Killing an Octopus

Vincent Ogulafor, PDP National Chairman

Crisis continues to be the main defining attribute of the several state chapters of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), despite the best efforts of the party’s National Chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, to foster unity
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
In the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the largest party in Africa, its Octopidal size seems to be its biggest albatross. Somehow, the party’s size, it does appear, is conmensurate to its problems. This, indeed, best typifies the almost non stop feud in some state chapters of the party.
The schism in the party is further widened by the current moves by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to retain his chairmanship of the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT) and the counter schemings by his opponents to see him bite the dust. The former president is currently reaching out to state chairmen of the party to solicit their support, a move which PDP sources told The Source is threatening to pitch the chairmen against their state governors, many of whom are rapidly anti-Obasanjo.
As an ardent Christian which he claims to be, if there is any piece of prayer that apparently features daily in the former President's prayer menu since leaving office a year ago, it is perhaps, “father, if it is your wish, let this cup pass me by.” prayer which according to the Christian holy book, the Bible, was first said by Jesus Christ in the face of deadly plots against Him by the Jews.
Unfortunately, however, not only has the former President’s cup remained filled with acidic criticisms of his alleged mal-administration while in office, it sometimes overflows with harsh judgements concerning his actions or inaction during his eight-year presidency. In the political turf, his larger –than –life PDP is also not spared.
The former president’s critics are unrelenting in their bid to dwarf him. Indeed, Obasanjo’s firm grip on the party suffered a huge jolt in March when his enemies ensured that neutral candidates, rather than those he had lined up emerged as PDP’s national officers.
The final push to render the former president a king without a kingdom seems afoot should the recommendations of the Dr. Halillu Mohammed Review Panel be set in motion. Mohammed, PDP’s deputy national chairman was saddled with reviewing the reports of a reconciliation committee headed by Second Republic Vice President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme.
This is even as the party’s governors in the South west are reportedly putting pressure on the former president to vacate the BOT chair. Though the governors had since denied this, a source close to the party is emphatic that the former President's continued occupation of the BOT chair and the odium which it has attracted to him formed the bulk of their parley with him in May. The governors, The Source learnt, were not happy that a man of Obasanjo’s standing is being pummelled left and right in the party over the BOT issue.
They thus reason that the only antidote was for the former president to vacate the BOT chair and take a deserved rest from PDP politics, or at most become something of a revered party elder whose advise should be sought on critical party issues. The South west governors’ position, The Source gathered, is also shared by some of the party’s governors in other zones of the country, especially those of them who are sympathetic to him.
In their estimation, it would be politically expedient for the former leader to yield the BOT chair now, rather than allow the implementation of the Mohammed review panel report uproot him.
They further reason that it would be a political disaster for the former president to be humiliated out of the position via the mini-convention which Mohammed’s report recommended. The Source learnt that Obasanjo’s opponents in the party are patiently waiting for the mini-convention where the contentious issue of the 2006 amendment of the party’s constitution which threw Obasanjo up as the BOT chairman will be tackled. Whether or not the former President will eventually cave-in under pressure and vacate the controversial BOT position, however, remains doubtful. This, analysts say, is because as an Army General, Obasanjo wouldn’t want to be seen as surrendering to his critics or accepting defeat.
And in tandem with analysts reasoning, the former president, The Source can authoritatively report, is not about throwing in the towel in this regard. Obasanjo, a dependable PDP source said, is not ready to let the BOT position go without a fight. Thus, in the run-up to an impending PDP NEC meeting this month, where the Mohammed review panel report will be ratified, Obasanjo is currently engaged in a life-and-death schemings to thwart any action geared towards unseating him.
While his opponents in the party, the likes of Tony Anenih, the man he dethroned as the chairman of PDP’s BOT last year, Jerry Gana, Abubakar Rimi, former governor of the old Kano State, Umar Ghali N’Abba, former Speaker of the House of Representatives among others, according to sources, are mobilising to ensure that the former president meets his waterloo at the NEC meeting, by divesting him of the BOT chair, Obasanjo on his part is perfecting strategies that will see him not only retain his position as PDP BOT chairman, but ensure that he secures more clout within the party.
