The PDP and our home-grown democracy

Going by what has been happening in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lately, one can safely make one prediction: the PDP does not need any APC (I mean, armoured personnel carrier) to explode. PDP has all it takes to destroy itself – and it is gleefully doing so. All we can do is to assist them with prayers; that the good Lord should grant them the strength and will power to see it through. There was this neighbourhood drunkard in my younger days that I can’t now remember if he was ever sober at any time. He stayed drunk for all the years I knew him.

Every time he staggered past, his standard response was: “person wey do juju say make man no kill am, make spirit no kill am, na him go take him own hand kill himself”. Today, it is this drunkard’s favourite saying that comes to my mind every time I think about the PDP and how it is holding us at the jugular, boasting that no party or alliance, or merger can kick it out of power – insisting that it would rule (at the first instance) for a straight 60 years, and then, forever. So, while we are helplessly stranded with PDP, we are tirelessly assisting them with prayers to continue on their path of self-destruction.

And it would seem our prayers are being answered already. And it not because any APC has been born (although it would not be a bad idea to have a formidable party waiting on the wings) Rather than us exploding the PDP from outside, the PDP members have resolved to implode from within. They have provided us both government and opposition. So we are just sitting back and watching them erect and demolish their own structure. So, yes, the PDP will ultimately collapse, but no, neither the APC nor any merger will bring about that collapse. PDP people will see to it themselves. That is why there is a lot of internal combustion going on there right now. If the chairman is not fighting his governor, then he’d be fighting all the governors or the secretary would be fighting the BOT or central working committee or the national working committee members would be shouting about not being carried along.

Then there are all the several other proxy wars; Jonathan’s loyalists weeding off and kicking out Obasanjo’s cronies. Then, there is this grand irony of a party that is talking of reconciliation but is unwilling to reconcile with Atiku and Na’Abba and all the other notable present and former members who have issues with the party. Rather than any desire to build a formidable party that can take power on a sustainable basis, the PDP is a short-run gang arrangement used to capture power to serve immediate self interest. It is built around whoever is occupying the Aso Rock Villa and destroyed as soon as he leaves. Obasanjo did it; Yar’Adua tried it, now it is the turn of Jonathan.

Every president comes in and tries to build the PDP that he wants; the PDP that would serve his own ambition – and not necessarily the PDP that would serve the party, much less, the country. He changes exco, NWC, CWC, BoT and just any other thing that is perceived to have the potentials of playing any significant role in that real or perceived ambition.

Of late, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum has come into the mix of the amalgam of organs that must also be teleguided. That is why Gov Rotimi Amaechi has been fighting the battle of his life in recent times. Suddenly, every governor seen as a Jonathan ally has overnight developed interest in running the NGF. Of course all these have nothing to do with 2015. Amaechi is not consolidating on the NGF to use it as a launch pad for any presidential ambition in 2015. Similarly, the Northern governors who met with their Niger State counterpart to explore the possibility of producing the chairman of the NGF are doing so purely for altruistic reasons. They are not hoping to use the plat form to bargain for presidency in 2015. And, of course, we must count President Jonathan out of this 2015 hullabaloo. For Jonathan has yet to decide whether or not he should contest the 2015 presidential election.

Of course, I believe him. Even though we live in a country where politicians begin to think of the next election as soon as they are sworn into office on one mandate, Jonathan says he is not thinking of 2015 yet. Like me, I want every Nigerian to believe the president is saying nothing but the truth. It does not matter that we have heard those same lines over and over again from our politicians – and that on all those instances, it always turned out to be untrue. He is not campaigning and he has not told anybody to campaign for him.

Nothing said by Elder Godsday Orubebe or Kema Chikwe (that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock) has anything to do with Jonathan. Similarly, the return of Chief Tony Anenih (the famed Mr. Fix It) early yesterday morning as the new BoT chairman of the PDP has nothing to do with any plan to fix re-election. Even though PDP chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur says the President can now sleep well, now that the back of the Governors’ Forum appears broken, I refuse to believe that Jonathan has anything to do with the bid to unseat Amaechi. It is just unfounded media speculation.

That is why I can’t understand why people can’t take Jonathan out of the problems that Rivers State governor is speculated to have with Godswill Akpabio and his other colleagues at the NGF (or is it PGF?). Jonathan is not running. In fact, he is too busy delivering on his transformation agenda to think of 2015. What is baffling me, however, is: In all these, where does the vote of we the electorate figure in? Is this no longer a democracy? Is it no longer about one man, one vote? Watching the way the president Jonathan and his opponents are wooing, cornering and taking control of one body after the other, you’d be tempted to conclude that 2015 presidency would be conducted on the basis of electoral colleges or that the voting would be done by a select few – like in an aristocracy or even, a plutocracy. You’d think that by the time the governors, the PDP BoT and the national working/executive committees vote, the presidency would have been decided.

Nobody seems to be talking to those of us on the shop floor. Nobody is lobbying me for my vote. Nobody is giving a second thought to the fact that we’re actually supposed to be running a popular democracy. Or is this what home-grown democracy is all about? All the same, let’s welcome back Chief Anenih to a seat I personally believe he is cut out for. At least, we can be sure that he is a party man and might actually help in making the PDP a party once again.