Annus Horibbillis for the PDP -By Akin Osuntokun

The year 2015 did not start on a note of optimism for the PDP and it is only gotten worse. If it survives, this is not a year the party will love to remember. Going into the general elections especially the Presidential election the omens were not good. There was the baggage of the long predicted implosion which resulted in a massive loss and gain situation for the PDP and APC correspondingly. The positive momentum for the latter party and the antithetical negative motion for the former had hitherto been generated by the realisation of a political merger (for long mooted and for so long elusive) between the majority party in the South West and the dominant political tendency of the Muslim North.

There was the political bonus of the fact that the South West legacy party of the APC was coming to the merger not merely with the boon of electoral votes but also with the bounty of a stranglehold on the instruments of propaganda for good measure. There was the hostile backdrop of the sub regional wide animus against the perceived usurpation of the turn of the ‘North’ to produce the Nigerian President. There was the intractability of the Boko Haram insurgency and the collateral damage of the resultant exposure of President Goodluck Jonathan to negative national and international fixation.

There was the confounding exhibition of an abject lack of competitive spirit in Jonathan reinforced by a near reluctant mobilisation of his political party onto a fighting fit pedestal. The plausible excuse of the lack of preparedness of INEC notwithstanding, the six weeks postponement of the presidential election was validly perceived as a safe window of opportunity to boost the sagging re-election chances of President Jonathan. In the event whatever utility was provided by this window turned out a bit too little and too late.

The unprecedented and graceful concession of defeat by the incumbent President to his presidential rival was the doctor’s prescription for how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat or so it seemed. Like the embattled naira however, the purchasing power of this currency of national and international goodwill and respect has increasingly waned and gotten devalued and appeared to have entered the phase of a tailspin downward spiral.

Insinuations and innuendoes of a chart busting corruption reputation and repeated threats of multifaceted sanctions against those found culpable was finally given three-dimensional reality in the unfolding drama of parsing political slush funds as security appropriation in the office of the former National Security Adviser, NSA, Colonel Sambo Dasuki. As salacious tales of scandals go-in manner, content and form, they do not get any messier than what has thus far been disclosed by the prosecuting authorities.

It is no excuse for those found culpable but the plight they found themselves is unique only in the respect that their misdeed has been uncovered and brought to light. The incipient opacity and murkiness inherent in the accumulation of political slush funds is generalizable across the political spectrum. Neither the PDP nor APC will smell of roses were they all call to accountability on the sources of campaign finance. The thief, according to a Yoruba adage, is the one who gets caught.

No less unique is the mindless lack of sophistication bordering on stupidity in the committal of the scandal-if, for instance, it is true that funds were being nakedly disbursed as PDP campaign resources from the Nigerian public till. This is nothing short of a direct call to the Nigerian public to bear witness to the abuse of public office at its most brazen. I am not happy to say so but there has to be a definitely neater, smarter and less incriminating contrivance of accumulating slush funds. What then is the role of over pampered businessmen whom the government had generously patronised?

The PDP has always been prone to demonization and criminalisation not the least on account of the fact that for the past 16 years the buck of responsibility for good and bad of whatever becomes of Nigeria stops on its table. On the strength of present evidence there can hardly be any conscientious member or supporter of the PDP who would not, in varying degrees, feel a deep sense of remorse and embarrassment. Even if the facts and figures are apparently exaggerated there is still sufficient murk left to provoke a sense of moral outrage.

In general terms there is a significant respect in which the experience of the PDP is a manifestation of the escapist and hostile political succession syndrome. This is characterised by the penchant to court legitimacy for successor governments via the contrivance of stereotyping predecessors as failures and (in the worst case scenario) criminalizing them. The more insecure, clueless and overwhelmed the successor government, the higher the propensity to seek refuge in the utility of this scapegoating.

