Last Wednesday’s judgment of the Supreme Court, which is the highest court in the land, has virtually resurrected the Peoples Democratic Party from the dead. “Lazarus” has practically come forth from the grave before our very eyes. But unlike the biblical Lazarus that was dead and buried only four days, PDP’s Lazarus had been dead and buried many months. A former governor of Borno state, Ali Modu Sheriff, was the undertaker that almost killed the once vibrant party that ruled the country from the return to democratic rule, called the Fourth Republic, in May 1999 to May 2015.
When leaders of PDP; led by governors Ayo Fayose of Ekiti and Nyesom Wike of Rivers head-hunted Sheriff, little did they know that Sheriff would soon become bad business and an albatross around their neck. It turned out a classic case of the Yoruba proverb “Iku n de Dedere; Didere n de iku!” PDP leaders wanted to use Sheriff but Sheriff had his own designs different from theirs. PDP leaders thought they had seen “money miss road” that will deploy his immense financial resources as well as political clout for their benefit. Sheriff was willing – but at a price considered too steep by PDP leaders. Offloading Sheriff was not easy. His was the veritable case of a visitor who not only overstayed his welcome but also nearly stripped the owner of his property – but for the Supreme Court last Wednesday.
Now that Sheriff is thrown off the back of PDP, dumped in the garbage dumpsite of history where he rightly belongs, it is time to begin to re-build PDP into a virile opposition party that the country deserves. I have said it repeatedly here that vibrant opposition is a fulcrum of democracy. For this reason, I solidly stood with the All Progressives Congress when they were in the opposition; it is now time to stoutly encourage the PDP to play the indispensable role of a vibrant opposition party; especially so since the APC has not only badly let down the people, failing to fulfil its electoral promises, but has also virtually turned dictatorial and divisive, running the country into recession and then depression, leaving it as we speak in gaping indebtedness with nothing to show for it, with the vast majority of the people in abject penury and suffering never before experienced in the land.
But the job will not be easy. Not only does the PDP have a party in government (incumbency factor) to wrestle, it also has a lot of defectors from its ranks who have negotiated their way into the ruling party to contend with. How, for instance, will former President Olusegun Obasanjo feel about the come-backing of PDP, a party he had said was dead and buried? There are so many others who recently defected from the PDP, citing its internal crisis as the reason for doing so. Now that the crisis is over – and especially if the party begins to rebuild while the APC continues to lose goodwill – how will such people feel? Then, of course, there is Sheriff and his cohorts to contend with. Statesmen, deep thinkers, and institution-builders are sorely needed in PDP at this most auspicious occasion to transform it from the rag-tag that Sheriff had made of it and turn it into winning ways again and a government-in-waiting. Fulfilling this hope is what will compensate for all the efforts and resources devoted into wrestling the party from the vice-like grip of Sheriff; doing otherwise reduces the struggle of many months to a wasted effort.
Without admitting it, APC is jittery right now. Possibly, they never expected PDP would resurrect. I dare to say that even if not on points of law but for the sake of political expediency and in the overall interest of our renascent democracy, the Supreme Court judgment sits pretty. A contrary verdict would have poured petrol into the raging fire of an already over-heated polity. It would have been bedlam but after the verdict, the political temperature of the country was considerably brought down. An APC that was complacent before now must sit up. The days of John Odigie-Oyegun – a big flop, if you ask me – as APC chairman are numbered if the party must ride the storm and square up to the challenge I expect the come-backing PDP to offer. The divisions within APC surpass those within PDP and are more deep-rooted. In many critical and important centres of power – Kano, Kogi, Kaduna, the South-West, the National Assembly to mention but a few – the party is hopelessly divided and the birds are devouring one another’s intestines. Defenders of the APC chairman blame President Muhammadu Buhari, who wrestled the national party leader position from Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of failing to provide effective leadership as well as starving the party of funds. They may be right but will – or can – Acting President Yemi Osinbajo do better? The prognosis aren’t looking good at all for APC – what with an economy in quandary and a hungry and angry 170 million citizens waiting to explode at the least available opportunity? We saw a bit of that penultimate week in Osun state where the ruling APC was whipped by PDP in the bye-election into the Osun-west senatorial seat made vacant with the death of the occupant, former governor Isiaka Adeleke aka “Serubawon”. PDP’s candidate, who was Serubawon’s blood brother, Nurudeen Ademola Adeleke, won with a landslide, trouncing APC’s former Senator Mudashiru Hussain by 97, 480 votes to 66,116; a whopping margin of 31,364 votes.
