The PDP Governors” Merger With The APC By Dr. Wumi Akintide

 

May well the road to the nullification of a one party dictatorship in Nigeria, if it can be sustained.

If any of you believe that PDP leaders are not troubled and would not lose any sleep over this development, you will it if I tell you I have an island to sell to you in the Pacific. The development cannot be music to their ears but it has to be seen as a welcome development for Nigeria and majority of us who have been waiting and praying to celebrate the end of a one party dictatorship in our country following 38 years of military rule which have proved to be more of a curse than a blessing to a potentially great country with so much going for it but so little to show for it in 53 years of self rule.


Those who wish the best for Nigeria would never support a one party dictatorship like Obasanjo their most preeminent leader says he wants for Nigeria when he tells anybody who will listen his plan is to have the P.D.P rule the country for 100 years. He saw his decision to hand-pick candidates for the presidency as the instrument for achieving that goal, even though the first 3 individuals he has managed to impose on Nigeria have been unmitigated disasters.

If Shagari was such a good President, the Military would never have returned in 1983. If Umaru Yar Adua was the best leader to rule Nigeria he would not have spent more time receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia and Germany than he spent governing the country. Surely Ebele Jonathan would not have been his best pick from the South/South to be the running mate to a terminally-ill Yar Adua. It was that move that saw him becoming President without passing any litmus test.

Leaders who truly love Nigeria would never support a one party dictatorship because it denies the voters a chance to have a fair and free election which is a sine qua non in every democratic government. Having two major political parties in Nigeria like it is in two of the bastions of democracy around the world namely the United Kingdom and the United States is a model Nigeria ought to emulate.

A proliferation of parties does not serve the best interest of any country. Elemure Ogunyemi, the Ekiti Country Music idol who never saw the four walls of a University had framed this observation better than any of our political leaders minus Obafemi Awolowo. Elemure composed a song titled “Aiye Oselu” in which he lashed out at Nigerian politicians and leaders for going for a multiplicity of parties rather than settling for just two or three but not more than 5 parties at any time.

Elemure in his wisdom has described those parties as a recipe for disaster and confusion and I totally agree with him.

Many of the close to 32 parties initially registered by the Federal Government after the failure of the two party system tried but abandoned by Babangida, were all registered for the wrong reasons to cause confusion. Many of them with no grassroots support whatsoever were all registered so their leaders could qualify to receive the grants or subventions promised to them by the government. Some of those parties were founded by individuals whose only motive was to make money and not because they really want to help develop the country. The conditions for receiving those funds were so generous that many bread and butter politicians went for it, and they made a fortune in so doing at the expense of Nigeria.

I hear the conditions have now been revised to make it that much harder for those 419 elements in our midst to profit from floating useless political parties which cannot win a seat in the Local Government talk less of winning any seat at the State or Federal Level. I commend the INEC or the Federal Government for flushing out such parties, but they still have more work to do to sanitize or clean up the system. The Federal Government must see to it that political parties are reduced to a minimum of 2 to 5 to reduce the cost of conducting elections and to make sure that the show of shame that recently played out in the Anambra Governorship elections does not rear its ugly head again in subsequent elections in Nigeria including the 2015 Presidential election, which is likely to be a major contest between the PDP and the newly registered APC which now has a chance to make an inroad in each of the 6 political zones of Nigeria to give the PDP a fight of their life.

If Professor Jega is no longer able to sustain the fine image of a performer in one or two elections his Commission has conducted, he should have the courage of his conviction to resign or be fired by a President who once boasted that part of the legacies he wanted to leave behind is conducting a very credible election and putting an end to corruption which has held Nigeria ransom for far too long.

Even though his poor handling of the Stella Oduah scandal in Aviation and other parastatals controlled by Stella and her colleague, the powerful Oil Minister, has shown the President to be nothing more than a toothless bulldog who has become a laughing stock who cannot even control or discipline his first lady and many of the Ministers he has handpicked on the understanding they could be fired if they don’t meet his expectations.

