PDP: Doomed Forever?
The misfortunes of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, take a quantum nose-dive with the emergence of a splinter group

By Amaechi Dike, Abuja

No matter the amount of diplomatese or tough-talks adopted by the leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which prides itself as the biggest political party in Africa, it is obvious that things have really fallen apart in the party.
This reality emerged penultimate Friday, June 9, when a splinter group, believed to be a collection of those loyal to Vice President Atiku Abubakar, sprang a surprise by declaring their emergence as the authentic Peoples Democratic Party. Apparently to give practical effect to its action, which came on the heel of the submission of the reports of the six committees set up by the embattled party to try to thaw the soured relationship among the party faithful, following the noxious third term gamble, the splinter group proceeded to announce an immediate dissolution of the Ahmadu Ali - led national executive. In its place, it named the party’s former National Chairman, Chief Solomon Dutshep Lar as leader of the 25 - member National Interim Management Committee.
The group also named Alhaji Ibrahim Safana, former Deputy National Chairman (North) of the party, as the chairman. Other members of the group include Alhaji Shuaibu Oyedokun, who holds the position of Deputy National Chairman (south) of the break away faction, Chief Orji Nwafor Orizu (National Secretary) and Chief Ifeatu Obi-Okoye. Most of them had been notable personalities who had been in the top hierarchy of the PDP before the crisis that led to their exit from the party.
Besides, the splinter group at a press conference in Abuja nullified the expulsion of former Anambra state governor, Dr. Chris Ngige and his Plateau state counterpart, Chief Joshua Dariye who was placed on indefinite suspension by the Ahmadu Ali- led National working committee. It further revoked what it described as the “purported expulsion or suspension of other members by the “illegal Ali led NEC” including all activities of the party carried out by the Ali executive, particularly the “purported membership revalidation exercise” as well as the ward, local government, state and zonal congresses and the affirmative national convention of 2005”.
To underscore its seriousness, the group immediately set up an office at Mabushi area of Abuja and directed its Interim Management Committee (IMC) “to immediately set up the state IMC's to enable the party streamline its activities with the national body. The state interim committees are in turn to establish similar committees at the local government and ward levels, “pending the conduct of proper elective congresses”.
Oyedokun who spoke at the press conference disclosed that the splinter group has in its fold about 17 governors, “majority of whom are members of the PDP NEC, immediate past members of the National Working Committee (NWC), members of the Board of Trustees (B.O.T) as well as party leaders from all the states of the federation”. Rationalising the action of the splinter group, he said that the dissolution of the Ahmadu Ali - led executive was informed by the judgment of an Abuja High Court which had earlier declared the PDP affirmative national convention which produced Ali’s executive as not being recognised by the 1999 constitution or the party’s constitution.
According to him, the court’s decision, “which has remained unchallenged, meant that the PDP as it exists presently was being run by persons not recognised by the party’s constitution or the laws of the land. Oyedokun: “Indeed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ought not to recognise them, the party members ought not to recognise them, the governments of Nigeria and the general public ought not to recognise them. The PDP as far as the law is concerned, has no persons legally piloting its affairs. This situation is not contemplated by the constitution of the party. The party constitution envisages that each executive will terminate after four years. The last executive expired in November 2005”.
He continued: “Majority of us were members of that executive. Upon our election in 2001, we were sworn in and we took oath to protect the constitution of the PDP. Now that no legal executive has been sworn in to replace us. We owe it a duty to make arrangements for proper congresses and convention to elect our new officers”.
However, reacting to the action which apparently hit the PDP like a thunder storm, the factional national secretary, Ojo Maduekwe boasted that the party was not surprised at the latest twist in the troubled party’s affairs.
Maduekwe: “We are not alarmed with what is happening and we are not scared. We are not under any siege, our party is running normally and we are looking forward to elections. The traffic into the PDP is higher than the one moving out of the party”.
He also boasted that the development was a “minor inhibition coming from quarters we can afford to ignore”, adding that they merely wanted to set the record straight. “That is why we are responding, and threatened to report the development to security agencies for proper investigations”. Maduekwe warned that “the PDP’s olive branch should not be taken to be a white flag of surrender”.
Almost in a jiffy, the police swooped on the Mabushi factional office of the splinter group, sealing off the premises and disallowing entrance therein. As it were, the police action has generated a lot of tongue lashing by members of the public who see this development as a display of raw power by the ruling party. Some political observers who spoke to The Source on the unfolding high level political drama, accused the presidency and the Ahmadu Ali led executive of misusing the police and other state security aparati controlled by the Obasanjo administration. In fact, one commentator drew an analogy between the present police occupation of the Mabushi office of the PDP splinter group and the refusal by the Force of the meeting of the anti-third term group, scheduled at Sheraton hotel and Towers, Abuja, at the peak of the tenure elongation plot of President Olusegun Obasanjo. He pointed out that the action of the ruling PDP amounted to a rape of democracy because, according to him, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria allows splinter groups in political parties.
