The Peoples Democratic Party, it would
seem, has finally come to the realisation
that it is no more the giant it thought it
was just a few months ago. From the
initial arrogant posture that it is the only
truly democratic party in Nigeria with
membership across the length and
breadth of the country, a position that it
thought had guaranteed its continuous
dominance of Nigeria’s politics for the
next 6o years, it has now come to the
awareness that for 16 years it misruled
Nigeria and deservedly lost the trust of
the voters.
Nobody could have put it better than the
Chairman of the party’s Reconciliation
Committee, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi, who at
a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday,
November 10, 2015 ahead of the party’s
National Conference admitted that his
party has failed the nation.
Like someone just coming out of a deep
slumber, he formally admitted to what
every other sane Nigerian already knew
that his party, the PDP, misruled Nigeria.
In his own words, “We tender unreserved
apology to Nigerians for the mistakes and
to party members for abandoning the
zoning principle of the party.We apologise
to people whose toes were stepped
upon.So far, whatever the PDP has done
against anyone, we hereby tender an
unreserved apology,” adding that “we are
going to have Adamu Ciroma, Alex
Ekwueme and some of the founding
fathers who were hitherto alienated from
the party at the conference to chart the
way forward for the party. The party in
2010 and 2011 made the first
fundamental mistake for not allowing the
North to complete its term, but special
recommendations were made to allow
former President Goodluck Jonathan to
complete it. The party came again,
because they were not courageous
enough to allow zoning and they
supported the former president, and the
party suffered defeat…”
In his thinking, the PDP made a
“fundamental mistake” for not allowing
the North to complete its term within the
context of their own zoning arrangement.
I think the real fundamental mistake
which the party made was to have taken
Nigerians for a ride. The PDP did not
reckon with the ability of the ordinary
Nigerians to see through the monumental
deceit, corruption and lack of democratic
spirit in their conduct of government
business.
There is no doubt that it initially enjoyed
national spread in the composition of its
leadership but it is equally true that the
so-called “national spread” has more to
do with the fact that there is no part of
the country where we didn’t have corrupt
men and women especially those who
evilly profited from the long military
dictatorship as apologists, associates,
cronies and fronts.
The party was largely peopled by those
who benefited from the evil military
dictatorship. It did not have many
genuine pro-democracy activists whose
bitter struggle accelerated the demise of
the military dictatorship within its ranks
and like I have always argued, there was
hardly anyone within the top echelons of
the PDP at inception that was not
contaminated by his or her active
collaboration with the military
dictatorship. Their choice of General
Obasanjo as the first president to
inaugurate the inchoate civilian
democracy was a continuation of their
militarised perception of national politics.
To be candid, if the military did not trust
someone in 1998, there was no chance of
him or her getting nominated into any
position of importance within the PDP
system. So much for national spread.
Therefore, the fundamental mistake
which the party made and to which it has
not yet alluded to in Dokpesi’s
confessional statement was to have
deceived Nigerians into believing that
they were democrats when indeed they
were the extended arms of a retreating
military from the politics of Nigeria.
Whether or not there was internal
democracy within it was a matter for the
members of the party to deal with. It was
always my view that the party was at
liberty to choose whoever they wanted as
candidate for the election but they should
be prepared for the consequences of
their choice. When a political party, out of
naked arrogance, deliberately alienated so
many people by its own lack of internal
democracy, it should have known that
under any truly fair and democratically
conducted election that it was going to
lose badly.
So their foolishness in picking President
Goodluck Jonathan as candidate against
zoning, political justice and fairness to the
North led to its total loss of support in
that part of the country. People like Chief
Edwin Clark manifested such degree of
insensitivity to the rights and feeling of
others in such ways that would naturally
alienate even the most ardent
supporters.
The 16 years that the party stayed in
power are similar to the biblical years of
the locust. It was wasted. The party had
ample opportunity to remedy its affairs
but it refused and went ahead arrogantly
on the illusion that Nigerians are fools
who cannot tell when they were being
taken for a ride. That is why I couldn’t
figure out the purpose of the unreserved
apology that Dokpesi, the AIT mogul, was
belatedly offering.
The PDP has a lot to apologise for. It
would also have to apologise not only to
Nigerians but to the whole of the
democratic world for willfully
counterfeiting the idea of democracy. The
last primaries conducted by the party
were the last straw that broke the
camel’s back. I recall making the following
observations about the recklessness of
that process on this same page:
A great number of observers have
labelled the unfolding development
within the PDP as “lack of internal
democracy”. I think it is more of
disguised autocracy than anything else.
When a party uses its internal machinery
to subvert and undermine the popular
will of the voters by presenting to them
not those they would have loved to
represent them, what follows is a rape of
democracy eventually giving birth to
counterfeit governments – an effective
‘state capture’ by those who do not wish
the nation well.
“I am aware of a situation where the
octogenarian Chairman of the BOT of the
party swore that a particular candidate
must not be voted for at the primaries no
matter his popularity. He even went
further to threaten that if at the end they
still stubbornly vote for the particular
candidate he would make sure the result
is annulled. A party that harbours such a
fascist personality has forfeited the right
to claim to be democratic
I foresee several internally generated
crises – implosion — within the parties in
no time and there shall inevitably be
inconsolable wailing and gnashing of teeth
in the face of the pending domestic
rebellions against overbearing political
tsars who are presently busy messing up
the process because you may force a
horse to the river but you cannot force it
to drink. There shall be protest voting
galore and it may not mean well for those
who have been playing God recently.
Mark my word.”
It is remarkable that less than a year of
making the above observations, the party
is already gnashing its teeth as the recent
“unreserved apology” of Dokpesi tells the
whole story. I warned them that it was
suicidal arrogance to have let go, in one
fell swoop, six serving state governors;
saw its former two-term president shred
his membership card on TV or allowed
people like Fani-Kayode and Clark to be
driving a supposedly convincing campaign.
I warned that it was akin to the man who,
for “fear of death committed suicide.” The
PDP needs to repent of its sins against
the nation. A mere one-time apology
may not be enough.