The ideal number of parties should be 2 so voters will have a choice about who to vote for from one election cycle to another. General Ibrahim Babangida was clearly on his way to achieving that goal when his Government floated the SDP and NRC to contest the 1993 elections. M.K.O Abiola was the flag bearer for S.D.P while Alhaji Tofa was the flag bearer for NRC. By so doing the Babangida Government had forced all Nigerians to find accommodation in either of the 2 parties or stay out of politics. It was the first time Nigeria ever fielded two Muslims to run against each other and they did it by openly debating each other and telling the voters what they were going to do if elected. It was the closest election to the kind of elections we often witness in most of the developing nations of the world.

It was a step in the right direction but Babangida annulled the result of the elections because he did not mean well from the “get go.” He was rooting for the move to fail, so he could elongate his tenure as military Head of State.

The whole plot blew up in his face, however, as he was later forced to step aside while Sani Abacha, his Second-in-command easily defrocked Ernest Sonekan the Interim President the Maradona had picked to appease the Yorubas for robbing Abiola of his well deserved mandate and victory in that election. That annulment took the country back another 6 to 7 years in her quest to end military rule once and for all.

That said, it goes without saying that having 2 major political would have stopped the near permanent domination of Nigerian politics by the NPN or its successor, the PDP despite their abysmal record of performance in the last 14 years and counting. Now that Nigeria has two major political parties, there is now room for Nigeria to start emulating countries like the UK and the United States if Nigeria is ever going to remain one country. I therefore don’t see eye to eye with ignorant Nigerians who are lamenting the current crisis or schism and polarization in the PDP rank and file as we speak.

The PDP has outlived its usefulness and it deserves to be rejected by the voters in the next election if the truth must be told. The PDP has always claimed to be the only party that can keep Nigeria one. It calls herself the mother of all political parties in the biggest nation in Africa where one out of every 4 Africans is a Nigerian.

The merger of opposition parties like ACN in the South West and the GNPP from the North and the Eastern part of Nigeria and the other party led by Muhammadu Buhari should be seen as a step in the right direction because the PDP can no longer accuse or describe the APC as being a sectional party like they use to blackmail the Action Group or the UPN or the AD that succeeded the Action Group which used to have serious difficulty winning the presidency as prescribed or stipulated by the military-inspired 1999 Nigerian Constitution which is already overdue for review or revocation to reflect the true needs of Nigeria.

The present PDP is in no position to drastically make any changes to the status quo in Nigeria because it was the major beneficiary of the useless system left behind by the Military in Nigeria. The PDP is in fact a hybrid of civilian politicians and the military establishment in Nigeria. Nigeria would be insane to continue to keep the P.D.P in power in Nigeria beyond 2015.

I once thought that Goodluck Jonathan as the first southerner outside the Military to ever win the presidency on his own merit was going to deliver on what he promised .

The nation has seen enough of him now to know he is a weakling who cannot change Nigeria or some of the forces like Corruption, Nepotism and tribalism which have already put Nigeria in total bondage.
You go to Aso Rock today and what you see are pitiful images of a country completely taken over by the Ijaws who now think and behave as if they currently own the country and they are not going to let any other Nigerian tribes stop them from taking maximum advantage of the power they currently have.
They see the South/South as the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. They believe that since Nigeria depends on the black gold in their own back yard, the country belongs to them because whoever pays the piper, according to them, must reserve the right to call the tune. They sure have a point on that, but the observation has more far reaching implications than the points they are making. If their son, the current President is a man of substance and principle, he should have talked them out of that mindset in a very fragile country like Nigeria which can still break up if things don’t change for the better.

President Jonathan is just too weak, too incompetent, undisciplined and confused to even control his egomaniac first lady talk less of controlling the rank and file of his own Ijaw nation or the top echelon of his PDP Ministers and Legislators. He sees his becoming President as an entitlement and he seems to have completely forgotten how he got to that job to begin with. He has forgotten all his promises to transform Nigeria. The man only knew how to use his bully pulpit in Aso Rock to intimidate Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State for refusing to dance to his tune and that of his first lady. He has used his bully pulpit grant a state pardon to criminals and fugitive offenders like his former boss who looted the Bayelsa State treasury. He uses his office to cover up for all of his corrupt Ministers because his own hands are not clean.

