The recent statement by a former Governor of Benue State, His Excellency, Senator Gabriel Suswam, accusing the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors Forum (PDPGF), His Excellency, Governor Bala Mohammed, Governor of Bauchi State, of being responsible for the problems of the party, is the height of arrogance, political opportunism and outright hypocrisy.
Appearing on the Morning Show programme of Arise Television recently, Suswam said that Bala Mohammed and the acting national chairman of the PDP, Ambassador Iliya Damagun should be held responsible for the problems of the party.
Suswam, I must say, is being clever by half if not outrightly hypocritical. As a former Governor of Benue State for two terms of four years each, Suswam knows that Bala Mohammed is not a member of the national working committee (NWC) of the party, the body that has the statutory responsibility for running the affairs of the party. It is also hypocritical for the former Benue State Governor to feign ignorance of the genesis of the crisis that has plagued the PDP since the last convention in 2022.
Suswam knows that the crisis started when a presidential aspirant, in pursuit of his inordinate ambition to be president at all cost, led some members to walk out on President Goodluck Jonathan and the party in 2013. They ultimately joined forces with opponents of the PDP to oust both the president and the PDP from power. Perhaps, if the leadership of the PDP had mustered the courage to punish the perpetrators of that ignoble disloyalty, the party would have been spared the crisis that Bala Mohammed and his colleagues in the PDPGF are trying to resolve.
Rather than demonise Mohammed as Suswan and his cohorts have embarked on, Governor Bala Mohammed and his colleagues in the PDPGF deserve commendation for standing in the leadership gap, for a party whose existence has been seriously threatened by a multiplicity of factors. In fact, It is insulting to the members of the PDPGF for Suswam to attribute all the decisions of the body to Bala Mohammed. As a former governor, he cannot feign ignorance of the fact that the forum is a body of equals where the chairman, as a ceremonial head, cannot force a decision on other members. It is also common knowledge that all decisions of the PDPGF, as contained in the communique of their meetings, are reached by consensus.
It is indeed a sad commentary that while Bala Mohammed and his brother governors have deployed all available assets to reestablish the PDP as a formidable opposition party, ready to take over the reins of government from the faltering All Progressive Congress (APC), Suswam and his sponsors are rather demarketing the party.
Reminiscent of the 2013-2015 misadventure that foisted the APC on Nigeria, Suswam and his co-travellers have embarked on another round of self-serving negotiations, deceptively couched as ‘coalition’, to create another dubious contraption of strange bedfellows that would further deepen the misery of Nigerians. If the former governor and his mentors are sincere, they should boldly support the decision reached at the Ibadan meeting of the PDPGF, in April, opting for like-minded compatriots to join it, as the country’s leading opposition party with the aim of ousting the APC-led Federal Government.
Besides, Suswan needs no one to tell him that those who arrogate to themselves the toga of indispensability, those who are consumed with a maniacal sense of entitlement, those who have one leg in the party and the other leg in another party, and those who have a reputation for abandoning the party once they lose either a nomination or an election, are the real problems of the party and certainly not Bala Mohammed.
For Suswam to cast aspersions on Bala Mohammed, a patriot who has distinguished himself as a quintessential civil servant, a consummate administrator, a legislator par excellence and a statesman, as insincere and lacking in leadership and therefore the problem of the PDP, is grossly unfortunate and portrays him as someone with a very poor sense of judgement.
Contrary to Suswam’s tantrums, the evidence abounds that, all through his political career and public service, Bala Mohammed has scrupulously and persistently prioritized national unity, political stability and constitutionalism over self-interest. If he had not been a talented conflict manager who also places a high premium on inclusion and due process, he would not have commanded the respect and confidence of his brother governors and other party stakeholders at this critical watershed in the party’s history.
The sublimity of the essential Bala Mohammed was to play out, to the nation’s advantage, way back in 2010 during late President Umaru Musa Yar’Ardua’s unfortunate passing. As the nation perched perilously on the vortex of a constitutional implosion, Bala Mohammed rose gallantly to propose the Doctrine of Necessity motion that cleared the path for then Vice President Jonathan to assume office, initially as acting president before he was confirmed as demanded by the constitution. For Suswan to speak so derisively of such a principled patriot raises serious questions about his ability to run the PDP should the leadership mantle fall on him. on him.
What has emerged is the indisputable fact that Suswam lacks the moral basis to hold Bala Mohammed responsible for his failure, so far, to clinch the chairmanship of the party. If the former Governor of Benue State possessed those messianic and leadership qualities that he has been flaunting on national television, why did his zone not insist on him replacing Damagun, despite the principled insistence by Bala Mohammed and others that, in accordance with the constitution of the party, Damagun, should step down for a candidate from the North central zone?
That Suswam has not been able to reestablish a strong foothold in Benue politics since his exit from the Senate, is an unflattering tribute to a man who aspires to lead the party in a crisis period and a repudiation of his leadership claims. Since charity should start at home, it is also axiomatic that if he could not secure the endorsement of his zone, by the same token, he cannot secure the confidence of other zones.
It is also axiomatic that those who go to equity should do so with clean hands. Therefore, for Suswam who could not produce a successor and ended up handing a secure PDP state to another party, to now pontificate over leadership credentials is an insult to intelligent members of the society. To make matters worse, except for the one term he spent in the Senate, Suswam’s diminishing political clout is further demonstrated by the ease with which he has been trounced on those occasions that he offered himself for elective offices in Benue State since he left the gubernatorial seat.
If Suswam does not know, his recent utterances portray him as a man who is either envious of Bala Mohammed’s ever rising profile or someone who no longer believes in the PDP as a viable platform for achieving the objective of the tendency that he represents. The yarn that he is spinning, about telling the truth, does not give him the impetus to demarket his party otherwise he would not have gloated about the PDP being in ICU on national television. One is strongly tempted to see Suswam’s uncharitable characterisation of the PDP as being in ICU as a smokescreen to validate the continuation of coalition talks with other entities, in a clear defiance of the decision of the PDPGF, ruling out any coalition talks.
If I may ask, what has been Suswam’s contribution towards strengthening the party since it lost the presidential elections in 2023? In other climes, the loss of the presidential elections in 2019, and again in 2023, would have triggered a welter of strategic moves towards rebuilding the party. Furthermore, in order to command the confidence of a broad spectrum of the party membership, this rebuilding process would naturally have thrown up a new leadership corps of younger elements that has not been serially tainted by defeat or deep-seated cleavages fuelled by personality cults and an entitlement mentality. Sadly, for some people, that is not the case.
Thus, we are left to wonder which party that Suswam aspires to run: the one that his co-travellers have sent to the ICU or the party that the PDPGF is striving to rebuild? He cannot be approbating and reprobating, he cannot be running with the hare and hunting with the hound at the same time as he is doing and still claim to have the interest of the party at heart. That may explain the trust deficit that, despite his desperation, has denied him the chairmanship of the PDP so far. These are the issues that he should address instead of his misplaced aggression against Governor Bala Mohammed.
Agu, a veteran journalist and a former chief press secretary to the head of the Interim National Government, is the media consultant to the PDP Governors’ Forum.