PDP crisis and national stability

In countries where totalitarianism or authoritarianism has been imposed on the people, such ended up with jeremiads and a crisis of national stability. We live in perilous times, as the international community has seen in Nepal, Morocco, Mexico and even here in Nigeria, winning or retaining power for its sake and by all means is not good enough. There is always the morning after. Ensuring national stability through a collective sense of ownership and belonging is more important

THE crisis in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) came to a head over the weekend that just passed, November 15 -16 when a group of PDP elders, they refuse to be called a faction but that is what they look like, decided against the background of fierce legal battles, to hold the party’s elective conference in Ibadan, Oyo State. They were hosted by Governor Seyi Makinde, the PDP Governor of Oyo State. The build up to that convention was marked by battles in the Federal High Court and the Oyo state High Court with the judges in both courts cancelling each other out. On Friday, Nov. 14, to be specific, Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court at about 8.30 am had ordered a suspension of the PDP Convention. Before him, Justice James Omotoso also of the Federal High Court had given a similar order. By 2. 30 pm on Nov. 14, the same day, Justice Ladiran Akintola of the Oyo State High Court gave a different ruling to the effect that the Convention should go ahead, and that INEC should oversee the elections at the convention.

Under the Electoral Act 2022, Section 84 (14), the jurisdiction for determining party conventions rests with the Federal High Courts. Where Courts within the same hierarchical order give the same orders, it is trite law that the latest in time prevails. By some display of cleverness, forum shopping and mischief, the faction of the PDP that gathered in Ibadan thus outsmarted the Wike faction for the want of a better label. They insist, therefore, that the PDP convention in Ibadan was validly conducted, and it stands. They point to the fact that the absence of INEC electoral observers was immaterial, not a required condition for the legitimacy of the exercise. Section 82 (1) of the Electoral Act states that a political party– “shall give the Commission at least 21 days’ notice of any convention, congress, conference, or meeting…” which the organisers of the Ibadan convention insist that they complied with. In Section 82(2) of the same may Act, INEC “may, with or without prior notice to the political party, attend and observe any convention, congress, conference or meeting which is convened by a political party…”  In other words, the absence of INEC observers at the Ibadan PDP Convention did not render the event invalid.

The major development at the Convention was the emergence of a new National Working Committee, with Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (KT) SAN, from Kebbi State, and former Minister of Special Duties in the Jonathan administration, elected as new Chairman of the party and Chairman of NEC, and Chairman of the Convention, along with other new officials of the party. A total of 3, 131 delegates registered for the Convention, both statutory and elected. About 2, 745 were in attendance. Delegates from Taraba arrived after accreditation had been completed and voting had commenced, so they could not vote. There were no delegates from Sokoto (Senator Aminu Tambuwal’s state) and Jigawa state (where former Governor Sule Lamido hails from), and just a handful of anti-Wike delegates from Rivers State. The Governor of Rivers State, Sim Fubara, stayed away; the PDP Governor of Osun State, Senator Ademola Adeleke, was represented by his Deputy. But the high point of the convention was when a voice vote was taken to expel 11 chieftains of the party on the grounds of indiscipline and anti-party activities. They include the former Governor of Rivers State now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike, former Governor of Ekiti State, Chief Ayo Fayose, and nine others who are well-known Wike loyalists in the party. The resolution was proposed by Chief Olabode George, a founding father of the party, and a would-be octogenarian (he turns 80 on November 21). He is also a former Wike ally. The proposal was put to a voice vote – those who say Aye, and those who say Nay, chorus and of course, in Nigeria, the Ayes always have it, the organisers are often likely to be selectively deaf. The expulsion of Wike and 10 others marked a turning point for the PDP. It is also ironic that Wike, who is the major factor in that process was expelled under the watch of persons who were once his close associates in the lead up to the 2023 general election – the G5 Governors who betrayed Atiku Abubakar and the PDP – Seyi Makinde was a member of that group, Prof Jerry Gana too in the Integrity Group while Chief Bode George was a member of the Integrity Group also led by Chief Wike. Both groups have since imploded, with the point writ large that indeed in politics, there are no permanent friends. Politics is a shifting landscape of loyalties and disloyalties.

The Ibadan PDP convention was prefaced by courtroom dramas in Abuja and Ibadan. It will only get worse. Going forward, we may well witness more PDP-related cases in court, but also banditry, insurgency and full-blown terrorism among the ranks. The organisers of the Ibadan Convention insist that they have done nothing wrong. They rely on extant Supreme Court rulings in Jegede &Anor v. INEC & Ors; Nenadi Usman & Anor vs. Labour Party & Anor; Onuoha v, Okafor; Waziri v. PDP; Ufomba v. INEC; Dalhatu v. Turaki; and Anyanwu v. Emmanuel that the courts cannot interfere in the internal affairs of a political party. But the caveat here is that the same Supreme Court has ruled severally that where the political party violates its own rules, or behaves as it likes, the courts would interfere (see Agi v. PDP, PDP & Anor v. Lawal & Anor, Uzodinnma v, Izunaso; Peretu v. Gariga, APC vs. Moses) to defend fundamental human rights and the rule of law. In Section 82 (3), the Electoral Act further stresses that the affairs of a political party “shall be conducted in a democratic manner and allowing for all members of the party or duly elected delegates to vote in support of a candidate of their choice.” The main grouse of Alhaji Sule Lamido is that he was excluded from getting a nomination form for the Chairmanship of the party, whereas the Ibadan faction insists that Lamido requested the form after the deadline for the submission of applications had closed! Lamido can still force the legal issues and drag the matter all the way to the Supreme Court, well aware that only the Supreme Court can reaffirm or reverse itself.

