14 Dec 2006 |
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Awaiting the PDP Presidential candidate
The President, who now goes by the title "leader of the party" has sworn that it is the PDP or nothing. This may be intended as mere campaign talk but the President's body language says it all. And the primaries at other levels have confirmed this: that only those who are favoured by the party's national executive and invariably the President can ever hope to get a ticket for the 2007 elections on the platform of the PDP. It is for these reasons that Nigerians are looking forward to the PDP convention with great anxiety. Whatever the PDP comes up with: fish or crab: could affect the future of our country. It is also widely believed that given the current configuration of politics, the factor of incumbency and the relative strength of the competing political parties, no other party can displace the PDP at the centre. But the convention is not just about the PDP; it is specifically about the electoral process and Nigeria itself. There are a number of issues to be considered, and these are derived from the build up to tomorrow's convention. The first is the impression so disturbingly created that the PDP convention will end up as a mere ritual. In the past two weeks, the PDP primaries at the levels of the House of Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate and the Governorship have projected the strong message that what has happened so far is a process of anointment. No real democracy has taken place in the PDP primaries. Otherwise qualified persons have been disqualified on vague and malicious grounds. Local chieftains also known as Godfathers brazenly imposed their own candidates. In the various states, the incumbent Governors acted like warlords leading troops to battle. In one state, the delegates could not move to the venue of the congress until the Governor told them how to vote. Democracy is about choice. Its lodestar is the ability of the individual to express himself, and make a choice. In the PDP, the primaries have been mere "one-man shows". The other political parties may not have been in the eye of the storm on this ground but only because their activities have been under-reported. But the Action Congress in particular is just as guilty as the PDP. The primaries generally have shown that nothing has changed in Nigerian politics. The professional political class so used to the old way of doing things, has refused to learn any lessons. Where money could not easily enforce the will of the master, bombs were used, assassination threats were issued, the screening panel was turned into an inquisition body. The PDP National Convention has been openly promoted as President Obasanjo's show. It is the forum where his favoured candidate is supposed to emerge. The President himself has been quoted as saying, he will show the people the "bush and the way". They are of course expected to follow the way, the President's way, and not the bush. In the past month, one particular candidate has been promoted widely as the President's anointed candidate. Dr Ahmadu Ali, the PDP National Chairman who seems to have developed a special skill for speaking through his hat has been quoted as saying that the PDP National convention will be a "mere coronation". Yesterday, the newspapers reported that the PDP screening panel shortlisted only six candidates and suggested that 12 others could participate in the Presidential primaries. But the PDP National Chairman had to take the list to the President "the leader" for his inputs! Whatever final list that may be announced, webelieve, is the President's long list from which according to Ahmadu Ali, one man will be "coronated". But the PDP National Convention must not end up as "a mere coronation". Otherwise it will be a huge joke that will further polarise the party and deepen its credibility crisis. The President as "the leader" of this party must rescue it from the crisis of legitimacy that has characterised the primaries at the state levels. He must resist the temptation to confirm the general impression that the only option for PDP delegates is to obey "His Command". A PDP National Convention that ends up predictably as Obasanjo's "My Command" would be most unfortunate indeed. The second point to be noted is that the list of candidates that is being advertised by the PDP can be broadly divided in terms of distribution of background into two categories: North and South South. And not surprisingly the processes leading to the PDP convention have been dominated by the politics of ethnic extraction: should the Presidential candidate come from the North or the South South? The strongest argument in favour of the North is that the political North can no longer afford to be out of power at the centre. It is a weak argument. It is further affirmed that there was a pact in 1999 between President Obasanjo and some other powerful stakeholders from the North: that he must return power to the North at the end of his tenure, the sub text of which is the assumption that power in Nigeria is the birthright of the North. This is silly. This is a point that annoys other Nigerians, especially the minorities to no end. The politics of power location in Nigeria is the strongest element of the national question. How the PDP chooses its Presidential candidate tomorrow may confirm the people's worst fears about the evil of veto power in