New Telegraph

PDP: Battling with leadership turnover

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), last week, resolved its leadership crisis and fixed October this year for elective national convention. ONYEKACHI EZE takes a look at the undercurrent that led to the crisis

 

When he addressed the emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on August 5, Senator Walid Jibrin, Chairman of the board, expressed concern that except Barnabas Gemade, no PDP National Chairman has completed his tenure.

 

He listed past PDP Chairmen whose tenures were truncated to include Chief Audu Ogbeh, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and Dr. Ahmed Mua’zu. He, however omitted Prince Vincent Ogbulafor whom Nwodo succeeded after two years in office.

 

“This BoT should therefore look at reason of the abrupt end of past National Chairmen and the NWC tenures and take decision quickly. “We must sit down with the National Chairman and the NWC and come out with decisions that will make our party strongest.

 

While truth is bitter, we must cope with the bitterness by taking serious actions to handle this situation,” the BoT Chairman said. Though the party was able to adopt a middle course approach in handling the plan to oust National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus from office before the end of his tenure, it nonetheless, shortened his tenure by a month and some days.

 

Sokoto State governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who briefed journalists at the end of joint meeting of the PDP stakeholders convened by the BoT, said the party’s elective national convention will hold before the end of October.

 

Secondus and other National Working Committee (NWC) members were elected into office on December 10, 2017. Said Tambuwal: “The meeting deliberated extensively on the issues thrown up and resolved that the constitution, traditions and practices of the party should be strictly adhered to in finding solutions to any problems. “That all parties should sheath their sword in the greater interest of the PDP and the need to rescue Nigeria from the avoidable national malaise and drift occasioned by the APC administration.

 

“That all processes leading to an early National Convention in October be immediately activated by relevant party organs, especially National Executive Committee (NEC).

 

“That the party should redouble efforts to provide a credible alternative leadership for Nigeria as it still remains the only hope for the Nigerian people for good governance. “The meeting requested the NEC to immediately constitute a zoning committee for party offices and another committee for national elective offices.”

 

Nevertheless, this is a victory for the national chairman. Another victory for him and other NWC members is the defeat of the planned motion to ban them from seeking re-elecion. Former Minister of Special Duties, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki was said to have pointed out to party stakeholders the legal implications if the NWC members were denied their constitutional right in the forthcoming national convention.

 

Perhaps, the failed attempt to sack the National Chairman was not because of financial malfeasance or other scandal. It may also not because of his incompetence, which other NWC members accused him off.

 

When he addressed journalists in December last year to mark his third    year in office, Secondus rated his NWC as the first “in transparency and accountability, the first to function effectively for three years without any scandal or dent of corruption; the first also to successfully render account of its monetary expenditures to both NEC of our party and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as statutorily required.”

 

 

 

PDP has highest turnover of national leadership since its formation in 1998. Before Secondus, the party had a total of 12 national chairmen and a caretaker chairman. Between 2000 and 2007, PDP had three national chairmen.

 

This was under Olusegun Obasanjo presidency which ran the party like a private estate. The highest rate was between 2008 and 2015 when a total of six chairmen served the party, out of this number, only two – Ogbulafor and Bamanga Tukur were elected at the national convention.

 

The four others – Nwodo, Halilu Mohammed, Abubakar Baraje and Adamu Mu’Azu, were appointed to serve out their tenures. Perhaps, what helped to stabilise the party until now was the over one year leadership crisis between May 2016 and August 2017.

 

It was  the judiciary that saved the party from going into extinction. Already, some party stakeholders had floated another political party before the August 17, 2017 Supreme Court judgement that was in favour the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led PDP National Caretaker Committee.

 

The present leadership crisis followed the trend of previous one: a clash between the national chairman and his state governor. Though he was instrumental to his emergence despite protest and agitation by South-West to allow the zone produce the occupant of the office, Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike led the struggle to oust Secondus out of office, and he was ready to deploy every arsenal at his disposal to achieve this.

 

This is believed to be for political reasons. First, the Rivers governor was said to be unhappy with the role the National Chairman played at the 2018 PDP presidential primary in Port Harcourt.