Part of this strategy, The Source was told, is the rallying of loyal PDP governors and state chairmen to his side. To ensure he has a firm grip on several state chapters of the party, the former president and his footsoldiers are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that pro- Obasanjo chairmen emerge in states where the party is factionalised. For example, in Anambra State, the former leader is relying on Andy Uba, his former special adviser on Domestic Affairs for relevance. This, The Source gathered, explains Uba’s strident fight to see that his acolyte, Bright Nebedum, is recognised as the Anambra PDP chairman.
In his home state, Ogun, the political upheaval in the state has also been traced to Obasanjo’s desire to pocket the state’s PDP in readiness for either the party’s mini-convention or NEC meeting where the issue of his continued reign as BOT chairman will be tabled. Apart from Ogun, in other South west States such as Oyo, Lagos, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, the former president, The Source learnt, is keeping a tab on the party structures with the view of ensuring that they are within reach when the need arises.
Apart from Anambra, the crisis in the Imo PDP, courtesy Marcellinus Nlemigbo’s sit-tight posture, has also been traced to the forces which are plotting Obasanjo’s continued retention of the BOT chair. Nlemigbo is considered amenable to the Obasanjo cause. The former president’s resort to lobbying state chairmen of the party, The Source gathered, is anchored on the fact that they have majority votes at NEC meetings and could make or mar any major party decision.
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had upon his assumption of office last year set up the Ekwueme committee and charged it with wooing back into the party founding members of the PDP who were allegedly frustrated out of the party by the ex-President. Among other recommendations, the former Vice President and his team had recommended a revert to the party’s pre-2006 constitution and divesting of the position of PDP’s BOT chairman from Obasanjo.
Notably, Mohammed’s review panel’s report is in tandem with the Ekwueme recommendations. The review report is of the view that the office and function of the party’s BOT as presently occupied by Obasanjo, has somewhat usurped the functions of the party’s national executives. And to correct this anomaly, the report recommended that a mini-convention be held in the first quarter of next year to amend the party’s constitution to conform with the dream of its founding fathers. In a nutshell, the report recommended a revert to the 1998 PDP founding constitution.
The implication of this is that, with a revert to status quo ante, all products of the December 2006 amendment of the PDP Constitution, including Obasanjo’s chairmanship of the BOT would become invalid. The review report noted that in tinkering with the party’s founding constitution during the 2006 amendment exercise, contentious issues found their way into the party’s constitution, chief among which was the composition, election and function of the BOT.
The Ekwueme report put it in better perspective thus: “Many members who appeared before the committee took strong exception to the amendment of the party’s constitution carried out during the 2006 convention… Some members expressed strong reservation about the particular amendment which seeks to reserve the position of chairman of Board of Trustees for a former president.
“Party members, leaders and elders who appeared before the committee, condemned in very strong terms, the recent reconstitution of the BOT. They insist original members be reinstsated,” the report stated.
Indeed, in dying days of his presidency, Obasanjo had allegedly brow-beaten the then Ahmadu Ali-led PDP National Executive into amending the party’s constitution to provide for a former president as the chairman of BOT. This amendment came into effect less than one month after the former president left office, precisely in the wee hours of Wednesday, June 27, 2007 when in palace coup-like manner, Obasanjo and his foot soldiers in the party inspired a BOT meeting where Anenih, the occupier of that office was dramatically removed and Obasanjo installed– an action which Anenih had declared an illegality stretched too far as according to him, only about 35 out of about 150 members that constituted the party’s BOT were used to dethrone him.
The eventual revert to the PDP’s original constitution and by extension, the dethroning of the former President from his BOT chair, will be the climax of a strident anti-Obasanjo crusade and sentiment that have been raging in the party. The crusaders are vehement in their opposition to the former president’s continued wielding of influence in the party via the BOT position.
