“In the third world, political leaders run political parties in the frame of their factory management__ .” ― Ehsan Sehgal
The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is going through avoidable pains arising from a self-inflicted injury due largely to exacerbated injustice, haughtiness, corruption and the continuous breach of its constitution. PDP leaders after 16 years in power have been in a teeth-gnashing for the past nine years out of power and possibly saying to themselves, if we had known. The party had no reason to lose power when it did in 2015 but had to because of power arrogance and corruption.
If APC, Buhari and Tinubu as it appears are now a plague to Nigeria, the blame should go to the PDP for creating the enabling environment that brought them. The human scrotum is not easily accessible, so when a tsetse fly finds its way there, the man should be blamed for displaying it carelessly or leaving that region of the body moist and unkempt to attract flies.
Anybody or organization that is prone to corruption in politics is bound to be hijacked by big political spenders. That was what happened to PDP when it opened its corrupt insatiable belly to a generous big spender like Nyesom Wike. Now they are suffering indigestion from free envelopes.
A similar situation also happened to the ruling APC when Bola Ahmad Tinubu rolled out his dollars to the greedy APC delegates including Governors, the INEC and the Judiciary who saw it and died. Even the then Kaduna State Governor Nasiri El Rufai who coordinated the Tinubu largesse in the North is today biting his fingers and blaming his error in judgment.
Today PDP has found itself face to face with these two dangerous and inordinately ambitious wastrels, who are holding the money, and the power, and are ready and willing to quench every appetite. Can a hungry and greedy PDP reject the alluring aroma coming out of Wike/Tinubu rooms like land, money, houses and luxurious cars for party loyalty? That question is to be answered in days and weeks ahead as the PDP crisis escalates.
Experts admonish us that to avoid attracting tsetse flies to our bodies, we need to stay in well-ventilated areas. If a tsetse fly lands on your scrotum, you face a very high risk and you are advised to gently brush it off or carefully remove it with your hands. Avoid swatting or crushing the fly, as this could lead to further discomfort or even infection.
Medical records show that Tsetse flies can transmit the parasitic disease called trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) if not handled cautiously. PDP appears to have already been infected by the disease and is sleeping and hoping to wake up late for 2027 if it still survives. Not a few political pundits believe that the PDP is currently in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with a very slim chance of survival. It’s still baffling to political watchers how the PDP’s biggest benefactor Nyesom Wike turned out to be its main traducer and a tormentor-in-chief.
In 2023, Wike stood copiously between PDP and victory and has again positioned himself stoutly to do the same in 2027 and while it’s having an AK47 for the battle ahead, PDP is struggling with a den gun and sticks. Critical weapons needed for this 2027 electoral war are money, power, INEC and judiciary which Wike and Tinubu have in abundance while PDP and others have gullible and docile people and sentiments which mean nothing to corrupt politicians in Nigeria’s democracy. While PDP, Labour Party and others in 2023 struggled to campaign and convince the electorates with their penetrating messages, Tinubu and Wike took their campaigns to the homes of INEC and judiciary operatives and the result is what we have now.
The PDP lost their very rosy position in our polity when corruption and greed blocked their view from seeing the potential consequences of unchecked ambition and assertiveness. These vices posed long-term damage to the party and impacted greatly on its image, unity and effectiveness. If not weighed down by corruption who is Wike to be openly abusing and describing his party leaders as vampires even with his multiple anti-party records, but they dare not reply or punish him to avoid opening their filthy cupboards?
When they were lining up to commission projects in Port Harcourt before live television cameras, they didn’t know they were mortgaging their conscience and party’s fortunes. They didn’t know they were dining with the devil without a long spoon. Look at a supposed main opposition party whose Governors could not even defend their colleague before an overbearing godfather because of interest and compromise at the expense of their party. In the Enugu and Taraba conferences, the PDP Governors continued to chew words on the issue of Rivers State because of interest. But what do you expect from a body whose Chairman is campaigning for the return to power of the man whose tenure sent the party into oblivion? Shame!
It’s saddening what the party that had the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, Alex Ekwueme, Solomon Lar, Abubakar Rimi and other egghead leaders of blessed memory has become. An errand boy in Port Harcourt in their days when Prince Uche Secondus was the Rivers State PDP chairman has hijacked their great party and now decides what happens from another party. In Rivers State today, factions of APC and PDP are Siamese twins trying to undermine a PDP Governor but the party leadership is going back and forth unable to act.
For 2027, PDP is planning to enter a boxing ring without protective gloves, and you can imagine the outcome.
In the PDP of old, the current Acting National Chairman, Ambassador Umar Damagun, will not be qualified to hold any national position in the party with his party unable to win elections in his State since its inception. But today, he sits in breach of his party constitution setting up reconciliation and disciplinary committees to help him endorse illegality forgetting that peace and reconciliation can only be achieved by the enthronement of justice.
How did PDP get here you may want to ask? They arrived at this juncture when the party refused to stand for the rule of law and justice in 2022 to zone their Presidency to the South and that singular unjust act prepared the ground for a Wike even in his duplicitous act to stand and cause confusion in the party. Ahead of 2027, the party’s trajectory has not even changed.
The South East region was the electoral base of the PDP from its inception. In the six elections, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 to 2019, the geopolitical zone massively voted PDP at the Presidential level, rejecting even their sons in the race for party loyalty. But the party has not deemed it fit to give their ticket to anybody from that region for over two decades. As disruptive as Wike is, the PDP’s unjust and inequitable system provided him the ground to operate.
The PDP’s unethical behaviour, bias and discriminatory leadership over time have led to internal decay and erosion of trust within the party. The corrosive influence of corruption and greed in the PDP is very apparent and urgently calls for thorough reform and accountability if integrity is to be restored in the party.
The deeper conflict so far is over the party’s values, direction and leadership and the years of personal and political ambition clashing with party interests, and strategic differences threatening party unity.
In Wike, we have seen a loud leader achieving results through intimidation and aggressive tactics taking advantage of the corrupt environment.
What is playing out vividly is that Wike has tactically seized PDP with his loud personality, exuding confidence, which is often mistaken for leadership ability and often interpreted as decisiveness and strength but embedded in it is a character trait that is afraid of losing out and ready and willing to leak any anus including going the opposite direction to remain in the corridor of power. As it stands now, Wike’s current job description is tied to PDP and that makes him more desperate to have the party than those confronting him.
It’s therefore mortifying for a political party that was in power for sixteen years at the federal level and was at a time in control of 28 out of the 36 States to allow somebody like Wike to have such a dominant and intimidating figure and even providing him with a platform to establish his pattern of aggressive and coercive behaviour.
In a manner of the conclusion of this conversation, the point being underscored is that PDP leaders opened up their scrotum, made it dirty and enticing for a political tsetse fly to come and perch and endanger their future. The party is also under the weight of nemesis that is goddess of retribution and punishment which in Greek mythology also brings balance and justice to wrongdoings. When we colloquially say that nemesis is a bitch, we are indirectly emphasizing the fact that every action has consequences and justice can be fierce and unrelenting.
All those, including Wike, who directly or indirectly compromised to see Prince Uche Secondus out of office as National Chairman either for pecuniary gains or driven by ambition now know and embrace the age-long saying that all that glitters is not gold, otherwise Iyorchia Ayu would have been able to solve Wike’s ambitious desires. Let the PDP respect its rule book, embrace justice and fairness and watch the party return to glory. Period!. God help us.