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PDP: The Journey Into Madness By Bassey Henshaw-Jack
What once burgeoned as a promising rose of democracy and freedom, the PDP is today widely perceived as a distressing stigma on whatever virtues democracy ever preaches. Conceived and formed by Nigerian democrats, fanatically committed to seeing the back of military rule, the party no longer today represents a genuine platform for cross-fertilization of ideas or liberalism to dissenting views. Instead, it is widely regarded by Nigerians as a dangerously growing despotic dragon ready to swallow up dissidents or genuine voices of democracy.
Surely, the emerging tragic reality in the PDP today could not have been what the founding fathers of the party had bargained for in 1999. The systematic humiliation of men and women who had made enormous financial and material contributions to the party, which nurtured it to the level of formidable strength it has today, is contrary to the big dreams all lovers of the party originally had.
The current revalidation of membership cards (a euphemism for blacklisting vocal members opposed to despotism) is a dangerous development, which has put a big question mark on the PDP’s touted claim as the model of democracy! If the revalidation of membership cards is intended to give party supporters who have reached eligible age the opportunity to register with the PDP, the exercise would not have aroused anger and suspicion among millions of Nigerians. However, a situation in which a revalidation of membership cards was launched nation wide with the purpose of forcing out opponents of dictatorship out of the party, should not be regarded as an internal affair of the PDP. The future of democracy is not an in-house affair of the PDP but a matter of wider national concern. PDP isn’t just any other party. It is the ruling party into whose hands Nigerians put their young democracy in trust.
The reported standing instructions issued to state branches of the party not to register certain individuals poses a grave threat to democracy and raises a big question about the integrity of the entire exercise. For example, the former Governor of Kano State, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and ex-speaker Ghali Umar Na-Abba were reportedly denied registration. Already, the two men have indicated their determination to launch an alternative party to the PDP. Indeed, the entire exercise is ridiculous because one cannot make any sense of the idea of keeping a blacklist of those who the president and his anti-democracy allies want deliberately flushed out of the party.
Even those Nigerians who used to think that President Obasanjo and his surrogates in the party had no hidden agenda are now being tempted to believe otherwise. How can any rational person explain the discriminatory registration against certain members of the party or be convinced that the exercise is genuine effort to consolidate our so-called “democratic gains?” With the non-elective congresses and convention earlier imposed on the party now being challenged before an Abuja High Court, Nigerians are no longer having any lingering doubt that there are sinister motives attached to these undemocratic moves. And those bent on imposing these undemocratic measures are already laughing themselves out of court, morally defeated at the bar of public opinion and conscience. However, since their hubris respects no boundaries of reason, they are determined to push ahead regardless of public hostility.
But how far can the PDP play the ostrich in its suicidal folly to defy decent public opinion and the genuine democratic aspirations of Nigerians? When Nigerians voted for the PDP in 1999, they had never imagined that the party could degenerate to this extent. How can the PDP grow into a stronger party when some founding fathers that had contributed immensely in making it the formidable political party it is today are being deliberately frustrated? The travails of Vice-President Atiku Abubakar at the hands of the President and his hatchet men on the national leadership of the PDP is a direct challenge to the conscience of any one who has any modicum of honour.
When the PDP was being formed by chief Solomon Lar, Mr. Sunday Awoniyi, Chief Alex Ekwueme, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Sunday Afolabi, Chief Bola Ige (reputed as one of the original authors of PDP’S constitution), Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and other distinguished Nigerian democrats, nobody could have believed that the baby they nurtured together would be ultimately hijacked by people who contributed the least to bringing the party into being. United by a common vision to restore the international image and dignity of Nigeria as a democratic nation in 1999, the founding fathers of the party didn’t probably have the faintest idea that the party would descend into its present crudest form of despotism.
