When Dr. Alex
Ekwueme last Wednesday said the story of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP makes
him weep; some may have misunderstood the emotional turbulence that
led to the
assertion.
His assertion
when he received members of the party’s
reconciliation committee in his Enugu residence, came just two days before
yesterday’s historic Court of Appeal judgment on the factional crisis that has
paralysed the one-time ruling party. Underpinning that crisis is the fact that
the once bubbling national secretariat of the party has been sealed off for
more than six months. The same party that once bragged that it would rule the
country for 60 uninterrupted years was just 16 years after, chased away from
power by a septuagenarian. Even in the absence of the septuagenarian and the
visible expressions of rudderlessness, the party can hardly evince a proof of
its existence as a constructive opposition party. Indeed, only a few would have
connected with the historic vision that underlined the formation of the PDP
back in 1998. And perhaps, fewer still, would have contextualised the party as
a national institution or bulwark against the primitive tendencies of ethnicity
and religious bigotry that chip at the foundations of national cohesion.
underlined the
formation of the PDP back in 1998. And perhaps, fewer still, would have
contextualised the party as a national institution or bulwark against the
primitive tendencies of ethnicity and religious bigotry that chip at the
foundations of national cohesion.
The PDP was
conceived from the political alliance of nine principled men who stood against
the tyranny of the Sani Abacha dictatorship. The G 9 as they were called
included Bola Ige, Senator Francis Ellah, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Prof. Jerry Gana,
Dr. Iyorcha Ayu, Solomon Lar, Adamu Ciroma, Abubakar Rimi and Sule Lamido. Four
of the nine men, Ige, Ellah, Lar, and Rimi have now passed on to the great
beyond, leaving the remaining five to live with the torture of a missed vision.
Governor Sule
Lamido who governed Jigawa State between 2007 and 2015, perhaps as a memory to
the vision of the G9, immortalised them by naming nine Government Guest chalets
in Dutse after each of them.
Members of the G9 at that time in the late
nineties represented some of the best political minds in the country.
Remarkably, the major ethnic and religious shades in the country found
habitation of sorts within the G9.
It is significant that after the 1999
elections that the PDP won 21 of the 36 governorship slots in the country.
Remarkably, ten of its governors were from the North, and 11 were from the
South; underlining its standing as a truly national party. Its national
colouration was against the provincial character of its two competitors, the
then All Peoples Party, APP and the Alliance for Democracy, AD which drew
strength almost entirely from the North and Southwest respectively.
It is this
great national institution that has lately been reduced to near irrelevance,
not even able to voice its positions on national issues. Ekwueme blamed
President Olusegun Obasanjo for what happened to the PDP. Though it wasn’t
reported, it is unimaginable that the former vice-president would have let it
slip that Obasanjo was not even there when the G9 sowed the seed of the party.
Not even when others came to join them to make it G18, or even when it reached
G34 was Obasanjo present. Whether Obasanjo as a person was wholly responsible
for what happened to the PDP remains an issue for the jury, especially given
the effectual role played by other political actors in that period. Many who
lost out in the power game turned out to bellyache and curse Obasanjo for being
an enemy of democracy including those who within their own conclaves destroyed
the basic instincts of internal democracy. Even the well respected
Dr. Ekwueme
is sometimes blamed for the anarchy that became the lot of the PDP in his
state, Anambra. Those who have not heard his perspective of the role, if any,
he played in the emergence of Dr. Chinwoke Mbadiniju as PDP governor say he was
responsible for the disaster that the PDP became in Anambra. Though he has
publicly torn his membership card of the PDP, it would be a notorious space in
history if Obasanjo refuses to let the world let the role played by the
different actors in the sordid and sorry state of the PDP. Then, Ekwueme’s
weeping would have been truly in vain.
0 Comments