Impeachment,
the Only Option for PDP
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
The
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is increasingly getting into a fix. Writing
about it has become imperative, a priority you may say. This stems from the
dominant role the party plays in our democracy today.
It is the ruling party in this country, having the President and the
majority in both Senate and House of Representatives. It has 22 out of 36
governors plus the Minister of the Federal Capital, who is another PDP man
appointed by the President. In addition to this, by tribal allegiance to the
President, the five Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors are also members of
the PDP. Finally, there are some APP chieftains and governors, few though, who
are busy eating the roasted maize
(the symbol of APP) under the umbrella (symbol of PDP) held by the
President. Some of them are right now in the Southwest campaigning for the
superiority of the umbrella over the maize, as they did in 1999. What a
conspiracy!
Also,
the economy and politics of the country is literally in the hands of PDP. Its
members determine who gets what share in the economy through budget
formulation and implementation, contracts award and appointments into the most
lucrative offices in the country. Politically, as the sole proprietor of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), it determines the course of
events in the political process. This body, whose overwhelming majority are
PDP members, is required to ratify not only the conventions and congresses of
the PDP but also of the other parties. As a demonstration of its power, last
month it boycotted the national convention of the APP and the gathering of
over 10,000 people had to disperse in disappointment because by law no
convention is valid without the attendance of INEC.
I
will therefore like to submit that when only sheer size and power are
considered, PDP is the party to reckon with, so far. We can validly argue,
based on that premise, that until it is toppled in the next election, if PDP
is in trouble, our democracy is in trouble. However, unlike Fairouz who, out
of love for Damascus said, “Syria! Your people, if they are in trouble, my
heart is in trouble,” our writing about PDP is not informed by love for the
party but by the impact which its troubles will have on our democracy.
The
troubles in the PDP are many but two are particularly disturbing. The first
problem is Obasanjo. His government is a total failure, a fact that has been
chronicled by many writers. All what the government is good at is quoting
figures, but the work cannot be substantiated. The reports of gross corruption
in the federal government including those given by international organizations
have reached alarming levels. The levels of insecurity, ethnic conflicts,
poverty, etc. have never been so high. All these are common knowledge among
Nigerians today.
The
trouble with Obasanjo does not stem from his failure but from his resolve to
remain in power as it is the tradition with other African rulers. He is bent
on using whatever resources are in his control to win elections next year. He
has proved his ability to crudely get his way in previous conventions of his
party and in the Senate. He changes the leadership of the Senate and the party
at will, three for each in the last three years. His control over INEC and
other bodies makes him feel confident that victory must be his companion in
2003.
Knowing
the degree of his low esteem on the one hand and his resolve to maintain his
seat through whatever means on the other, many members of his party have
expressed their fear over the fate of the party and the future of democracy.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most consistent and
eloquent in this. He has threatened to leave the party if Obasanjo comes out
of the next convention as its flag bearer. The convention will come and in it,
Obasanjo may or may not contest. Everything will depend on what happens to him
between now and then. We will come back to this later in the article.
The
second problem of PDP is the flood of aspirants seeking its ticket at the
local government and state levels. As Obasanjo is sitting tight on the
presidency, so also are the governors of the party. There are many aspirants
within the party who would wish to replace the present state governors. Seeing
how the governors have manipulated the congresses of the state, they are left
with no choice but despondency which has led some of them to entertain, in
revenge, anti-party activities, others have decamped to other parties as we
have seen in Plateau state recently.
At
the local government level, in addition to intrigues and decampment, violence
has been employed as a means of expressing dissatisfaction with the affairs of
the party. Almost all the violence that took place during the local government
primaries did so only within the PDP. Some local government primaries could
not hold. And they may never hold because attempts to do so have resulted in
the loss of lives and property. A clear example is that of Jos North local
government where, no thanks to recent ethnic disturbances, the majority has
awakened from its slumber to claim its democratic right. The last PDP ward
congress there only succeeded in renewing the ethnic animosity and led to an
instant loss of hundreds of lives.
Ordinarily,
one would rejoice that the dominant party is crumbling; that its absence will
guarantee other parties breathing space in the political atmosphere. However,
I am of the opinion that the loss of the PDP will hardly change much, as
things are today. But this argument can only be substantiated if we probe the
source of the party’s problems such that we can say precisely whether or not
these problems are peculiar to the PDP or not and whether other parties that
will move to occupy the space it will vacate will be more promising.
