a separate self-serving brief from Jonathan. Gana spent half his career defending the indefensible. He also tried to become president; only got as far as three time minister and has been doing AGIP duties from the sidelines. Now he has seen an opportunity to bounce back to reckoning and is not the one to miss it.
The activities of House Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal unwittingly contributed to the cauldron by adding to the Presidency’s siege mentality. Tambuwal has been the boy wonder of this session of the Fourth Republic. He snatched the speaker’s post against the party’s zoning formula, against the cries by Obasanjo and the Southwest PDP caucus and against a very determined fight by the Presidency. Right now, he has cemented solidarity in the House irrespective of party loyalty; the House of Representatives under his leadership is generally antagonistic to the Presidency, while the speaker himself openly courts opposition party leaders. At a reception for suspended party member Aliyu Wamakko, Tambuwal openly castigated the NWC for suspending his state’s governor.
Tambuwal’s steep rise to national political reckoning was partly caused by the extremely self-effacing ways of Vice President Mohamed Namadi Sambo, who refused to provide a rallying point for an agitated North. Sambo was made to abandon the governorship of a very important state with the promise of influence and grandeur at the national level. If he knew that he was going to be looking over his shoulder at every turn, he probably would still be in Kaduna by now. The sudden death of Governor Patrick Yakowa accidentally improved Sambo’s political position, since a man totally beholden to him is now Governor of Kaduna State. But someone else must fill the vacuum.
Former President Obasanjo’s huffing, puffing, chaffing and sniping from the sidelines increased the siege atmosphere in Aso Rock. Obasanjo’s grand ambitions of bossing around his successor crashed and his men were ousted from party leadership. He himself relinquished the Board of Trustees chairmanship in a huff. Now he is the rallying point for estranged party elements.
The five northern PDP governors who variously went to Port Harcourt and then Abeokuta last week cashed in on this schism. They are a mix bag of the rebellious and the obedient. Governor Rabi’u Kwankwaso is a fiercely independent political quantity who, since his return to Kano Government House in 2011 has created a rival political organization called Kwankwasiyya. Jigawa’s Governor Sule Lamido has a much longer history of rebellious politics, even though he has shown unusual loyalty to Obasanjo who made him Foreign Minister in 2003 and helped him to realize his life-long gubernatorial ambition in 2007. Adamawa’s Governor Murtala Nyako, normally an obedient military man, has no choice but to rebel given what Bamanga did to him. Both Niger’s Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu and Sokoto’s Governor Aliyu Wamakko are career civil servants who are not given to rebellion. They may have different motivations but both are in full rebellion mood right now.
At the root of much of PDP’s troubles could be Dame Patience Jonathan. Three short years ago, one would have thought it impossible for anyone to overtake Mrs Turai Yar’adua in unpopularity, but Mrs. Jonathan has achieved the feat with her imperial gait, her imperious carriage, her pompous schedule and her grand imperial progress in the style of early 20th century Japanese emperors, which grounded traffic in Lagos and Port Harcourt. Last week she told a group of visiting bishops, in effect, that she ignited the Rivers crisis.   
And where is Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the only man who could correct PDP’s costly navigational errors? Well, three small observations. The Jonathan presidency is totally incapable of extending carrots to its intra-party opponents or even playing at decency. The four governors named to serve on the convention planning committee as well as the governors that accompanied the president to China were strictly his loyalists.
Jonathan desperately wants to remain the president of Nigeria after 2015, not the least because he enthroned a regionally-skewed patronage system that would be dismantled in a hurry once he leaves office. Finally, Dr Jonathan is incapable of calling anyone to order. Not Bamanga, not Anenih, not Jerry Gana, not Wike, not Compol Mbu. Not even his own wife.