The PDP serio comedy by Babayola M Toungo

My abhorrence for suspense makes me
hate watching any TV programme that
is produced in series. The fact that I
have to make myself free at an
appointed time, find fuel for my
generator as an insurance against the
PHCN’s legendary unreliability, makes
me avoid watching ‘serialised soaps’.
Whenever I find one that catches my
fancy is to wait till at least a whole
season’s production is available, get it,
create time and convenience (read –
availability of chop money), and then
proceed to watch the soap. This leads
me to the current soap in town,
produced and directed by the PDP.
They are driving me crazy because of
the irregularity in the release of the
episodes. The suspense is killing me
and I don’t find that funny. The recent
offering is the muscle flexing between
Bamanga Tukur, the National
Chairman, with President Goodluck as
his corner man and Olagunsoye
Oyinlola, the ex-national secretary, with
ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo/
governors in his corner. This particular
instalment has all the makings of a
bestseller and that is why I am
compelled to ‘watch’ till the end.
The spark for the current standoff may,
to all intents and purposes, be the
Adamawa State chapter crisis; but the
embers have been smouldering ever
since the third term ambition of
Obasanjo was scuttled by ‘unpatriotic’
elements. To take his pound of flesh,
Obasanjo foisted a sick presidential
candidate (may he rest in peace) and
an incompetent, provincial presidential
running mate on the PDP, and by
extension, the nation. With the late
president incapacitated, Goodluck and
Obasanjo used every sentiment –
religious, regional, ethnic – to enable
the former assume executive powers.
After testing ‘real power’ and wanting
more, Goodluck practically genuflected
before the clergy and the governors to
realise his ambition. While the clergy
turned their pulpits into soapbox
stands, the governors used all the
rigging machinery at their disposal –
police commissioners, INEC resident
commissioners, the military and of
course thugs to make sure Goodluck
Jonathan is “installed” the president of
Nigeria. Knowing his provincial
worldview, the governors believed they
have a weakling in the Aso Villa. Now
the chickens are coming home to roost.
The dissolution of the Adamawa State
executive council of the PDP, which the
INEC had earlier called for its dissolution
along with eight other states, provided
the governors with a perfect alibi to
strike at the president and Nigerians.
Or so they thought. After suborning
some members of the National Working
Committee (NWC) to reverse itself on
the Adamawa case, the governors and
their point man, Oyinlola, were blinded
by a sense of victory that they didn’t
see the fangs bared by Goodluck and
his battering ram, the national
chairman. The muscle flexing
spearheaded by Oyinlola consumed
him as its first victim. The national
chairman felt betrayed by the action of
the ‘gang of 10’ as Dr. Umar Ardo, one
of the arrowheads for the dissolution of
the Adamawa State EXCO of the party,
portrayed them. That Oyinlola and his
cohorts – those in the NWC doing the
biddings of the governors and
Obasanjo, ‘betrayed his trust’,
whatever it may mean.
On this issue of ‘betrayal of trust’, I will
beg to vehemently disagree with
Bamanga Tukur. It is well known that
one of the ingredients that oils the
wheels of the PDP is betrayal of trust
beginning with Obasanjo himself who
betrayed the ‘trust reposed’ in him by
those who risked all to transform him
overnight from a jailbird to a president;
or closer home to Atiku Abubakar who
betrayed Bamanga, Professor Aminu,
Wilberforce Juta and Joel Madaki, after
it was agreed way back in 1998 to give
Atiku the gubernatorial ticket of the
party in Adamawa State while the
others are free to pursue other
interests at the zonal and national
levels. Because of the party’s unstated
motto of killing off members with
democratic principles or even
pretensions of democracy, the PDP is
today shorn off of all its original
founders – not because of retirement
from active politics or as a way of
handing over to younger elements in
the party. Obasanjo, the greatest
beneficiary of the aluta against the
military militarised the party and till
date, the party remains more like the
old Russian Communist party than
anything resembling a democratic
institution.
The crisis in the Adamawa state of the
party is needless, to say the least. At
the conclusion of the party’s
congresses around February/ march
2011, the (Independent?) National
Electoral Commission (I)NEC adjudged
the Adamawa Congresses and eight
other states’ congresses to be flawed.
This was well before the current
National Working Committee (NWC)
headed by Bamanga Tukur was
selected by the party’s “national
leader” Goodluck Jonathan. The NWC’s
mistake was in allowing those states’
EXCOs that emerged through
fraudulent means to remain in place for
this long instead of sacking them as
advised by the (I)NEC since last year.
Leaving them in place and dealing with
the illegal EXCOs made the governors
believe they have gotten away with the
illegality and in the process rubbing the
nose of the electoral ‘umpire’ in the
dust. Not that I blame them. The time
wasted by the NWC in dealing with this
illegality made them appear to take on
the garb of legitimacy. This is not any
business of mine. What concerns me
here is the infrequency of the episodes.
Since the one where the national
secretary of the party was kicked out of
office by a Federal High Court in Abuja,
the soap seem to have come to a
noiseless halt. Except for the trailers
that we are shown – the pledge of
fidelity by a group that goes by the
name “NWC Deputies”, we can’t as yet
with certainty say what the next
instalment will be.
The national chairman of the party may
not be a saint but if one is to go by
what he has been saying about
transforming the party, then he should
be supported by all the members and
be fought. I must confess here that the
word “transformation” has taken an
eerie meaning for me in present day
Nigeria. If the chairman’s
transformation agenda is in line with
the president’s, then may God save us
all. It is my friend who calls the party
Pat Dum Pewe, which in Fulfulde
language goes for: all are lies!