To
begin with, I believe that none of the parties would have done better if it
were in the position of the PDP, if we discount the extremely bad case of
Obasanjo. This is because, both AD and APP have shown similar degrees of
opportunism and weaknesses in the domains they control. Their governors are no
better than those of the PDP. They have emasculated the opposition in their
states and they are playing the incumbency factor as good, or say as bad if
you like, as the PDP is playing its at the state and federal levels. In the
appointment commissioners to State Independent Electoral Commisions for
example, the APP governors did not show a better degree of restraint. They
appointed their own men. Therefore, Obasanjo, Makarfi and others in the PDP
are not alone.
The
leadership of the other two parties have also shown weaknesses similar to that
of the PDP. The AD has shown strong inclination towards ethnic chauvinism to
the extent that it is willing to vacate the presidency for Obasanjo. The APP
on its part has been controlled not by the whims of its followers but by
manipulations of the rich and the powerful both inside and outside its
membership. Its leadership sold the presidential ticket of the party to an AD
candidate even after it has a candidate nominated by the convention. Recently,
four times, its leadership has failed to hold a convention and it has tried,
without success, to sell out the entire party to the Babangida group when the
latter was not sure of getting INEC’s registration. By the time it was sure
of it, it abandoned the merger project and pursued the registration. That
matter is now revisited, seeing that Nigerians are not enthusiastic about
joining the new parties, for whatever reasons. Finally, in the last convention
of the APP, the candidate who poised to unseat the incumbent chairman was
strongly alleged to have been sponsored by the PDP presidency. A
nan, biri yayi kama da mutum.
Since
we have established that other functioning parties, as of now, do not stand on
a higher moral ground than the PDP, then abandoning it will not help the
democratic process; it can only help individuals in the pursuit of their
selfish goals. If they see PDP as losing, or if they cannot find enough space
for the expression of their desire to oust current incumbents, they will jump
the fence over to these other parties, as some of them are doing now. Money
and expedience, therefore, are the strongest stimuli to which our politicians
respond, not to pride, esteem and principle.
Secondly,
the parties themselves are not based on any ideology, but on pure opportunism.
The PDP and APP are conglomerates of different interests, groups and
individuals. They are together when there is something common to share,
usually selfish, and part ways when there is nothing to scramble over. What is
common, for example, to the PDP is that its founding members – the G38 –
had nothing in common other than their interest to oust Abacha. Today, they
are in the position of Abacha, doing worse than he did. This has compelled
some of them, like Sunday Awoniyi, who are more inclined to principle than to
greed, to leave the party; others have remained in it, disgruntled over the
denial to partake in the spoil of governance and therefore waiting in revenge
to give Obasanjo a fight he deserves in the next primaries of the party.
The
final migration will be after May 2003. If the PDP will lose the next
presidential elections, it may never win it back because most of its members
will decamp to the victorious party as a response to their survival instinct.
They are only being clever; because it is difficult to have best side of the
two worlds. That is what happened to other parties. They have lost many of
their influential members to the PDP because they cannot withstand the
‘Agadez weather’ of opposition – dry, hot and windy.
Thirdly,
the high degrees of poverty and illiteracy have made both the masses and the
elite subjects of manipulation by whoever is in power. Almost all businesses
are dependent on government. This has turned most elite into willing
sycophants, ready to bury the truth alive and flying, instead, the flag of
falsehood, corruption, incompetence and failure. Whenever they are on power or
close to it, they would hold on to their positions by all means. They will
never accede to any democratic principle that might result in losing an acre
out of their vast political estate.
Finally,
there is the difficulty in managing victory. Victory does not always bring
ease. In many instances, it engenders a burden of responsibilities. The PDP
had a responsibility to manage well its decisive victory in 1999 by
exemplifying prudence, fairness and self-restraint. Instead, it preferred to
be wild, partial and dissolute. Thus, failure, acrimony and resent logically
became its fortune.
These
are some of the characteristics of our politics, past and present. It is the
mindset of majority of our politicians today. What we need is to move forward.
So let us focus on the solutions.
