25th July, 2013
By Joe Igbokwe
All things considered, I make bold to say that this is not the best of times for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Southwest and PDP National. Ever since the coming of APC, the PDP family has been living in fear. Fear of the unknown, fear that things are likely to go wrong for the party they claimed to be the biggest in Africa, fear that they may lose elections in 2015, fear they may be called to give an account where all the money went to and fear that the next President can bring the corrupt to book. But this is the story for another day.
Today my attention is going to be focused on PDP Southwest. A few days ago the PDP Southwest said Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, has been causing divisions within the party. They said that efforts they have made in recent years to put their acts together has hit the rocks because they suspect that ACN has been putting spanners in the works. The party claimed that ACN has been sponsoring moles in their leadership hierarchy and thereby making it difficult if not impossible for them to settle their irreconcilable differences for years now. They went further to claim that ACN has bought over their leadership.
PDP Southwest has been suffering from fear of the unknown, anxiety or what medical experts call neurosis. They blame others instead of blaming themselves for their predicament. Several factors contribute to the catalogue of woes the party has been going through in the past years. First is the inability of PDP Southwest to attract critical thinking men and women or cerebral personalities that will drive the party to greatness. The party has been saddled with primitive, corrupt, light-fingered personalities whose antecedents are well known. The party is saddled with unrepentant political jobbers with no means of livelihood thereby making them vulnerable to see politics of the stomach as a way of life. To attract credible men and women who are prepared to work for the party through thick and thin has always been the biggest cog in the wheel of Southwest PDP’s progress.
Another factor that is threatening the existence of PDP Southwest is the woeful performance of PDP governors in Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and even Edo states in almost 8 years Obasanjo was in power. PDP governors frittered away 8 years in the Southwest with nothing to show for it. Those of them former president Obasanjo rigged to the exalted office did not know what to do with power, resulting in failure of leadership in all its ramifications in the Southwest except Lagos State. You only need to see what the ACN governors are doing right now in the Southwest for you to come to terms with the comprehensive and collective emptiness of the PDP governors in the almost eight years of the locusts. In almost 8 years Southwest became an address where absurdity is the name of the game with no room for intelligent objectivity the governors were supposed to bring to the office. The woeful performance of the party at the national level has not helped matters. Every right thinking Nigerian sees leaders of PDP as people who seek power without responsibility, wealth without work, politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity and worship without responsibility (the eight deadly social sins). For nearly sixteen years the national leadership headed by PDP has frittered away our huge national wealth on frivolities and irrelevances. We have earned more money in the past 14 years than what this country had earned from 1960 to 1999 without anything to show for it. This is the greatest threat to the existence of PDP in the Southwest of Nigeria. Under our own very eyes Chief Bola Ige, the then Attorney General of the federation was brutally murdered under Obasanjo’s administration with no trace of the killers till date. To make matters worse, his wife Justice Atunike Ige died also because of circumstances surrounding the unacceptable death of her husband at peace time in Nigeria.
Assassinations of high profile political figures in Nigeria during Obasanjo’s eight years tenure left them with no option than to call PDP a nest of killers. It is as bad as that. Almost eight-years of PDP in the Southwest excluding Lagos was an unmitigated disaster, a colossal waste, an aberration, years of locust. Anything they touched turned to ashes. Using the words of one Yoruba patriot, Bayo Oluwasanmi, “the Yorubas are not so gullible, manipulable, and downright callous. We have a long history of enduring memory…..That Yorubas reject Obasanjo as leader or hero or ungrateful to him says what type of character fibre and finesse we are made of…. We Yoruba do not anoint thieves fools, saboteurs, traitors and hoodlums as leaders or as heroes/heroines…..We cannot drive a car forward by looking at the rear mirror. We cannot use shoes for hammers, newspapers for umbrellas and a finger nail to tight a screw.”
Another factor that is helping to render the activities of PDP Southwest nugatory is the obvious and painful truth that the party has never for once acknowledged the monumental human and material resources development going on in the Southwest especially in Lagos State. Carelessly and primitively too, the party has been handing dangerous weapons to their enemies in the Southwest for not getting it right. If you cannot celebrate a great man you too can never be great. Those who do not speak the truth do not make sense to serious-minded persons anywhere in the world and such people cannot be trusted.
PDP Southwest can still redeem itself. If the party’s leaders can get serious and look back from where the rains started beating them, they may yet get attention. If you do not have the courage or the boldness to ask for what killed your father, what killed your father may eventually kill you too. PDP Southwest should look elsewhere to find solutions to their pandemic problems. For us in the ACN or APC, we are leaving no stone unturned to justify the confidence reposed in us by those who believe in us. That is our primary focus, our big picture and our target. We will ever remain focused, fixing our eyes on the ball and getting it right. We are not the problem of PDP Southwest, and of course, we can never be. For once I urge PDP Southwest to look inwards. What PDP Southwest is looking for in Sokoto is right there in their sokoto. Case rested!
•Igbokwe is Lagos ACN Publicity Secretary