Even in trouble, PDP should be honourable by Duro Onabule Desperate to save the wobbling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from eventually collapsing, members are employing everything from the book of tricks. They may even be free to do their thing without behaving as if their party is without a yesterday or that discerning Nigerians are without such memory. The latest in the PDP show are national chairman Bamanga Tukur (an otherwise pleasant man) and Senator Ameh Ebute, whose only distinction in the party is that, in a different dispensation, he was a shortlived crisis time Senate President. When Bamanga Tukur was elected the party’s national chairman less than three years ago, he was pitied in this column that as a reputable figure with good public service spanning over many years ending as governor of the defunct Gongola State, he risked being eventually destroyed out of public life by his PDP. Just like virtually all his predecessors. It is with mixed feelings to feel vindicated today, as chairman Tukur is fighting for his political life. For quite a time, Bamanga Tukur has been waxing strong in playing the game for President Goodluck Jonathan in getting out of national positions those members of the party’s national working committee and even national executive committee, sometimes with contrived court decisions, anyone suspected or known to be against Jonathan’s aspiration to be re-elected in 2015. Such well-placed members so directly or indirectly affected, like PDP state governors, are now holding Bamanga Tukur’s political jugular. Worse still, Jonathan is not the type to be reminded of the callous old rule, “In politics, you use and drop at your convenience.” With that prospect as carried in numerous media speculations, chairman Tukur, hoping that all is not lost, now preaches reconciliation with the erstwhile alienated state governors. Even that good intention will not justify some of his tactics. Bamanga Tukur’s latest showdown is that Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has no power to recognize or refuse to recognize any party official, and that the agency’s statutory function is limited to observing a party’s national convention or state and ward congresses. This followed INEC’s refusal to recognize PDP’s choice, Ejike Ogbuebego, as the party’s chairman for Anambra State. Unfortunately, Tukur must be reminded that that was the battle a defunct rival party, Alliance for Democracy (AD) fought over some ten years ago. Yet, the PDP, under Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency, was the sole saboteur of a political party’s right to choose its officials and merely inform INEC. Alliance for Democracy, strong rival of PDP, got mired in a dispute but held its convention and elected Ambassador Yussuf Mamman as its national chairman and duly informed INEC. However, that electoral body then, obviously acting on Obasanjo’s directive, rejected Yussuf Mamman as AD’s national chairman and instead claimed to recognize a dissident Abdulkadri as the party’s national chairman Despite AD’s insistence that Yussuf Mamman was its national chairman, the PDP, (though under a different national chairman, all the same) was complicit in INEC exercising a non-existing power to determine who is a party’s official. To worsen matters, PDP’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, proceded, thereafter, to appoint the INEC-imposed national chairman of AD, Abdulkadir, as one of his senior special advisers. If that was convenient for Obasanjo and PDP, the party is now merely swallowing the bitter pill it manufactured for INEC. On his part, Senator Ameh Ebute has thought it fit to poison the mind of south westerners (Yoruba) against those he referred to as Hausa-Fulani, all in preparation for the political battle of 2015. Ebute’s motive is no more than a clever attempt to be recognized by his party hierarchy. If past political disagreement should be a basis for non-co-operation currently or in the future, Senator Ebute and his Middle-Belt contemporaries have no lesson to offer south-westerners and of course, Ebute and Middle belters owe Nigerians much explanation for their (middle belters’) record. The starting point is that the Ebutes of Middle belt embrace southerners only when Hausa-Fulani are out of power. Any day Hausa-Fulani regain power at the federal level, the Ebutes and Middle belters will once again become northerners. More straightforwardly, if Jonathan loses in 2015, Nigerians should look for the whereabouts of the Jerry Ganas, the Solomon Lars, the Ameh Ebutes, the Lawrence Onojas, etc. For now, Ebute is mistaking his desire for reality. He can support President Jonathan without dragging south west along. With past record, south west has a reputation of independent-mindedness, such that the zone stood away from PDP, despite Obasanjo in 1999. And when rigged out of office in 2003, south-westerners took their time to regain their distinction in 2007. Hausa-Fulani (now distinctively referred to as core north) can defend themselves but why were this group not shunned by middle-belters (specifically, Ameh Ebute’s Benue State of Tivs and Idomas) when they joined in running their National Party of Nigeria after the civil war? Why did the same middle belters of Solomon Lar, Ameh Ebute, Iyorchia Ayu join Hausa-Fulani to run their current PDP? Despite criticisms of middle belters against Hausa-Fulani, Solomon Lar, the middle belt leader, was a junior minister in Tafawa Balewa’s government from independence in 1960 till the military coup in 1966. Was Balewa not a Fulani? When Shehu Shagari was elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1979, middle belters (from Ebute’s Benue), Joseph Tarka, John Wash Pam and others, were elected senators on the same party, the NPN. Is Shagari not a Fulani? Before then, did Ebute’s leaders from middle belt not accuse Fulanis of political victimization and marginalization? Yet, at every stage of Nigerian political history, up to the current dispensation under the late President Yar’Adua, middle belters (Benue-Plateau) always supported Hausa-Fulani for national political leadership and got appointed ministers as well as members or chairmen of public parastatals. Even under the military, officers from middle belt regarded themselves as northerners (without distinction from Hausa-Fulani), and got appointed as governors. In what capacity was Ameh Ebute appointed Senate President if not as a northerner? Could Ameh Ebute, an Idoma from Benue, Middle Belt, have been elected Senate President without the majority votes of Hausa-Fulani senators? Why have Ameh Ebute and fellow middle belt politicians never regarded Hausa-Fulani the political poison he (Ameh-Ebute) now wants south west to discard? For a repeat, should power at federal level return to Hausa-Fulani, Ameh Ebute and fellow middle belters will instantly become northerners. To expose their hypocrisy, here is a challenge for the Ameh Ebutes, the Jerry Ganas, the Solomon Lars now trying to draft south-westerners as guinea pigs in the hostility against Hausa-Fulani. They should first of all quit the PDP in total rejection of political collaboration with Hausa-Fulani, to whom they are closer as members of the same party than south westerners. That is, if Hausa-Fulani were that politically poisonous not to be embraced in 2015, why are they not poisonous for these middle-belters? During the national crisis in 1966, middle-belters, (in Benue State) killed fleeing south-easterners more than in any other part of the north. If south-easterners were to hold that against Benue State, the two goups would not be in the same party. Come 2015, each zone should be free to ally with another and as many as possible, depending solely on each group’s interest and not mischievous mind- poisoning.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:51:05 +0000
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