So, in order to fully articulate their views and have their anti-Obasanjo objectives achieved, some elements within the PDP have come up with reformist groups.
These groups were largely instrumental to ensuring that the Owu, Ogun State-born immediate past president did not succeed in saturating the PDP national executives with his candidates during the party’s March 8, 2008 national convention.
Ken Nnamani, the immediate past president of the Senate is leading one of such groups. His G.21 made up of mainly founding members of the party has been unrelenting in its opposition to the former President, especially on the issue of the BOT chair.
But four months into his chairmanship, if it were possible to invoke everlasting peace, Vincent Ogbulafor, PDP’s national chairman would have since done so in chapters of the party such as those of Anambra, Imo, Ogun, Lagos, Oyo, Enugu, Edo, Nasarawa, Delta, Kogi and Ekiti among others. In PDP chapters in the above states, peace has remained as elusive as a pin that is being searched for in pitch darkness. In virtually all the afore-mentioned states, the kernel of the problem is anchored on who controls the party structure.
For example, in the South east states of Anambra and Enugu, the grand fight for the ‘soul’ of the party has dovetailed into the mushrooming of parallel executives. In Anambra alone, there are about four seemingly irreconciliable factions, with each parading “ a chairman”. In Enugu, the titanic battle is between Vita Abba and Ray Nnaji. Both men are laying claim to the chiarmanship of the state PDP. Though the National Secretariat of the party recently accorded recognition to the Abba-led faction, that did nothing to thaw the crisis. The action instead widened the frontiers of the raging fight, with the Nnaji group shifting the battle to the law courts.
The recognition which the Abba group now enjoys at the PDP national level is a function of the recommendation of the Jim Nwobodo- led Action Committee. The committee was set up by the South east zonal leadership of the party to reconcile aggrieved members of the party in the zone. In asking the court to denounce the Abba group, the Nnaji faction is insisting that the Nwobodo committee is an illegal body set up by Olisa Metuh, the PDP Vice National chairman, South east whose ascension to that position is being challenged in court. In fact, shortly after he was selected, some aggrieved members in the zone got a court injunction restraining Metuh from parading himself as the party’s Vice National chairman for the South east.
The disquiet in Enugu PDP is principally conditioned by the frosty relationship between Governor Sullivan Chime and his predecessor, Chimaroke Nnamani, now a serving Senator. While Nnamani propped up Nnaji and organised a congress in one of the Hotels in the State capital to elect him state chairman of the party, Chime’s- sponsored congress produced Abba, thus setting the stage for a debilitating intra-PDP crisis in the state. Thuogh the governor has survived the greatest threat to his governorship – the nullification of his election by the election tribunal and the subsequent Appeal court ruling in his favour – that Chime rode the storm on the crest of a divided party structure is not in doubt. His opponents in the party openly jubilated when the tribunal annulled the election and while the appeal lasted, they campaigned vigorusly for his substitution as the party’s candidate in the event that the Appeal court upheld the tribunal’s verdict. His victory notwithstanding, the state's PDP faction opposed to him has vowed to fight on. Nnaji, a former commissioner in the Nnamani administration and a leader of the faction has made clear that peace will not reign until he is recognised as the authentic chairman of the party in the state.
Neigbhouring Anambra presents a slightly different picture in that unlike Enugu where the party has to content with just two factions, there are about four PDP factions in the state. But the two which are fierce in their battle to undo each other is the Nebedum and Tony Nwoye factions. The greatest surprise in the Anambra crisis was the parting of ways between Nwoye and Uba. Uba, it was who singlehandedly installed Nwoye, a former National President of the National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS) as Anambra State chairman of the party.
