Who lost seven governors? Category: Monday column Published on Monday, 02 September 2013 05:00 Written by Mahmud Jega Hits: 3838 Imagine yourself, as the head of an extended family, to be presiding over a strange family ceremony to correct a violation of cultural norms that was pointed out to you by the traditional authority. In the middle of the ceremony you receive word that seven of your brothers and children have walked out of the back door, into a nearby bukateria and have started a rival ceremony of their own. What will you do? You can either take off after them to try and drag them back or you can put up a brave face, accuse them of bringing dishonour to the family and continue with your ceremony, your heart burning like a stove all the while. Last Saturday’s walk out from the special PDP convention at Abuja’s Eagle Square was particularly embarrassing because minutes earlier, party national chairman Alhaji Bamanga Tukur had predicted that total reconciliation will be achieved in the party. Bamanga has been talking about reconciliation since he became party chairman but it increasingly looked like what Winston Churchill once called “a forlorn hope.” Now the chance is probably lost for good because with their carefully planned, super-secret plan to walk out from the convention venue, the seven governors and former vice president Atiku Abubakar have crossed the political equivalent of that small Italian river, the Rubicon. For President Goodluck Jonathan too, the walk out and subsequent setting up of a rival PDP occurred within an hour of his boast that PDP has been the most stable party in this Republic. He is better known for listless speeches but Dr Jonathan found his voice last Saturday and delivered some rousing lines about PDP’s stability. He asked the convention delegates a series of questions such as “has PDP changed its name?”, “has it changed its logo?”, “has it changed its manifesto?” and “has it changed its vision?” To all these questions the party stalwarts responded with a resounding “No.” It looked at that hour like the president had scored a big political point because the two other parties with which PDP started out in this Republic, namely APP and AD, have since changed their names, logos and emblems so many times that they are unrecognizable now. Within an hour of uttering those rousing presidential words however, they rang hollow. Speaking at the Yar’adua Centre where the defectors retreated to, chairman of the New PDP Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje said they formed it “in order to rescue the party from dictatorship, lawlessness and the acts of exclusion being perpetrated by Bamanga Tukur and being encouraged by the president for the actualization of his 2015 ambition.” The New PDP may look small in relation to the Old PDP but if its leaders now claim to be the majority, they are only borrowing a formula invented by PDP and the Presidency. They invented the notorious formula that 16 votes at the Nigeria Governors Forum election was greater than 19 votes; seven rebel governors could therefore be a majority against PDP’s remaining 16 governors. Old PDP’s leaders may be putting up a brave face for now but the loss of seven state governors along with Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki and a bevy of Federal legislators in one fell swoop is akin to an upper cut in a boxing ring. During the days of the Cold War, there was this sport in American politics about which president lost which country [to revolutionaries]. “Who lost China?” Truman! “Who lost Cuba?” Eisenhower! “Who lost Iran?” Carter! “Who lost Grenada?” Reagan! Now, if the nine men who have been PDP’s national chairmen since 1998 ever sit together to apportion blames over who lost what in the party’s history, the question of “Who lost seven governors?” is likely to come up. The resounding answer: Bamanga! He lost not only governors but Obasanjo, Atiku and South West party chapters as well. What is likely to happen now? If Alhaji Bamanga and President Jonathan carry on with the same approach that has brought PDP to this sorry state, things are likely to get even messier. A key test will occur today, when the New PDP is scheduled to open its national secretariat. Bamanga and Jonathan’s instincts will be to send policemen to seal off the rebel party office, the formula that Police Commissioner Mbu Joseph Mbu perfected in Rivers State. Trying to prevent seven serving governors from entering a building is a dangerous business indeed because each one of them has a battery of policemen attached to him. It could lead to policemen brawling with policemen as occurred in Rivers. The next thing that could happen, if Bamanga still acts on his instincts, would be to suspend all seven governors as well as Atiku, Oyinlola and Saraki from the party. Hot on the heels of that disastrous move, Old PDP could launch an effort to snatch away local party structures from the rebel governors with the help of ministerial henchmen. If that happens, it could play into the rebels’ hands. From all indications they have made up their minds to leave the party but given the quirkiness of the law, legislators who follow them into the New PDP without the benefit of a division in the old party could stand to lose their seats. If and when these men leave PDP, where will they go to? The political move that will have the greatest strategic effect will be for them to flock into APC. That will immediately create an opposition party with 18 state governors, more than PDP’s residual 16. Old PDP can no longer claim to be the largest party in Nigeria, much less in Africa. If they don’t move into APC but they choose to form a third force instead, that could complicate matters on the national political scene. Atiku’s men have already registered PDM in anticipation of such events. This is an old Atiku tactic; in 2006 when he was having problems in PDP his allies registered AC together with leaders of the rump AD. He could now offer PDM to the defecting PDP governors but will they accept it? Most of them will not like PDM as a platform because it is associated with the late General Shehu Yar’adua. Governor Rabi’u Kwankwaso had politicked with Yar’adua in the Third Republic while Governor Nyako served under Yar’adua as a military governor; otherwise all these men are not Yar’adua’s men. Also, Atiku’s men are already ensconced as PDM’s leaders; trying to uproot them could invite a CPC/Rufa’i Hanga situation. Yet, if the New PDP were to end up in APC, there would be complications as well. The presence of state governors in a party is a political double-edged sword. While they come with alot of followers and resources, they tend to be overbearing. Right now, political observers regard the Buhari-Tinubu axis as APC’s centre of gravity. Even though APC has a caucus of eleven governors they are not yet posing a real challenge to the Big Two, mostly because the six ACN governors feel highly indebted to Tinubu. All that could change if the APC governors’ caucus grows to 18. Even though New PDP’s leaders made much about Bamanga’s despotic tendencies as their reason for leaving, the real underlying cause of the PDP crisis is the struggle for 2015. If these governors were to end up in APC, they could well carry along with them the “understanding” foisted on PDP in 2006 that state governors are the pool for future presidential recruitment. For President Jonathan too, who backed Bamanga to the point of wrecking the party, it was all because of a desire to firmly control the party and secure an easy re-nomination in next year’s presidential primaries. In the event, it has boomeranged with the biggest mass defection from a ruling party probably since the First Republic. As the president went to bed on Saturday night he was probably asking himself the question, “Is Bamanga more valuable electorally than seven governors?”
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 09:25:05 +0000
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