As the PDP blunders along, By Okey Ikechukwu

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is adamant on retaining the current party Chairman. The Chairman, himself, is adamant on not giving up his position. The supporters of the Rivers State governor, a defeated candidate in the party’s controversial presidential primaries, are adamant on not supporting their party’s presidential candidate unless Ayu is removed as party Chairman. Well, when adamant meets adamant, an adamantine situation arises.

Ayu’s adamantine posture is reinforced by Atiku’s blasé attitude to genuine problem solving as a leader. Now that various stakeholders within the party are maintaining whatever, sometimes fluctuating, positions they have maintained since the party primaries, the stage is set for an impressive conflagration and implosion. It is as if the party received, and is diligently executing, a custom-made template for self-destruction.

Look at the recent, and ongoing, revelations of Wike. Look at the monies being returned by members of the Party’s National Working Committee. All because of the recalcitrance of Atiku and Ayu, the first major celebrants of Atiku’s victory. Ayu capped his partisanship with a “State visit” to Tambuwal, to thank him for stepping down for Atiku and “Saving the day”.

Today, Ayu’s co-conspirator, Aminu Tambuwal, is the Chairman of the Presidential Campaign Organization (PCO) set up by Atiku. Atiku has also repeated the blunder of 2019, when he made Lamido, Ekweremadu, Makarfi and co, Technical Advisers to the campaign. What are Saraki and others today? What value will they bring, or are they bringing, to the table?

Yes, certain provisions of the PDP constitution cannot be ignored. But the party Chairman, the aspirant and the person who stepped down and ceded his votes to the current presidential candidate should be sensitive to the underlying political sensibilities. The party is scandalized, in disarray and in great disrepute today, because none of the people on Atiku’s side seem wise, or statesmanlike, enough to apply strategic thinking and situational dialectics.

You can solve a problem without damaging, or undermining, the rules. The concept of “natural justice, equity and good conscience” is sometimes invoked in order to get out of a potentially awkward situation. What did Obasanjo do about the party’s provisions when he found out that there was no major position going to the South East?

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar cannot hold himself, his party and his people together. The wisdom of his insistence on a constitutional provision that a stakeholder resolution can put in abeyance for a limited time is open to question. His clear inability to engineer any form of consensus, or prevail on Ayu to conduct himself with greater dignity and grace, calls out his presumed experience and ability to lead.

The PDP must ask itself why Nigerians should trust it, or trust its candidate and its chairman if it cannot resolve the glaring crises before it at the moment. The ongoing dance of shame in the village square suggests that the party is affiliated to Bedlam. It is putting too much energy into everything that will help it to lose the coming elections. Let someone tell the PDP that stupidity is not a virtue; that bungling is not a type of competence and that blindness is not a type of vision. Just look at them, biko nu. Ejikwa m ogu o!

First published in Thisday Newspaper