Desirious of detaching the party from the grip of the Uba dynasty, Nwoye had aligned with anti-Uba elements which include Senator Annie Okonkwo, Chuma Nzeribe, Uche Ekwunife and several other federal lawmakers from the state, as well as the state’s PDP elders. They were primmed at conducting a congress that would produce a chairman who would not be an Uba appendage when a court order obtained by a chairmanship aspirant, Kenneth Emeakayi, a former commissioner of works in the Mbadinuju administration stopped the entire process. The Uba group, however, spurned the court order and went ahead with their congress which produced Nebedum.
Not even the intervention of the Nwobodo committee has brought peace to the party in the state. As was the case in Enugu, the recommendation of the committee on the Anambra PDP crisis has further driven a wedge between the warring factions. At the end of the committee’s three-day public hearing in the state, it made the following observations:
*That Anambra State is a PDP state with huge followership
*That members are primarily concerned with equity, fairness and justice in the management of party affairs
*That power should not be exercised outside the ambit of the party
*That internal democratic processes should at all times guide party election and decisions
*That financing must be democratised to avoid incidences of personification of the party
*That it is important to find a platform that can accommodate all members of PDP in readiness for the challenges ahead.
The Nwobodo committee had gone ahead to deliver what amounted to a clincher in in the mould of a recommendation: A new congress be held in the state to elect a neutral party chairman. Aware that in the event of a fresh congress his opponents will ensure he is finished off politically, Uba and his followers are crying blue murder. They have raised hell over the committee’s recommendation and have indeed distanced themselves from it. And so as far as they are concerned, Nebedum remains the authentic PDP chairman in Anambra.
To further cast a slur on the Nwobodo report, a member of the committee, Lynda Ikpeazu, has since accused Nwobodo of bias in handling the Anambra crisis. She followed up her accusation with the submission of a minority report. Ikpeazu, an Uba loyalist who represents Onitsha in the House of Representatives, wondered why the committee did not recommend the harmonisation of the parallel PDP executives in Anambra as was the case in Abia and Ebonyi states.
Ikpeazu: “My submission was that we should use the indices and parameters already used in other states because they apply in Anambra State...It is not that doing a fresh congress is something that can never be done, but the point is we have rules that we used and we have certain guidlines, why don’t you use them all in the state.”
A PDP source confided in The Source that the recommendation of the Nwobodo committee is geared towards handing the state’s party structure to the elders and founding members from the state such as the former Vice President, Ekwueme and Onyeabor Obi among others, so as to reposition the party in readiness for the 2010 governorship contest in the state. Nwoye and Senator Okonkwo’s reactions to the Nwobodo recommendation tilt towards this reasoning. Okonkwo: “We need to open up the party. We need to have a new register in all the wards and allow people to register.”
Nwoye on his part was optimistic that the recommendation would help rebrand the PDP in the state, saying “we have been vindicated.”
And in keeping with the Nwobodo recommendation, PDP's National Working Committee (NWC) has set up a congress committee charged with conducting a new congress to produce a new chairman of the party in the state. The committee is headed by Chuma Nwafor with all State chairmen of the party in the zone as members. Predictably, the NWC's action is not going down well with the Uba faction. The PDP, The Source gathered, is making moves to become a court order restrain the committee from functioning. Other stakeholders are however optimistic that the NWC action will bring the much desired peace in the state PDP.
Paulinus Obichukwu, member representing Oyi state constituency in the State House of Assembly holds this view. According to Obichukwu, by setting up the congress committee the PDP National Secretariat appreciates the plight of members of the party in Anambra State. The lawmaker is also applauding the decision of the congress committee to opt for option A4 voting system during the congress. He has thus challenged those grandstanding as godfathers within the party in the state to submit themselves to the congress to prove their popularity. Indeed, rumours are rife that Prince Ossy Ezenwa, Secretary to the State Government (SSG) during the Mbadinuju admiration may emerged as the next chairman of the party in the state.