We see the manifestation of this syndrome in almost all the instances of leadership succession at the federal government level including, emphatically, the military coup d’état tradition. A change of government via the fiat of military coup is a fait accompli imposition requiring of the coup leaders the obligation to rationalise their intervention as imperative and contingent on the failure of the government that is being overthrown. Understandably, the Nigerian public, particularly the older generation segment, is quite familiar with this tradition.
Since the advent of the fourth republic we have, mercifully, experienced three instances of regime change through the ballot box.

One peculiarity of leadership succession within this duration is the fact that intra party succession within the PDP has proven to be no exception to the manifestation of this syndrome. Not only was the transition from President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Umaru Yaradua that of intra party succession, it was, pointedly, a mentor-protégé change of baton exemplar. Regardless of this velvet patriarchal transition, not even the acknowledgement of the need to serve the fall guy for the escapist extenuation of temporary inaction of his successor could prepare Obasanjo for the scandalization of his stewardship that was to come.

Remember the gross exaggeration of the appropriation allegedly dissipated on upgrading the puny electricity power status of Nigeria and the attendant witch hunt probes?
Mindful of this syndrome and in a fit of short lived political generosity, President Mohammadu Buhari, not long ago, issued a caveat emptor amnesty “Whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in, would be pardoned. I am going to draw a line, anybody who involved himself in corruption after I assume office, will face the music.” If, as it is now the case, he has made a U turn on this voluntary absolution, it is a lapse for which no dutiful Nigerian should criticise him.

As a matter of fact it is a proposal he should not have made in the first place. The gap between this campaign rhetoric and the reality of succumbing to the hostile political succession syndrome is the embarrassing escapism of blaming Jonathan for the prevailing inability of the incumbent government to get on top of its game in grappling with the protracted nationwide fuel scarcity malaise moral outrage.

The minister of information, Lai Mohammed contends “One of the reasons for the fuel scarcity was the inability of the last government to make adequate provision for fuel subsidy. We do face some other logistic problems but majorly, we are paying for the sins of the last administration. What I will be telling Nigerians is that what we met on ground is such that we are paying for the sins of the last administration. I am being very serious.

You remember that about two weeks ago, we had to go to the National Assembly for a supplementary budget of N674 billion’. If it seems rather implausible to keep blaming the previous administration for this mundane problem, we need go no further than the same Information minister himself to find corroboration. Three weeks ago he had asserted “We can confidently announce here today that the (fuel) scarcity will end in a few days. The National Assembly has approved subsidy payment till the end of the year. As you know, we can’t spend money without approval. We can assure you that we won’t be caught in this kind of situation again.”

If the PDP is condemned to live out this Christmas season with the frightening possibility of losing any or all of Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states to the APC then the relapse of the Niger Delta region into instability and restiveness may no longer amount to a remote possibility. Notwithstanding his recessive political temperament and the personality of a most unlikely warlord, Jonathan and the PDP presently personify whatever is left of Niger Delta irredentist nationalism.

It is illogical and counter intuitive to believe that the generality of the people of this region are indifferent to the wound of his inability to get a second term tenure. That wound would not be sooner assuaged by his political disinheritance in the consolation prize of PDP control of the proximate Niger Delta states. This is the corollary of the accusation of running an Ijaw-centric presidency frequently levelled against him; and it is a mindset that the ethno regional cleavage ridden Nigerian politics readily provokes.

If I were invited to postulate from the standpoint of political instability and order, I will argue as follows: no situation is more indicative of instability and crisis than the zero sum summation of having no vested interest in the survival and preservation of a political order. The loss of those states would necessarily be traumatic for the Niger Delta PDP in a manner that a similar exposure will not precipitate an equal despair for the APC. Standing in the gap for the latter is the APC controlled federal government and we identify a deployment of this insurance in key appointments made from the region by the President.

While there is this fall back sanctuary for the APC, a dispossessed PDP is out in the cold without shield or shelter. Advocacy to retain the extant political configuration is ultimately instructed by the consideration of what better serves the cause of political order and stability in the Niger Delta region and Nigeria at large.