If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had lost the election lawsuits over the two oil-rich states of Akwa Ibom and Rivers, they would have found it difficult to shoulder on. The All Progressives Congress (APC), despite grumbling over their unexpected losses in the ‘rich states’, could survive economically and politically. The opposition party, apparently feeling saddled with some 13 ‘ordinary’ states, most of them without too much electoral significance, would on the other hand have been filled with dread of how to approach the 2019 polls with weakened hands. They have all of the South-South states minus Edo, and all but two of the Southeast states, but they would have derived little comfort in that regional contiguousness if fortune had not also recently smiled on them. Their plight in the north of the Rivers Niger and Benue is even much worse. They were thrown out of the Northeast almost entirely but for Gombe and Taraba, and they do not fare better in the Northwest except for the oasis of Kebbi. In the North-Central, they are non-existent.
Until the Supreme Court gave judgement in the Rivers and Akwa Ibom election disputes, the PDP was actually in danger of fizzling out. The tribunal and the Appeal Court had earlier given judgement in both cases in favour of the APC, and it seemed nothing on earth short of judicial robbery could reverse the trend. Had the PDP ended up losing the two oil-rich states, they would have been left with not only 11 ‘ordinary’ states, but the ruling party would have got a significant toehold in the South-South and diffused the political contiguousness which the opposition was beginning to revel in and eager to leverage on. There was of course a sense in which the APC felt it had the advantage in Akwa Ibom and Rivers, especially in the judicial sense.
It didn’t seem the election was held at all in many parts of the two states, and where they were held, they were thought to have been conducted in an atmosphere of unremitting violence. That the APC lost at the apex court is not because the public didn’t get a general sense of non-compliance with electoral rules, but because the party couldn’t prove its case.
The PDP victory in the two South-South states will go on to help the opposition party consolidate in that region. They will perform much better in the coming rerun elections than they would otherwise be capable of had they lost at the apex court. They will now have the resources to entice voters, defy the ruling APC in Abuja and weaken the resolve of those who were, until the Supreme Court judgement, fired up to bury the PDP. Having successfully fought the Bayelsa poll, and now feeling the siege has been lifted, they will give the APC more than a passing headache in the coming Edo and Ondo governorship elections. The APC may get its candidature politics right this time in Ondo, but no one can guarantee they will get it right in Edo. Henceforth, everywhere the APC makes a mistake in choosing its candidates, the PDP will loom over them like a spectre to inflict the most damage.
The PDP has been given a lifeline, as it were, by the Supreme Court. They may not deserve it, but there is little legal arguments anyone can summon to controvert the apex court decisions on all the states where judgements have been given. At any rate, it is futile, even for those seeking some kind of unprecedented probe of the judgements.
It is now left for the embattled opposition party to utilise the lifeline in an appropriate manner, assuming they have the will and the discipline. Nothing is certain, however. The lifeline will help them to find an ideology (whether culture-based or politics-based) around which to coalesce their partisan political undertaking. Though their son, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, ruled the country poorly, somehow they still feel a sense of loyalty to him. Together with the Southeast, as the boxed article below indicates, the South-South’s cultural and political elders may attempt to redress their alienation by huddling together for self-preservation.
The PDP is fortunate that the APC is unable to deliver the killer blow. The ruling party does not appear to have the cohesion and raison d’etre needed to fuse together its legacy parties and position their party at the core of Nigeria’s ambitions. They have also been unable to mobilise the country behind them, and have advanced no strategy to woo the Southeast and the South-South. Ideologically, even the Southwest, which was dragged screaming and kicking into the APC column, has felt somewhat distant and uncomfortable. But for the PDP to exploit these weaknesses, they will have to do the unimaginable. The country needs a vibrant opposition party, as this column has argued repeatedly in his dismissal of APC’s hubris and awkwardness. That need for a virile opposition will, however, have to be nurtured by the PDP itself. They still live in denial of the effects of the anti-graft war on their party and leadership.
Too many of their leaders were sucked into the vortex of corruption under Dr Jonathan. Rather than purge that leadership and enthrone credible and charismatic replacements, they have dithered and given the impression they would hang in there and challenge the anti-graft agencies in court. No such challenge can be successful. The scale of the stealing is unbearably and unthinkably huge. If it is to stand any chance of making impact in the coming polls, the PDP must urgently begin the process of atonement, reform, reorganisation and recreation.
This column does not submit to the dismissive characterisation of the PDP as an irredeemably hopeless or dying party. The party can be reformed if those who soiled their hands in corrupt practices, some of whom are yet to be unmasked, are sidelined and defanged. Many of their leaders are also fickle. The party needs to winnow its leadership to get rid of the tainted. Then they must think futuristically of the kind of alliances and amalgamation they would need to make a significant impact in the years ahead.
At the moment, no such leaders are in sight in the party, and the ongoing efforts to secure a new Board of Trustees (BoT) and emplace a new party executive may not be more than a stop-gap measure, given their pussyfooting and handwringing. If it is any consolation to the PDP, they must also understand that the APC itself is work in progress. The ruling party is still an unstable amalgam, and its leaders, not to say its members in government from top to bottom, are really not democrats or ideologues, or even visionaries. They subscribe to nearly the same political opportunism and proclivity for institution-bashing as the PDP, if not worse.
The PDP fears that the APC’s anti-graft war may consume opposition leaders. They are right. That is precisely why the party needs new leaders. They have also suggested that the anti-graft war is selective. There is little evidence to support that defensive posturing. What the opposition should fear is that public support for President Buhari’s anti-graft war may in fact translate into good governance and abundant life for the people. That possibility exists, though it is by no means certain. But even if the new government were to rule well, it still does not make it invincible. There are many causes around which a revamped PDP can coalesce. One of these is the current government’s paranoid view of the judiciary, in which lawyers and judges are sweepingly dismissed as pro-corruption agents and saboteurs. The country needs the opposition to remind everyone of many things, among them how the Jonathan government treated the judiciary with much more restraint and better understanding than how former soldier and ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo abused the courts, albeit without attaining the excesses of the present government.
NATION
END
Be the first to comment