In Edo State, though Ogbulafor last month anounced the resolution of the lingering crisis in the state’s PDP with the appointment of Solomon Ekhabafe, a loyalist of former chairman of the party’s Board of Trustee (BOT), Anenih, as chairman, peace still seems a distant dream. Not even the plea for peace by the two gladiators in the crisis, Governor Oserheimen Osunbor and Anenih could make their loyalists sheathe their swords. Osunbor’s faction of the party which parades Edward Sado as chairman, says as far as they are concerned, Ekhabafe who was a commissioner in the Osunbor government until last month, is an impostor and should be treated as such.
It is also in tra-party imbroglio in Oyo, Ogun, Ekiti and Imo States. But the nature of the crisis in the three South west states differ significantly from that of Imo State. In Ogun state, for example, the crisis is two-pronged. Members of the State House of Assembly and Governor Gbenga Daniel are in one hand locked in a titanic battle over the impeachment of Titi Oseni as the speaker of the House, an action which has been interpreted as a prelude to the sacking of the Governor by the House. On the other hand are some party elders who are no longer enarmoured by the chairmanship of the paty in the state by Alhaji Sule Onabiyi.
The party chieftains, mostly from Ogun west, are angry with Onabiyi for allegedly saying that the state’s Deputy Governor, Alhaja Salimotu Badru who hails from the senatorial district should forget her ambition to replace her boss, Daniel come 2011. The Ogun PDP crisis has so far defied all mediation efforts as parties to it are sticking to their guns. As a last resort, Governor Daniel has solicited the intervention of Ogbulafor to help end the crisis.
Ekiti also presents a similar indignant picture. The brewing crisis in the state PDP boiled over recently following a change of guards in the State House of Assembly. A group of five PDP members in the state had joined 13 of their colleagues from the rival Action Congress (AC) to uproot Femi Bamisile from his position as the House Speaker. Govenror Segun Oni, apparently desirious of a soft-landing for the former speaker, had proposed that Bamisile be allowed to formally resign while a neutral person be elected as speaker, but the Group of 18 lawmakers have flatly rejected this proposal, insisting that the former speaker remains impeached and Olatunji Odeyemi becomes, the new speaker. When it appeared the crisis has been resolved via the swearing-in of the new speaker and the purported resignation of Bamisilie, another one of gargantan proportion has reared its head in the state PDP. Following the failure by the Alhaji Shuib Oyedokun's reconciliation committee for the party in the South west to reconcile Governor Oni and former Governor Ayo Fayose, the faction of the party loyal to Fayose has set up a parallel executive with Yemi Arokodare, a former member of the House of Representatives, as chairman.
In Oyo state, though Oyedokun announced penultimate week that the party has reconciled former Governor Rashidi Ladoja and his successor, Christopher Alao Akala and have re-admitted Ladoja into the party, it is not yet uhuru for the state chapter of the party which has remained crisis-ridden as a result of imposition of party executives by the late strongman of Ibadan politics, Lamidi Adedibu and his godson, Governor Akala.
Former Minister of Power and Steel, Wole Oyelese, one of the gladiators in the crisis has emphatically said that the reconcialition of Akala and Ladoja does not in anyway translate into peace in the state PDP. Apart from Oyelese, Richard Akinjide, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the federation in the Second Republic. is another party chieftain who is agrrieved, prompting him to set up a pressure group, Patriotic Elders Forum (PEF), to confront his opponents within the party.
The crisis in Imo PDP is basically anchored on Nlemigbo’s desire to sit-tight disposition as the state’s PDP chairman despite the zoning of the position to Orlu senatorial zone of the state. Nlemigbo is from Okigwe zone.
John Kennedy Osuala, the national co-ordinator of the party's National Grassroots forum in a telephone interview told The Source that the forum is in consultation with gladiators in the crisis-ridden state chapters of the party, especially in the South east. The group, he said, is laying emphasis on peace because that is the only thing the party needs to thrive. He painted a gory picture of the party in the zone, saying, “right now, South east is not PDP-friendly because of factionalisation.” He traced the problem to imposition of candidates, selection rather than election of party office holders. Osuala is however happy that arrowheads of the various factions are now seeing reasons to tow the line of peace.But, for how long?