‘The umbrella didn’t leak. Until it did’
In the middle of a leadership crisis, partially of his own making – given the spoiler role he played in the 2023 elections when he clandestinely endorsed the APC against his own party, Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, appears to be using his own humiliation to distract from the chaos that has engulfed and consumed his party. The evidence is alarmingly apparent.
By the time the PDP eventually elect its new National Working Committee – replacing the Umar Damagum caretaker committee, later on Saturday, 15th November, the chances and probability of a united, indivisible and strong People’s Democratic Party, one that can wrestle and give the ruling APC a run for their money in the 2027 general elections, would have dissolved into the quicksand of irrelevance – the leaking umbrella would have spectacularly spoiled beyond repair.
That, of course, will be the outcome of a convention that will have both its validity and legality tested in the law court, court of public and among the party’s most influential bigwigs and gladiators, many of whom have distanced themselves from what they termed ‘the Ibadan charade’.
For one thing, the staging of the contentious and controversial elective convention in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, has no doubt positioned Governor Makinde as the new PDP helmsman, elbowing the likes of Nyesom Wike, the FCT Minister, who has been at the heart of the internal implosion rocking the party. The battle ahead will show who still calls the shots in the party affairs.
By damning the legal perils that are sure to ensue in the aftermath of the convention, the PDP, once the biggest and largest political party in Africa, is walking through its most dangerous and perilous path since its formation.
The situation of things, of course, given the deep division and polarization in the party, is likely to cast doubt and erase any chances of a true and genuine reconciliation of various warring factions of the party – not after the Saraki led reconciliation team has offered a chilling advice to the convention planners: shelve the show! Consider the legal implications of this convention amid the various contradictory court pronouncements.
In Abuja and Ibadan, we’ve all been entertained to the fullest by judges whose judgments no longer carry justice. We’ve seen the blast weaponization of the judiciary to carry out sinister motives and pronounce skewed verdicts.
Imagine reading various court verdicts and counter-verdicts on a subject that ought to have been diplomatically and internally handled by all parties. Apart from the dent on the country’s judiciary where precedence no longer guides court pronouncements, the implication of those rulings on the PDP itself is telling.
And I can bet, those rulings will only escalate and widen the internal rift that has been simmering for months on end. For close to two years, the PDP has endured both internal fisticuffs and external brickbats from the various gladiators within its ranks and files.
Ahead of others in this fight for the soul of the PDP is the FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, whose aspiration to run for the Presidency in 2023 was conspiratorially wrecked by the combined team of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President, and Senator Aminu Tambuwal, former Governor of Sokoto State.
Despite feeding the party with his state’s oil money, Wike’s shocking, stunning, and traumatic betrayal by his allies caught him off guard. That effectively sent him on a vengeance mission to fight those who fueled his meltdown.
Instead of backing Atiku, who won his party’s presidential ticket, Wike, alongside four other aggrieved PDP governors – the acclaimed 5G – fought against the party under whose platform they emerged as Governors.
Today, one of the fighters of that era, Governor Seyi Makinde, is both front and center, trying to undo what he, alongside others, did more than two years ago. But it will be naïve to think that the crisis tearing the PDP into tiny shreds started immediately Nyesom Wike was wickedly defeated in the party’s primary. Far from it. Take the 2015 general elections. That was the exact time PDP’s woes began.
Think of the defection of five strong, formidable, and influential PDP governors, alongside other notable and affluent members, to the All-Progressives Congress, and how that quietly and essentially set the tone and laid the groundwork for the destruction of the party — from the inside.
Add that to the public shredding of the membership card of the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, and the series of events that followed. Although, when PDP was formed, it quickly suffered from the politics of ‘BIGMANISM’.
That is, the prevalence of highly powerful and influential members of the society meant that the PEOPLE, whom the PDP claimed it returned POWER to, hardly had a say in the running of the party. Perhaps, the foundation of the PDP itself was premised on both the old order and military establishment – two features that have massively contributed to the fissures shaking the root of the party.
So, it is not surprising that, where dialogue and discussion would suffice, PDP, whether now or then, has always preferred the use of brute force to resolve issues. That brute force has dragged the party to this precipice of further balkanization and annihilation.
As this public spat drags on, one thing is clear: PDP, once the darling of powerful politicians, and regardless of who emerges as the National Chairman, will never be the same again. The fate of the party seems to have been sealed forever. In 2019, when Governor Seyi Makinde, against all odds, emerged victorious in the gubernatorial contest, he rode under the strength, influence, and acceptability of the PDP.
Recall that the PDP Presidential candidate in that election, Atiku Abubakar equally flogged the APC flag bearer, late President Muhammadu Buhari, by a slim margin in the state. That goodwill, considering the current state of the PDP, has all evaporated into thin air, never to resurface for a long time, again.
To be sure, the meteoric rise of Governor Seyi Makinde as an influential PDP national leader is both a blessing and a time bomb. A blessing because a national leader will emerge from the pace setter state, and a time bomb because under his watch, the PDP will disintegrate and polarize further.
Like the fate that befell the APC Zamfara in the 2019 gubernatorial contest when the electoral fortune of the APC turned misfortune because Senator Kabiru Marafa and ex-Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, could not reach a common political ground, one can only hope that PDP, under Makinde, will escape the same wrath, harsh and similar legal cudgel in the future that will probably determine the future of his legacy and others like him.
OYO101 is Muftau Gbadegesin’s opinion about issues affecting the Oyo state and is published every Saturday. He can be reached via @Upliftnuggets on X, muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com, and 09065176850.
