PDP SPLIT: WHAT IMPLICATIONS FOR 2015

Another election year is creeping into the corner and the politicians are already poised for the kill and generating a high level of heat on the polity in the process. The umpire has even warned that electioneering whistle has not yet been blown, but they turned deaf ears to that warning, leaving hapless Nigerians bombarded with their war drums. The PDP has only just come out of the first round of skirmishes that will follow in the wake of the struggle for power in the 2015 calculations.

Those who thought that the current discontent in the party was going to mar their last National Executive Committee meeting for the first time in over a year instead of the constitutionally defined quarterly meetings were disappointed. The din generated by the anti-Bamanga Tukur tendency in the party with which opponents as well as other chieftains worked hard to see the end of the Bamanga Tukur leadership failed to materialise.

However those who want Bamanga out of the way did not stop at that as they continued their war by moving around the country, first by visiting the former President Obasanjo in his Abeokuta enclave; then to Ibrahim Babangida in his palatial home in his Minna hometown; then to former President Shehu Shagari and his Vice, Dr. Alex Ekwueme before they came to see their main foe Dr. Bamanga Tukur  in his home in the exotic Wuse surburb of Abuja.

Cheekily, the governors then known as the gang of five went to confront President Jonathan at the presidential mansions in Aso Rock Villa. They have since metamorphosed as the gang of seven, spewing fire and brimstone as they gathered momentum in the wake of the PDP Special National Convention of August 31 at the national political shrine Eagle Square. After their well publicised visits to top leaders of Nigeria, they quietly kept their most important visit secret, that of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar.
Apparently as things turned out, Atiku, the political strategist trained by the late and famous master political strategist of Katsina fame, Major General  Shehu Musa Yar’Adua appeared to be the brain behind the whole shenanigan. As Governor Musa Kwankwaso of Kano talked last time of teaching his political opponents in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum political lessons, the gang of seven exploded venomously by working out of the special convention and throwing the Peoples Democratic Party into the worst political crisis it has ever faced in its 14-year history.

My personal anger at all this overheating of the political environment is that hapless Nigerian voters who put these politicians in power are being made to suffer as governance have literally gone on recess two years before the political campaigns are even due to start. All these because politicians are more concerned about their future relevance in the political leadership of the country than the provision of political dividends for the people that put them in office in the first place. If the whole objective is to ensure that President Jonathan does not contest the next general election, must Nigerians be made to suffer because someone else wants to rule the country instead?

I agree that the North rightly deserve another shot at the leadership of Nigeria having been left on the fringes for too long, but no one knows the plan of Almighty God whose responsibility it is to anoint leaders. No one is even talking about power shifting to the South-east which was the pivotal third leg of the tripod that held Nigeria together in the first republic. The day Nigerian leaders allow the will of God to manifest in the leadership of the country will be the day that better things will begin to happen for the country. Now, we are facing all sorts of difficulties in the country. Our oil reserves are depleting at a fast rate and so is the market for oil and instead of the leaders brainstorming on alternative ways of improving the political economy of the nation; they are wasting time looking for how to grab power for themselves and their cronies, not for the improvement of the lives of the citizens.

Coming to the future of the PDP, it will be a shame that the present Kunfu-fighting going on in the party is allowed to dominate the politics of Nigeria by people who were nowhere in politics when the founding fathers set the party up. Some of the party leaders are taking advantage of President Jonathan’s relative inexperience in hardcore political scheming at a time his government is making considerable improvement in the nation’s political and economic transformation.

Nigerian people will not be fooled by all these noises echoing in the political atmosphere. We are on the verge of resolving the most crucial problem facing the nation’s economic progress in the form of power generation and distribution and on the question of infrastructure, huge progress has been made; trains are running up and down the country and the airways are witnessing rapid transformation and if Jonathan remained focused and not rattled by the issues of mainstream and new PDP politics, Nigerians will forget the so-called lethargy that sometimes cloud his political perception.

At the end of the day, the nation will be faced with the choice of who will rule the country in 2015 between APC, PDP or the new PDP-PDM. I do not see the PDP going into the election as one party, because Atiku is a man that will always contest election for the presidency as long as he lives. He has already read the handwriting on the wall correctly and knows that nothing will stop Jonathan with his incumbency tag from going for a second term. This is why he has sponsored his boys to get the PDM machine ready while trying to see if he can cause a rumble in the PDP.

He knows that Bamanga Tukur, his fellow Adamawa chieftain has an umbilical attachment to President Jonathan, so he has made his move to get PDM set into a political party to provide him with cover ahead of 2015. All the new PDP moves are simply to see if he can intimidate Bamanga and Jonathan whom he knows is not possible. The other matter that Atiku must face is the Olusegun Obasanjo factor. Obasanjo will not be alive to see Atiku in power considering what happened in their eight years in office because he will ensure that he scuttles that ambition. This will force him to mend fences with Jonathan since he would not feel safe in Nigeria if Buhari becomes president.

The APC choice must be Muhammadu Buhari or they have no chance, considering that Buhari has already the potential of gathering 12 million-plus votes, while Jonathan will still be the PDP candidate as his body language does not reveal a man that will quit in 2015. I have heard talk of APC finding another candidate much younger but their biggest asset is Buhari and they can’t shy away from it. But when the "come comes to become", apologies to late political wordsmith, Dr. K.O. Mbadiwe, the ANC tendency in APC will do their normal somersault and make a secret deal with Jonathan to pick up south-west votes at the crucial time as even Tinubu will face hell under a Buhari presidency.

This could leave Atiku and the gang of seven in the cold unless there is a potentially dangerous situation where after the presidential first ballot between Buhari, Jonathan and Atiku, there is no clear winner and a gang up between APC and PDM becomes imminent. Who will withdraw for each other between Buhari and Atiku in that circumstance? That is where Jonathan can grab victory from the jaws of imminent defeat.

Assuming that OBJ has not mended fences ahead of 2015 with Atiku because people around the president like E.K. Clark do not recognise the importance of Obasanjo in the current political scenario around President Jonathan, OBJ will make sure that his Jigawa boy will topple Atiku, using the fellow gang of seven members to ensure that Sule Lamido is the candidate of the third force. My big fear for the new PDP is that there are too many warriors in their midst. Kwankwasiyya man looks tough, acts tough and appears the leader of the gang even though the portly one from Niger looks tougher. The Sokoto man in the gang looks even more of a sterner stuff while the Rivers variety is the one to provide most of the cash needed for the whole plot but may be discarded at the end as a mere spare tyre distanced from the centre of power.

I wish that everyone in the ruling party should retrace their steps and allow the PDP to remain the cohesive force it was, deliver the dividends they promised the people in 2011 or they will pay a big price for disappointing the people of Nigeria come 2015 whether they go by the tag of old or new PDP.