If
we truly want democracy to have a footing in this country, then we must work
hard to refine the way we conceptualise and practice politics. But as a matter
of urgency, generally speaking, no party will succeed in giving this country a
better leadership than the first outing of the PDP without committing itself
to the principles on which leadership and democracy are based. Leadership is
based on competence, steadfastness, self-sacrifice, rectitude and service to
the people. Government belongs to them, and it must be put to their service.
Our parties and officials are deficient in these. In the choice of candidates,
therefore, only the popular, selfless and competent must be chosen. In
governance, the weaknesses of the soul – greed, ignorance and envy – must
be tamed. Responsibility must be given to the honest and competent. This was
the advice we gave to Obasanjo on the pages of this column three years ago.
Unfortunately, we did know that we were speaking to the dead, as an ancient
Arab poet would put it.
The
choice of presidential candidates deserves particular caution and attention,
given the dominant role of the office in our society. Our parties will do this
country a great favour if they will, at least for a day, suppress other
desires and choose the suitable even if it means dragging them from their
homes to stand. It is in accordance with this goal - enriching our list of
presidential aspirants - that this column called on Buhari to join politics
and possibly contest the presidency. Other good candidates should be
encouraged to overcome shyness and fear and come forward so that whichever
party wins we are assured that the country will have a better leader than
Obasanjo come 2003. Giving the ticket to the highest bidder this time, as it
has been the tradition, would be like passing a death sentence on democracy.
The
PDP in particular carries a greater responsibility in ensuring that it
conducts the coming transition with all sense of responsibility. Right now,
Obasanjo has earned it a bad repute, that he cannot even allow INEC to compile
voters’ register, something that all past military dictatorships did
promptly without any hitch or complaint. Obasanjo is unable to do it because,
in his attempt to rig elections through the compilation, he starved the INEC
of funds and burdened it with tasks that it cannot accomplish. The party must
call him to order.
I
will implore Ghali Na-Abba and his like to remain in the party. They should
stay there and fight, just as Rimi has resolved to do. I appreciate that
Obasanjo is a big liability to the party. If they are really serious about
solving the problem of maladministration, they must do away with Obasanjo and
replace him with a better candidate. Anything short of this will mean failure
for the party and likely for democracy in Nigeria.
Right
now they have two gates opened before them. They can either impeach Obasanjo
now or wait until the national convention when they intend to defeat him in
the primaries. I will not advise them to take the latter. Allowing Obasanjo to
reach the convention will mean catastrophe for the party, whether he wins it
or not. If he wins the primaries, the party has to contend with his
unpopularity and with his bad record of recklessness, incompetence,
inefficiency, inattentiveness and corruption. This surely means that they must
be prepared to be strangers at Aso Rock after May 2003. Agadez!
On
the other hand, if they defeat Obasanjo at the primaries, it means they must
be ready to forego the largest concentration of physical votes that they
expect from losing Southwest – because AD will as a result nominate a
candidate in protest – as well as the largest concentration of invisible
votes that they hope to get from the incumbency factor.
So
the safest thing for the PDP is to encourage the National Assembly to impeach
Obasanjo before the next PDP convention. I hope this is the truth behind the
impeachment move by the House. At least, this will gurantee them the ability
to rig elections.
I
do not believe that impeaching Obasanjo is a threat to our democracy as his
sympathizers are claiming. Nothing will happen. Impeachment is a
constitutional matter. If the President has committed the fifteen impeachable
offences the House is charging him with, the system must be bold enough to
punish him. Those trying to persuade the members of the house to drop the idea
of impeachment are not being fair. Where were they when Obasanjo was
committing all these offences? If he is impeached, the right signal will be
sent that no one is above the law. No one should take the government and
people of Nigeria for granted simply because he is under the wrong impression
that he is doing the country a favour or because he has the backing of
imperialist forces outside. It will be a lesson which coming presidents will
learn from.
A
big question though remains regarding the impeachment. Has the House
mustered enough courage to challenge the President, knowing very well that
hardly would any ‘Ghana must go’ pass over the roof of the National
Assembly without being gunned down by the vigilant rocket launchers of its
members? If their past record is anything to go by, this affair may come to
pass as others did before. And that will surely put the PDP in a bigger
problem come 2003. Then it will look back and wished it had supported
Na-Abba. It is not too late. The chance is there. PDP, impeaching Obasanjo
is your best bet. Please take it.
Interested
readers can read last week’s article, Obasanjo:
the Sinking Titan from my page at gamji.com