 

Wike supported Tambuwal and worked for him to be PDP’s candidate for 2019 for 2019 presidential election. Governor Bala Mohammed committee that reviewed the performance of

 

PDP in the 2019 presidential election said the Port Harcourt convention, “Though widely adjudged to have been free and fair, had been unnecessarily plagued by a plethora of unhealthy factors even before it took place. Public disagreements and threats between leading party stalwarts showed clearly that there were divisions within the party.

 

“To the detriment of party unity, the inability to resolve whatever the lingering issues were, snowballed into some stonewalling that ignited damage control measures. We cannot forget in a hurry, the desperate visit to the host governor, who could not witness the formal declaration of the nominee, at the venue of the convention.”

 

Wike had earlier threatened the party against denying his state the hosting right of the convention, and he did not take kindly the loss of his preferred candidate to the eventual winner, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

 

Some party leaders were not happy that the NWC insisted on allowing the delegates decide the flag bearer. This unhealthy atmosphere was taken into the main election.

 

The post-election review committee again noted that the electoral fortunes of some PDP governors that ensured their re-election “contrasted sharply with the votes cast for the party’s presidential candidate” whom it believed “towered head and shoulder above the candidate of the APC.”

 

Secondus wanted to raise the issue of Port Harcourt convention at the BoT meeting as genesis of the crisis when Senator Abdul Nigngi drew his attention and the board members of the presence of the media. This must have been discussed at the meeting.

 

The second reason has to do with Rivers State politics, the politics of who succeeds Wike in 2023. Secondus has wanted the next governor to come from riverine area  so as to assuage the feelings of the people who have been denied the opportunity since the return of civil democracy in the country.

 

There have been agitations by the people of riverine that the next governor should come from the area, because since 1999, upland has produced the governors of the state. Peter Odili, Chibuike Amaechi and Wike, are all from the upland.

 

The National Chairman’s candidate is Tele Ikuru who had served as deputy governor, first to Celestine Omehia, and later, to Rotimi Amaechi after the latter won his case in 2018 at the Supreme Court. Ikuru left with Amaechi to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, but returned to PDP shortly before the 2015 general election.

 

He is from Andoni, a riverine area of Rivers State. Wike, on the other hand, wants former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Austin Opara, as his successor. Opara is from Ikwerre, an upland area.

 

The upland/riverine politics have been an age long one even before the carving out Bayelsa from Rivers State. During the local government election few months ago, the governor’s men emerged victorious. Secondus was denied the opportunity of producing even a councilor of his ward.

 

Having taken control of the state structure, Wike’s attention was shifted to the centre, to dismantle it because of the fear that Secondus might use it to fight back and truncate his 2023 vice presidential ambition.

 

The governor is preparing to run with his Sokoto State counterpart, Tambuwal, as president and running mate respectively, in 2023. He is also afraid that the possibility of Opara becoming the PDP governorship candidate is under threat if the status quo remains. Former Niger State governor, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, believed that those who want the National Chairman’s sack have other reasons. Aliyu said in an interview  that with the PDP national convention just few months away, there was no need overheating the political atmosphere.

 

“If you want somebody to leave a position, there are ways to do it. You don’t go to market places, calling somebody bad names just because you want him to leave.

 

“We have a way to make people resign; we have a way that we query people if they have done wrong and we are elders enough that if things are that bad, we will find a way to advice people on what to do,” he said.

 

Former Deputy National Chairman, Chief Olabode George, is however not happy the way the party is managed, which he said, “fell short of seriousness.” But he was happy the matter was resolved by PDP elders.

 

The PDP chieftain had in March 2018, praised Secondus for his leadership quality, which he said rekindled his loyalty for the party, and called on members who left the party as a result of its past mistakes to return home from “wilderness,” adding, “to err is human and to forgive is divine, it was time to walk the talk for the repositioning of the country.”

 

As the party prepares for its national convention in two month’s time, observers believe there will be alignment and realignment of forces. Former political enemies will be friends and former friends, enemies. After all, politics is said to be a game of interest.

 

And as first President of Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe stated, quoting Hans Morgenthau, in politics there is no permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interest. PDP has showed that it has the capacity to quickly manage its crisis.

 

Even though the convention is coming less than two years to the 2023 general election, it is expected that any likely fallout will be nipped in the bud before the election

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