- Sherriff deepening the gulf of crisis
The lingering crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may not have been if the party had not lost the 2015 presidential election. In the build up to the general elections, obvious signs were visible that the PDP will lose for the simple reasons that northern leaders in the party were vehemently opposed to the re-election of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
First, the power tussle started as a disguised struggle for internal democracy in the party.
The G7 compromising of Governors of Jigawa State, Kano, Kwara, Niger, Rivers, Adamawa and Sokoto states, led the vanguard of opposition, which also included several senators and other lawmakers, to the re-election of Jonathan.
Though five of the governors led the legion of PDP defectors to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Two of the G7 governors, Sule Lamido of Jigawa and Babangida Muazu Aliyu of Niger State, stayed back in the PDP.
The most ridiculous political behavior was that even PDP northern governors and several other party leaders who never raised a voice of opposition against the former president were covertly working against Jonathan.
There were pretenses during the electioneering campaigns but stronger indices were unveiled that they were not working for the party through which they achieved their highest political success in life.
The result of the election was obvious that former President Jonathan had since been abandoned before the polls. The result was that inexperienced and incompetent state actors were voted into office across the various realms of government.
The appalling phenomena is PDP provided the strongest political platform for about 95 per cent of northern politicians to achieve their political ambitions either as governors, legislators, ministers or even commissioners and council officials.
The 2015 general elections symptomatic of a political scenario where regional interests superseded national and party interests in a mass political party like the PDP. The outcome of the elections marked the destruction of the PDP in the North. The party merely survived extinction in the South East and the South-South. Being seemingly relegated to a regional party.
Former Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State has been working assiduously to reconcile PDP members across the country. His efforts, however, are being frustrated by the inordinate ambition of Senator Ali Modu Sherriff in his struggle for the party’s leadership. Consensus building, negotiation, bargaining or trade off, have all broken down in the PDP.
Again, the battle for PDP leadership is still the handiwork of northern leaders. The political machine that was necessary for conflicts mediation or regulation has been non-existence in the PDP. This, however, is a relative paradigm shift from the northern plot to frustrate Jonathan.
The PDP in its 16 years of dominating the mainstream body politic survived mainly on the powers of the government at the respective levels, from federal to states. Former presidents or governors did nothing to guarantee autonomy of the political party neither was party supremacy in their lexicon of party administration.
Apparently, Modu Sherriff has not acted in oddity; contradictions and conflicts are inherent components of partisan politics; only consolidated independent political machine of the party regulates or supervises the conflicts of interests between party stakeholders. Unfortunately, this has been conspicuously missing in the PDP throughout the 16 years of controlling government.
Today, there is no president to issue orders for other to follow; thus, the party has become animal farm where some animals a greater than others.
It is out of place for anybody to attribute the ravaging conflicts to the APC, such argument from some PDP stakeholders is self-defeatist. The conflicts in the PDP is from the northern stakeholders in the party and they are the only people that can proffer solutions to the conflicts towards rebuilding the party. The northern leaders of the party should, therefore, negotiate to resolve the conflicting interests among themselves, thereafter, begin the rebuilding of the party from the North. Now, Jonathan is out of the way, the northern PDP leaders must first rebuild the party in the North before rebuilding the party nationally.
Neither Sherriff nor Markafi is the headache of the party.