The other field of battle is the expulsion of Wike and others. Wike and his allies have dismissed this as a joke – a case of “Detty December in November”. Wike has the support of the Governor of Adamawa State Governor – Adamu Fintiri, incidentally the Chairman of the Convention Organising Committee, who apparently was kept in the dark and was wrong-footed with the resolution on Wike and 10 others. The PDP Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, also disagrees with Wike’s expulsion. Dr. Agbu Kefas, Governor of Taraba State, has announced that he is leaving the PDP on Wednesday to pursue his personal ambition.  Is it possible that the Taraba delegates to Ibadan deliberately arrived late because their Governor had his own plans? Apart from Wike, former Governor Ayo Fayose will certainly not like the 65^th birthday gift that he got from the PDP, on a day that others were celebrating him. To be humiliated on one’s birthday is the equivalent of a mortal sin. Fayose may well roar back as the likes of Samuel Anyanwu, Umar Bature, Mao Ohunabunwa, Chief Dan Orbih, George Turner, Adeyemi Ajibade SAN are also likely to. Senator Gabriel Suswam once warned that the PDP was already in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and that the then-proposed Ibadan Convention would make or mar the party. His prediction has come to pass. Suswam probably has some local fortune tellers in his family line whose DNA he inherited.  The party is on its way to the mortuary. The same party that was once touted as the largest political party in Africa, is now in urgent need of the Lazarus effect!

The principal undertaker is Minister Nyesom Wike, the one-leg-in-one-leg-out, chief fifth columnist in the PDP, the master of amphibious politics, neither PDP nor APC, who is the main subject of the implosion of the PDP. Wike must be given some credit and some flak as well, with the conclusion that he had the current comeuppance coming. In fairness to him, when the PDP imploded in 2014 ahead of the 2015 Presidential election, with principal members of the party including Alhaji Sule Lamido, who stayed behind and worked against the party, and is now in the current film, also Senator Bukola Saraki, who exited the party in 2014, to work against it, to form the new PDP which fused into the APC. Wike stood firm. He not only stayed at the party; he funded it with Rivers State resources. Other PDP Governors at the time were lukewarm. While Buhari’s APC was in power, party leaders trooped to Port Harcourt to collect handouts from Wike. He received them, fed them and gave them envelopes, brown and white. Wike’s problem is that he became delusional. He thought he could buy everybody and buy the party, and dictate the future direction of the party. He ended up quarrelling with every Chairman of the party who refused to do his bidding or tried to show some independence: Uche Secondus (acting Chairman, 2015 -2016); Ali Modu Sheriff (2016), Ahmed Makarfi (Acting) – (2017); Uche Secondus (2017 – 2021); Iyorchia Ayu (2021 – 2023); Ambassador Iliya Umar Damagum (2023 – 2025).  He overreached himself in the 2023 Presidential elections when he tried to dictate who should be the Presidential candidate of the party; he personally zoned the position to the South and put himself up as the right candidate or at best a Vice Presidential candidate. He said he was fighting on the basis of principle, but it turned out that he was more interested in his own ambition. He has since become an APC/Tinubu agent in the PDP.

He has practically turned Rivers State, a PDP state, into an APC state. The Governor – Sim Fubara – is so battered and bruised, after a six-month suspension, that nobody hears from him these days. Wike has tried to do the same at the national level in the PDP. He has promised chaos and confusion if his commands are not obeyed. He shunned the reconciliation meetings led by Ambassador Hassan Adamu and declared that the PDP must not have a convention but set up a Caretaker Committee, and that for the 2027 Presidential election, the PDP must not choose a Presidential candidate. The response from the party, from the same party leaders who used to troop to Port Harcourt to pay homage to him, was his expulsion from the party in Ibadan.  The Convention, the highest decision-making body of the party, claims that the party’s Constitution frowns on indiscipline. But why now? Why is the party just waking up? And were the expelled persons allowed to defend themselves as the party’s Constitution stipulates? Wike will fight back. His own faction will probably expel the same people who expelled him and others. He has a contract with the APC: to return Tinubu to power by frustrating the PDP from within. He will not give up easily. How did one man become so powerful in a political party in Nigeria? Not even Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mallam Aminu Kano, or Mallam Waziri Ibrahim exercises such absolute powers!

It is Nigeria’s democracy that suffers in the long run. After 26 years, Nigeria’s democracy can no longer be described as nascent or putative. It is long enough a period for our democracy to grow. But the big problem that we face is the threat of the emergence of a certain, curious, one-party state – the APC state. Only the other day in Plateau state, APC Chieftains received politicians defecting to the APC. This was against the background of farmers-herders clashes, unresolved killings on the Plateau and elsewhere, and America’s campaign against Nigeria. It is almost certain that the Tinubu for 2027 project has been sealed and delivered, but after that, what next? Every democracy needs a robust opposition. Being in the opposition does not mean being anti-government: it simply means allowing a multiplicity of views, divergent and varied, to thrive. This is what we need in Nigeria. In countries where totalitarianism or authoritarianism has been imposed on the people, such countries ended up with jeremiads and a crisis of national stability.  We live in perilous times, as the international community has seen in Nepal, Morocco, Mexico and even here in Nigeria, winning or retaining power for its sake and by all means is not good enough. There is always the morning after. Ensuring national stability through a collective sense of ownership and belonging is more important.