Said he: “It is amazing that the PDP could deploy the police to stop a legitimate discent in its fold when it is known to have encouraged splinter groups in other opposition parties. Take for instance, the role of the presidency and the PDP in the crisis rocking the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA. Who does not know that the presidency and the PDP have hands in the break up of the Alliance for Democracy, AD? So, why did the government not send the police to chase away the break away factions in these other parties?”.
In the opinion of Alhaji Umar Bello who described himself as non partisan, “it is ironical that the Ahmadu Ali-led faction of the PDP could take such a unilateral action before embarking on a judicial action”. Does it not amount to taking the law into their hands by using the police to handle what should ordinarily be a legal matter?” he queried.
To be sure, the embattled PDP leadership last Monday, May 12, filed an action in the Appeal Court, seeking to restrain the members of the splinter group from forming a parallel executive body with the intent of taking over the Wadata House National Secretariat of the party.
Apparently jolted by the explanation that the splinter group’s action was predicated on the decision of an Abuja High Court that the process which produced the Ahmadu Ali’s executive was unknown to the PDP constitution and the laws of the land, Ali and Maduekwe instituted the case on behalf of the party.
In the suit, the two top national officers argued in a motion on notice that there was a subsisting appeal over the judgment of the Abuja High Court presided over by Justice Aladetoyibo, which is awaiting final determination, and therefore makes the action of the respondents contemptuous and unjustifiable. In the suit, filed at the Court of Appeal with reference No. CA/A/210/2005, suit No. FCT/HCCV/735/2005 and dated June 12, 2006, the PDP National Chairman and Secretary (Appellants) prayed the court “to restrain Lar and 28 others who had on Friday, May 9, 2006, formed the National Interim Committee, their privies, associates and agents from claiming under the said judgment from interfering with the subject matter of this appeal or acting in any way contemptuous of this honourable court in relation to the subject matter”.
Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) who filed the suit on behalf of the party and the appellants, recalled how the judgment of the lower court delivered on October 10, 2005, restraining the PDP from using non- election as mode of occupying various offices of the party was appealed against and is still pending final determination.
Babalola: “The appellant also filed a motion for stay of execution of the order of injunction granted against them by Aladetoyibo, in this honourable court. The said motion is still pending and has not been argued in this court. Based on the judgment, the respondents and their agents purported to have formed a parallel executive body. The respondents threatened and are still threatening to continue to act on the judgment to disturb and destabilise the first appellant (PDP) and its officers”.
As at press time last week, the Court of Appeal was yet to assign a date for hearing the appeal.
But Lar’s comment on the latest development in the PDP remained hazy as at press time last week. The Langtang Chief and first Chairman of the PDP was not categorical on whether he is part of the splinter group or not. He was merely quoted as claiming that he was interested in the survival of the PDP. Lar was further reported as saying that as far as he was concerned, the question of faction did not arise.
Lar: “The question of faction does not arise. We are for the survival of the PDP. We want the PDP to survive. You can quote me on this. I am saying that we are for the survival of the PDP. I am in Langtang resting but I will go to Jos tomorrow. You can call me”. It was not however clear whether the “we” referred to the new splinter group which he is named the interim leader or the Ahmadu Ali led PDP. However, Lar, like most of the people in the splinter group, has been estranged from the party for several months now. Since then, he has been vocally opposed to the party’s activities, especially with the spate of suspensions and expulsions which are at the root of the PDP crisis.
Indeed, the latest crisis rocking the party has been interpreted as part of Vice President Atiku’s strategy to weaken the PDP as a prelude to positioning the Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD) to clinching the presidency in 2007. Atiku, described by his loyalists and associates as a political strategist had almost been humiliated out of the PDP, following the frosty relationship between him and his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo.
His ordeal began in 2003 when he showed some inclination to challenge Obasanjo in the April 19 presidential election. Although he later beat a retreat and allowed his boss to secure a second term in office, he was never forgiven by Obasanjo who felt humiliated by his (Atiku ) initial action. Consequently, the President embarked on a war of attrition against Atiku whose PDM provided a veritable platform for President Obasanjo’s success in 1999 and 2003 presidential elections.