Ironically, the very men that aided and abetted the military in 1993 to sabotage our democracy have infiltrated the PDP and are today once again destroying the integrity of our hard-earned democracy. When the PDP constitution was being written in 1999, the late chief Bola, then a member of the G-34, was said to have protested the presence of some discredited politicians among them who had in the past contributed to the collapse of democracy out sheer opportunism. It however, took the magnanimous intervention of Atiku Abubakar and other founding fathers of the party who pleaded forgiveness on behalf of the dubious characters who joined the party to make Bola Ige soften his hostility to these shady characters. Late Bola Ige refused to budge and took away his supporters to form the Alliance for Democracy,AD.
Interestingly, little did many genuine democrats within the PDP realize that the fears expressed by the late chief Bola Ige could be vindicated few years after the PDP had formed a government at the center. The open disregard for democratic norms demonstrated by the late Gen. Sani Abacha in his desperate bid to succeed himself is today distressingly repeating itself. In fact, some Nigerians were even willing to forgive Gen. Abacha because he was a full-blown military dictator who came to power through the barrel of the gun. What they find unacceptable, however, is the descent into the same pattern under an administration that came to power through democratic process! Majority of Nigerians are saddened by the fact that our President, who is internationally respected for democracy advocacy, has now become a hostage to the same forces that pooh-poohed and scuttled our democracy in June 1993, which opened a Pandora’s box that almost led to Nigeria’s disintegration.
Far from its original image of a democratic model, the PDP is today losing public respect as a political party sincerely committed to democratic virtues. With the open and systematic disregard for basic norms of internal democracy, how would the PDP claim the high moral ground to preach democracy to other political parties, when it is displaying the tendencies normally associated with autocratic order? The dominant influence in the PDP of men who had tainted political record has done incalculable damage to the democratic credentials of the party. A party that was once the pantheon of credible democrats is today nothing more than a parody of democracy.
It remains a mystery to many Nigerians why party members who are real assets to the PDP are being humiliated or frustrated in favour of discredited politicians that are liabilities to the party. The arguments that the PDP was not properly formed as proffered by the president himself are not convincing to any critical observers. Gen. Obasanjo is angry why party members should criticize their own President or Governors. This line of reasoning is consistent with mind of dictators who don’t brook even genuine dissent or benign opposition. Nothing destroys democracy like silence when things are going wrongly. And when democratic leaders are not criticized, they may mistake themselves for a god and grow into unbearable oppressors!
The cultivation of “yes” men is alien to democratic tradition. Party members must occasionally express genuine dissent when the actions of their own leaders are out of steps with the aspirations of electorate. Senator Joseph Liebermann of the united states is a bona fide democratic member, but that did not stop him from harshly criticizing former President Bill Clinton, when his conduct over the Monica Lewinsky affair debased the moral authority of Clinton’s presidency. Did any American Democrat call for Senator Liebermann’s head for criticizing his own President and a fellow party member? Did the Labour Party expel the late British Foreign secretary, Mr. Robin cook when he openly criticized Tony Blair over the plan to attack Iraq, which Mr. Cook considered as unjust and inconsistent with British national security interest?
It is an irony that, despite President Obasanjo’s privilege of rubbing shoulders with democratic leaders around the world, he is still averse to the right of dissident as part of democratic norms. Democracy without dissent, which the President and his minions are trying to impose on the PDP, is a fertile seed for the growth of dictatorship and at variance with the dreams of Nigerians who had staked their political destiny in the hands of the PDP in 1999.
Therefore, if the main objectives of fresh registration are to kill dissent and frustrate independent-minded party members who cannot keep quiet when democracy is threatened, then the PDP is advised not to push its luck too far. Democracy is like a living organism; you cannot restrict its growth without killing it! Rather than any pretension of reforming the PDP, President Obasanjo and his surrogates are audaciously determined to drag democracy to the abattoir for the sake of gratifying their despotic ambitions. No wonder those that insist on respecting the party constitution and basic internal democratic norms are regarded as enemies that must be put out of the way to make democracy surrender to despotism on its knees! And consequently, regardless of the perceived benefits of fresh registration, the exercise is discredited by the hidden agenda to disenfranchise certain party members because of their loyalties to certain politicians. Signed BASSEY HENSHAW-JACK
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