|
The Sinking Satanic Ark Of The PDP! By Jonathan Manok
Governor Abdullahi Adamu of Nassarawa State has often reminded PDP critics that the party is like a Noah’s Ark and, according to his absurd theory, you are either in it or you perish! The Col. Ahmadu Ali PDP leadership, which is firmly in President Obasanjo’s pocket, is standing on its last leg of legitimacy and even political survival. The party’s open contempt for democratic norms has already cost it enormous shrinkage of popular good will. The death of the third term agenda was a resounding evidence of just how much the party is widely hated by majority of Nigerians.
Deserted and disdained by Nigerians, the PDP is merely whistling in the dark, pretending that all is well when, in fact, things are falling apart. The odds are not as bright as Col. Ali and his cabal wants the world to believe. Indeed, their so-called reconciliation initiative is going nowhere because the move is fundamentally flawed. The deliberate refusal to reverse the malicious de-registration of certain party members that seemed reluctant to toe the line of the third term agenda and the failure to dissolve all illegal leadership structures in the party is making reconciliation impossible.
Mortally threatened by the fear of uncertain future, the Col. Ahmadu Ali led national leadership of the PDP is desperate to bring frustrated party members back into the fold. But the ridiculous thing is that they want to eat their cake and have it. The illegitimate circumstances of how his leadership came into being must be addressed if the party must be saved from imminent demise. However, to all intent and purposes, his leadership is opposed to democratic election.
The most dangerous feature of their shenanigans is their shameless determination to continue the tendency of imposing leaders. For example, the bitterness, rancour and controversy being generated about President Obasanjo’s successor is making nonsense of the “efforts” the party is making to rebuild the PDP and restore it to 1999 glory. How does the policy of taking people’s sovereignty for granted fit into the image of a genuinely democratic political party as Col. Ali’s faction of the PDP claims? Any succession process that discounts the qualification of the Vice President or puts him out of reckoning is ridiculous. The Col. Ali faction is limiting the search for Obasanjo’s successor to either the Governors or Senators, arguing unconvincingly that even in the United States, Governors and Senators produce presidential materials, thereby distorting facts of history to absurd extent.
However, the truth is that even in the United States, very rarely is a Vice President discarded in favour of other contestants. Wasn’t Richard Nixon nominated from a Vice President to contest Gen. Eisenhower’s position as President of the United States(Mr. Nixon’s loss to a more popular Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy, in 1960 was a different issue altogether.)
When President Lyndon Johnson declined to go for a second term in office because of the merciless pressure of the Vietnam War, his party had no hesitation to nominate Hubert Humphrey to stand as Presidential candidate. In fact, when President Nixon resigned in August 1974 because of the Watergate Scandal, Gerald Ford was eventually nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate against Mr. Jimmy Carter of the Democratic Party. In fact, despite the no-love-lost relationship between President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the issue did not disqualify him from being nominated as a Presidential candidate of his party.
A recent example was the nomination of Vice President Albert Gore as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 2000 to succeed former President Bill Clinton. Despite Vice President Gore’s studious efforts to distance himself from Bill Clinton because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the issue was not held against Mr. Gore by his Democratic Party. Instead, President Clinton himself had worked tirelessly for Gore’s success, despite his Vice President’s silent move to avoid him because of the stain of Monica Lewinsky scandal. In South Africa, former President Nelson Mandela had no hesitation supporting the nomination of his Vice President, Thabo Mbeki to succeed him, despite the fact that Cyril Ramaphosa was the popular choice of most ANC supporters.
In Nigeria, however, we are witnessing a bizarre democratic transfer of power in which President Obasanjo has so personalized power and regards Nigeria as a private investment that he is acting in cahoots with his pack of handpicked PDP leaders to frustrate the genuine and legitimate ambition of Vice President Atiku Abubakar to succeed him. In fact, Atiku Abubakar is the last person to leave the PDP given his active commitment to the party. Despite being part of the implementation of the economic reforms and his qualification to pursue them further if elected in 2007, President Obasanjo is turning every nerve to frustrate him - a move borne purely by malicious motives.
Under these circumstances in which Atiku Abubakar runs the gauntlet of internal enemies that reward his loyalty and sacrifices with ingratitude, can the PDP leadership convince any Nigerian that they are committed to genuine reconciliation, let alone rebuild the PDP as a once formidable national party? Can the future of our democracy be guaranteed under the atmosphere of crude abuse of power by a malicious President who deliberately planted leaders that have no genuine commitment to the principle of fair competition? Should Atiku Abubakar behave like a lamb to the slaughterhouse without weighing his options for political relevance and survival?
The relative stability of the PDP was shattered with the destruction of democratic process, through the mutilation of the PDP constitution and the shameless de-registration exercise, all intended to make a level playing field impossible. And the victim of this brutal use of power is the democracy itself. The future of the PDP should not be separated from its ability to respect democratic process. However, it seems that the President and his PDP henchmen are obsessed with the acquisition of power by force under the guise of practicing democracy.
Since the future of Nigeria does not depend exclusively on the non-elected oligarchy holding sway over the PDP, Nigerians must look beyond the party to help democracy take more genuine and firmer roots. The emergence of a parallel PDP national leadership, led by Mr. Solomon Lar, one of the key founding fathers of the party, did not come as a surprise to many keen Nigerian observers. A political party that openly disrespects basic democratic norms and holds public opinion in brazen contempt cannot be trusted to protect our democratic gains.
With the President and his men lacking the modesty to acknowledge how their own arrogance is destroying the popularity and good will of the PDP in the eyes of Nigerians, Mr. Lar and other supporters that deserted the party should not be blamed. The Obasanjo PDP is already dragging Nigeria into a needless political crisis through a divide-and-rule policy. If they have to be on the right side of history, there could not have been a better moment to part company with a party that wears the face of democracy but with a heart tipped with the sword despotism for slashing the guts of democracy. Having lost the third term ambition, these wounded lions of dictatorship wouldn’t bother leaving Nigeria in crisis just to satisfy their sadistic passion. |