The Osun election has many ramifications. If it is a signal of things to come, then, APC is poised to lose the state in next year’s governorship election, possibly to the PDP – that is, if PDP is able to put its house in order and present a common front like it did in the bye-election. What many thought was not possible was made possible in Osun when both Makarfi and Sheriff factions of the PDP temporarily put their differences aside and worked for the victory of Adeleke. If they can keep the same spirit up to the 2018 governorship election, Osun will be theirs for the picking. Now that the PDP leadership crisis has been finally laid to rest by the Supreme Court, the job is half-way done for the Osun PDP leaders and APC leaders in the state must be pissing in their trousers right now. Going by what played out in the Osun bye-election, it would appear as if the problem of imposition of candidates is yet to abate in APC. Like his late brother, Serubawon, Nurudeen Ademola Adeleke was in also in APC and was poised to contest the party primary. As it turned out, party leaders appeared to have zeroed in on Mudashiru Hussain; seeing that he would be elbowed out even if he contested and won the APC primary, Adeleke decamped overnight to PDP and was anointed candidate of the party. The rest, as they say, is history. In fairness to Gov. Rauf Aregbesola and other APC leaders, their sentiments (as I could glean from reports since I did not speak to any of them) were plausible: When the party desperately needed to woo Serubawon into its fold, Hussain, who was the senator representing Osun-west, sacrificed his position for Serubawon. Now that Serubawon is dead, it is only natural that Hussain be allowed to return to his post. Frankly speaking, this line of reasoning makes some sense but the APC leaders neglected a very important maxim of Economics – “ceteris paribus”; meaning, all other factors being constant.
There were so many other factors that were not constant in the Osun-west saga but which APC leaders willy-nilly wanted to force to become constant. Rather than yield to their pull; the rope snapped! First, was the controversy surrounding Serubawon’s death which, in some quarters, was put, rightly or wrongly, at APC’s door-mouth. In dealings with the public, perception, as much as reality, matters a lot. APC leaders failed to sufficiently appraise itself of the people’s perception of who or what killed Serubawon. Secondly, it carried forward an impunity that has become customary to it when it rode roughshod over its own rules and regulations to clear Hussain to contest a primary that the election panel had said he was not qualified to contest and which an appeal panel also said he was not qualified to contest. Under the leadership of Tinubu, the Action Congress, which later became the Action Congress of Nigeria, and then one of the legacy parties of APC, is notorious for imposing candidates. The recent free-for-all in the party in Lagos during the conduct of local government party primaries was majorly over the imposition of candidates. The third factor that worked against APC was the performance of Gov. Aregbesola – a performance described by many as woeful, dismal, and abject. Osun is, perhaps, the most culpable of all the states owing workers and pensioners. The governor has been paying half-salaries for months and even this is not regular. Forget about subventions to so many institutions, parastatals, and agencies of government. How about white elephant projects all over the state – roads hewed up and not constructed; schools demolished and yet to be rebuilt; failed promises, dashed hopes; O-this and O-that which are howlers all over the place? I was stupefied when, in the midst of all of this, the APC government in Osun carried on as if nothing was amiss; its arrogance as it campaigned for Hussain was benumbing. Was there anything they knew that we ordinary people did not know? Reports said on the night/early morning of the election, they now issued alert that another half salary for workers had been paid! Is that how much they have taken the people for granted?
But then, the people spoke – and it was unmistakeable and unambiguous. Let other leaders take heed. I wouldn’t know if it is too late already for APC and Gov Aregbe to mend their ways before the 2018 governorship election in the state. Otherwise, electoral disaster awaits them. Leaders elsewhere must also take heed, especially in Anambra where elections are due this year and Ekiti where elections will be held a couple of months before Osun’s next year. Stop imposing candidates. Pay workers and pensioners. Accord the electorate a modicum of respect. Understood?
Credit: Bolanle Bolawole, Nigerian Tribune – July 16, 2017