First, the President adopted the policy of striping his deputy of virtually all the juicy portfolios he had allocated to him when the going was good. Besides, majority of the men and women whom Atiku brought into the Obasanjo administration were either taken over by Obasanjo or fired out- rightly. The President’s revenge operation was even stretched almost to a ridiculous limit when he literarily took charge of appointing Atiku’s personal aides for him. Also, it was reported without any official denial, that the Vice President’s security vote was drastically slashed, to the point that he had to scale down his initially approved number of entourage, even as he had to at times pay the official travel allowances of some of his aides from his personal means.
Matters came to a head when Atiku pre-emptively blew the lid to Obasanjo’s third term agenda when he granted an interview to a national daily last year. In a typical satire delivered in deadpan Swiftan style, the Vice President told the world that his boss had sworn to him that he (Obasanjo) would leave office on May 29, 2007; and that the rumoured term elongation agendum of the President was a ruse.
Apparently stung by Atiku’s seeming defence of the President’s innocence in the third term ambition, Obasanjo elected to jump full blast into the boxing ring with his deputy. In a rather vitriolic rebuttal, full of venom and bitterness, the president called his deputy a pathological liar and a disloyal subordinate. Thus, the hitherto arcane wrangling between the two senior citizens burst open, with the twosome scheming for each other’s crash.
When it became obvious that the president would not allow his deputy to succeed him, Atiku, whose ego and reputation had almost been bruised beyond tolerable limits, began to read the riot act against his boss. At the slightest opportunity as occasion provided, Atiku continued to criticise the overbearing disposition of Obasanjo, to the point that it assumed the voice of an outsider in government. People began to speculate the possibility of Obasanjo removing Atiku from his cabinet but the Vice President insisted that they were both elected on the same ticket, without anyone of them at the mercy of the other.
The final bubble burst when the PDP contrived the Vice President’s ouster from the party, using the Adamawa faction of the party led by Professor Jibril Aminu. Consequently, during the party’s last revalidation exercise, the Aminu-led committee schemed out Atiku and the state governor, Boni Haruna, in what political observers saw as an orchestrated attempt to humiliate and frustrate Atiku out of the party.
But as a strategic response to the PDP scheming against the number two citizen and his loyalists, a group loyal to Atiku floated some different political associations – the MDD, the MDR and another which later fused to form a registered political party, the ACD.
However, although every indication points to the fact that the ACD is funded by the Vice President, he has consistently denied having any affiliation with it. Yet, virtually every discerning mind in the country today insists that the ACD is Atiku’s fall back position in the event of being routed out of mainstream PDP. Perhaps, based on this sure-footing, the Vice President publicly declared recently his decision to vie for the highest office of the land, in defiance to the President’s staunch opposition to his succeeding him.
And, as if to give effect to this determination to take on the President frontally, the Vice President aligned forces with the anti-third term group to work for the death of the tenure elongation plot on the floor of the National Assembly. He worked so assiduously with members of the Senate and the House of Representatives with the consequence that the constitution amendment bill under which the presidency and the PDP wanted to achieve a third term of four years for Obasanjo and state governors, died a sudden death in the Senate on May 16.
Following the demise of the third term plot, President Obasanjo in what was clearly a volte face, clobbered the PDP leadership to commence an emergency NEC meeting, during which he called for total reconciliation among the party’s membership. Accordingly, the party constituted six committees which traversed the six zones of the county, seeking peace and reconciliation. But it was obvious that the wounds inflicted on the party’s members had developed into festering sores, very difficult to heal by mere pretentious permutations. And as was predicted by political pundits and party politics analysts, the reconciliation exercise ended up in a fiasco of huge dimensions. Indeed, the crack deepened into craters as those who felt injured by the apparent high handedness of the PDP leadership under Ahmadu Ali, shunned the committees and the party’s olive branch which many considered a Greek gift.
Those who wanted to cajole the presidency and the PDP hierarchy gave the party very strict conditions without which no reconciliation would take place. Some of the tough conditions included the dissolution of the party offices both at the national, state, local government and ward levels and a return to the prevailing status before the party’s affirmative endorsement, and the holding of the proper convention in which members will be free to choose their national leaders – demands which the presidency appears not comfortable with.
But whether the PDP accepts it or not, it is clear that the party has staggered from grace to grass. Not even the controversial recognition of the ahmadu Ali faction of the party by INEC last week, would seem enough to save it from current mess. Those who adopt this line of thinking argue that with the split in the PDP and the array of opposition parties posturing to take over the mantle of the leadership from the ruling party, it would be difficult for the PDP to enjoy the same near octopal status it had enjoyed these past seven years. Some argue that whether the Ahmadu Ali led faction succeeds in its court action or not, it will be difficult for the party to remain the same again. Thus, those who have always described the PDP even in its “good old days” as a “rally” and not a “party”, say that like all rallies, the time has come for the jamboree to end. And that the romance of strange bed-fellows has come to an abrupt end.