The man has lost all the respect the nation initially has for him by his inability to put Stella Oduah on suspension pending the outcome of the serious charges against her. The President has done more harm to his own image as President by defending the indefensible and looking very insensitive and impervious to correction. No wonder the PDP is collapsing under his leadership and the best he could do is try to put Professor Jega in his pocket while at the same time offering bribes to stop many of the INEC.

Initially, many thought he was going to be different from his predecessors, but we now know he is just as crooked as the rest of them. The way he has handled the last Governorship election in Anambra has proved what matters to him the most, and what matters the most to you, says a whole lot about you.

 The nation is beginning to lose confidence in him as the man who can clean up the Augean stable of election rigging in Nigeria. It is very much in doubt now if the man can handle the 2015 Presidential election and make it a completely free and fair election when the chips are down.
His admission of all the shortcomings of the Anambra election should have told him that complete cancellation was the only path of honor for him. If the President is not as weak as he is, he would have stepped in to advise the INEC Chairman to “chill out” because his failure in Anambra was a major embarrassment to the President.

I, for one, want the President out of Aso Rock in 2015 to give the opposition candidate, whoever that may be, a chance to prove his own mettle. If the APC fails again like the PDP, the party should be sent packing after 4 years. The Federal Government could also register an independent party in case the two political parties fail to deliver. That ought to be the bottom line for all Nigerian voters. Nigerians cannot fully enjoy the dividends of democracy as long as we are ruled by a one party system like the one the PDP has offered for the last 14 years.

Now to the issue of some of the PDP Governors jumping ship to pitch their tents with APC. The defection is a double-edge sword because the new admissions to the APC may actually come to pollute the waters by creating a new set of problems the APC may not be mentally prepared or ready to confront. Corruption which is one of the cancers in the PDP is also a cancer in the APC from all we are able to see in some of the leaders of APC, not all of them. My point is that the problem driving the aggrieved Governors out of the PDP today could again resurrect to drive them out of APC tomorrow if the APC leadership is not careful.

For all we know, some of them may be nursing a presidential ambition of their own that they could not sustain in the PDP because President Jonathan is telling them there is no vacancy in Aso Rock for 2015. That they are leaving the PDP may not mean they are going to be followed by their supporters and legislators in their different states. They are already used to a way of life in the PDP they might wish to continue in APC. They are coming with all kinds of baggages the APC must be ready and willing to confront up front for the marriage and the honey moon to endure. Their coming to APC may give the APC a false sense of security it has now become a national party with structures at the local, state and federal levels. A.P.C. would be making a huge mistake to assume that. The APC has her job cut out for her to make a success out of this very strategic merger.

The APC must be aware they still have a whole lot of work to do to create grassroots support at the local, state and Federal levels. If they are only focusing their attention on the merger at the top, they could be disappointed if their expectation does not pan out. The APC needs to quickly launder her image as a worthy alternative to the PDP by showing Nigerians that they are not a carbon copy of the PDP in many respects. When Awolowo and the old Action Group offered itself as an alternative to the old NPC and the NCNC, Awolowo showed the AG’s identity thru the kinds of programs and policies his party stood for in the old Western Region. He did it in a way to distinguish the old West as a pace setter in Nigeria.

The APC must be prepared to confront independent thinkers like Mimiko and his Labor Party in Ondo State which may be contemplating a merger with the PDP in secret just to dent the Yoruba solidarity the old ACN was canvassing before dissolving into the new APC. Some of the Governors merging with APC may be looking for a chance to become the presidential flag bearer of the new APC much to the resentment of the old party faithfuls. The APC must be aware of all these problems ahead of time and develop a strategy to confront them as they unfold. Running and managing a political party is no cake walk as Awolowo and Akintola later found out.

The merger is a welcome development provided the APC is fully ready for it as analyzed in this write-up. If not, the merger is only going to be a passing phase as the Governors can be lured back to the PDP in no time thus putting the APC in a quandary as the new Governors would have seen the weaknesses of the APC from the inside and they could use those weaknesses against APC upon their return to the PDP. In politics there is never a permanent enemy but a permanent interest. The name of the game is awareness and eternal vigilance.

Only time will tell if this merger becomes the watershed development we all hope it is going to be. God help Nigeria.
I rest my case.
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