If you have heard the phrase, “There are too many chiefs, but too few Indians,” you should appreciate the argument that where you have too many bosses, relative to the number of those who will carry out the instructions, there is going to be plenty of chaos.
The not-so-antiseptic opposition Peoples Democratic Party is giving the All Progressives Congress a very stiff run for its money, as another hold-all political party for disgruntled, and defecting, politicians, who also have the what the French call “Arriere pensee,” or ulterior motive of running for the Presidency.
Now, while this is good politics, and sign of healthy democratic values to entertain as many as want to vie for the position of presidential candidate of the PDP, it is important that it does not lead to crisis that may melt the thin glue that is holding the party together.
President Muhammadu Buhari, whose job they all want to take, is as assured of the presidential ticket of the APC the same way Ruddy Arthur, who later became king, was anointed by Providence as the only one with the grace to pull out the Excalibur Sword from the stone where it was miraculously embedded.
You probably heard the English legend that records Bishop Brice, who shall be described here as the prophet of the Old English realm. He proposed that whoever was able to draw out the Excalibur Sword from the stone would succeed King Uther, who had assumed the name of Pedragon, his brother, the king before him.
Like the APC of 2014, the allure that today’s PDP holds for the Reformed-All Progressives Congress is in the possibility that President Muhammadu Buhari, who will be seeking re-election, may have jinxed the APC in the eyes of the Nigerian electorate.
When they remember the political loss caused by former President Goodluck Jonathan, who insisted on running for re-election, against the undercurrents for a Northern candidate, caused the PDP, they fled the APC to avoid sharing in the agony of defeat that they imagine would be the lot of APC in 2019.
The lacklustre performance of President Buhari on the economy, his parochial appointments of the leadership of Nigeria’s security agencies, and his lackadaisical attitude in handling the herdsmen rampage against farm folks especially in Plateau, Benue, and Taraba states, no doubt swayed public opinion against.
Also, the reality that the APC governors and the party’s machinery have more or less adopted President Buhari as the candidate for the 2019 presidential election compels these ambitious lot to seek their electoral fortunes in the PDP.
Some of these defectors, with presidential ambitions, are Senate President Bukola Saraki, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, and Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, a former Governor of Kano State.
They are all singing the same restructuring refrain to get them the buy-ins from the people of the South-West, South-East, South-South, and the North-Central zones, who feel marginalised in this unbearable contraption called Nigeria.
They have choruses from the Afenifere, proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, and the Ijaw National Council. The North-West and the North-East will vote for any political party that presents a Northern candidate.
Senate President Saraki, who recently visited former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida, has declared his intention to run for President in a manner that is not too direct. But his body language more than betrays his intentions.
Serial defector, former Vice President Atiku, has the most chequered career as a presidential hopeful. He led the New PDP out of the PDP, with what looked like an assurance of obtaining the presidential ticket of the then newly formed APC, as he did of the Action Congress of Nigeria, before it. It was not going to be. He then bid his time, and left the APC.
Although he tried, Atiku could not hide his desire for the PDP presidential ticket. He recently said something like, though he was the most prepared, he was not desperate to be President of Nigeria.
Kwankwaso, also a serial defector, is currently warring with his erstwhile Deputy Governor, and current Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State. He rode the crest as a competent technocrat-cum-politico for some time.
But his luck expired as Ganduje appears intent to obliterate him from Kano State’s political firmament. Some claim that Ganduje prefers fellow Fulani President Buhari over a Hausa Senator Kwankwaso for President in 2019.
Now Saraki, Atiku, and Kwankwaso are going to face the same hardship they faced in the APC among their new found friends in the PDP. But their battle is going to be two-way: Among themselves, and against other presidential hopefuls within the PDP.
They will have to slug it out with former Governors Sule Lamido of Jigawa, Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto, Ibrahim Shakarau of Kano, Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna, and current Bauchi State Governor Ibrahim Dankwabo, for the PDP presidential ticket.
It looks like the peril that faced Ulysses while sailing through the waters: On the one side was Scylla, the once-beautiful monster who seized sailors with each of her six heads, and on the other was Charybdis, the gulf that swallowed vessels three times a day.
A likeness of the Scylla and Charybdis story is the dilemma of the man between a hard place and the sea. If that is not graphic enough, you could say that, as the trio of Saraki, Abubakar, and Kwankwaso faced stiff opposition in the APC, they would face serious competition in the PDP. Either political party is not going to be easy for anyone of them.
Already, Makarfi reportedly wondered aloud how he could be denied the PDP’s presidential ticket after staying back in the party while others left, accepted to be its Chairman amid a big crisis, successfully wrested the party off the hands of former Governor Modu Sheriff of Borno State, and berthed it safely at the bank of sanity.
And of a truth, if you had followed the story of the PDP, from the days of exit of the nPDP in 2013, its loss of the 2015 presidential election, and the inglorious days under former Governor Sheriff, the chairman who turned out to be an undertaker, you will acknowledge that Makarfi did more than a yeoman’s job in resurrecting the PDP from the political abyss.
In the PDP where everyone legitimately aspires to be the presidential candidate, there is going to be a lot of feints, alignments, realignments, and sleight of hands. And it is also going to be harvest time for folks who emerge as delegates at the party’s primaries. As juju musician Ebenezer Obey would have said it, “Nwon fe se odun owo,” they will stage a money festival.
But if the leadership of the PDP does not find a transparent and fair way to determine who gets its presidential flag bearer ticket from the array of talents, the party may implode. And the next round of crisis will be worse than the one before it. To rework a phrase from former Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Oladapo Diya, it will be the mother of all suicides!
And that will hand a political carte blanche to the APC that is also in bad shape.
–Twitter @lekansote1
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