Nigerian politics or it may signal the beginning of progress, and a determination to use power politics to address some of the injustices of the Nigerian arrangement. Our fear however is that those who are planning to turn the PDP convention into a "mere coronation" may be more determined to actualise an anti-people pact. In the last two months alone, the Presidential spirants from the South South, particularly Peter Odili, Victor Attah and Donald Duke, have run the most creative, the most robust and the most engaging campaign. They represent the determination of the people of the South South to have a voice in the Nigerian arrangement, not through the activities of the restive youths in the Delta but through participation in leadership at the highest levels, not as bystanders or spectators but as stakeholders. All three Governors have been advertising their achievements with Peter Odili using the power generation plant at Omoku as a last minute master-stroke. But is it not curious that in the politics of the PDP, it is precisely the same South South Governors who have been targeted by a malicious campaign machinery? All of a sudden, anti-Duke adverts began to appear in the papers, and yet Duke had been everybody's idea of a nice man. Then it was said that the EFCC was interrogating Odili: something that the EFCC has denied publicly! The linkage with EFCC was meant to malign Odili. But this is the same aspirant who Segun Adeniyi of ThisDay has openly endorsed in his column (ThisDay, December 14) with an emphasis on his achievements and the fact that he has a wife who is the "most educationally equipped" candidate for the office of First Lady. The bigger ideological point to be made, however, is that the campaign against the South South ahead of the PDP National Convention is most suspicious; it is condemnable for it suggests a mindset, and it is certainly not good for relationships among the various ethnic nationalities. I had expressed, before now, a preference for a South South Presidential candidate in the context of Nigeria's geo-politics and the frustrations of the minorities in existing power politics. The only thing that remains to be said is that as PDP delegates go to their convention tomorrow and make a choice, they must assess each candidate on the basis of his records. They should focus on ability and accomplishments. They must be on the look out for qualities. There must be a debate of issues, those who will choose must listen to the candidates and probe them. The Governors are said to be the leaders of the delegates: they have a historic duty tomorrow: to provide required leadership, and not be motivated by narrow goals of self-preservation. It is being said for example that if any Governor does not ensure that the delegates from his state obey the "President's command", then such a Governor who is seeking re-election should forget it. And if he is not seeking re-election, he should start getting prepared for a visit from the EFCC. Blackmail should not be the main feature of the PDP convention. Nigerians are looking for Presidential candidates of the highest quality: a man that they can relate to, a leader with a common touch, a man of ideas, not someone's puppet. Our advice: PDP delegates must reject the politics of birthright. They must frown at the politics of "Baba so pe." When all is said and done, the party primaries must be about democracy. It is strange that the PDP National secretariat claims to have the supreme powers to overrule any outcome of the primaries, and impose any candidate that it considers fit to represent the party. When the PDP leadership tells Nigerians so brazenly that it does not respect the opinion of its own party members at any level whatsoever, it merely advertises its anti-democratic credentials. The party primaries represent the first step towards the democratic elections. If what we have witnessed so far in the PDP and the Action Congress is an indication of the future to come, then the 2007 elections may have been aborted ab initio. When the people are denied their right to choose, a crisis of legitimacy is created. It is also disturbing that in many states, certain winners of the primaries are already parading themselves as if they had just won the major election. Some Gubernatorial aspirants are already being addressed as "His Excellency"; their wives are already being offered advice about how to be a good First Lady. There is never a short supply of sycophants in Nigeria! These days, when you hear someone being addressed as "Senator", "Honourable" or "Your Excellency" around you, please double check to be sure that the man before you is not appropriating the title in anticipation of victory in an election that has not even taken place. The clumsiness with which the PDP National Executive is conducting its affairs is a product of this conceit. Will President Obasanjo prove to be a 12th hour democrat? Tomorrow, only tomorrow, will tell...
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TOMORROW, Saturday
December 16, is most certainly a major moment for Nigeria as PDP
delegates troop to the party's national convention in Abuja to choose
the party's Presidential flagbearer for the 2007 elections. Whoever is
chosen as the PDP presidential candidate stands an excellent chance of
emerging eventually as President. Whatever may be its limitations, and
in spite of the divisions within the party, the PDP remains the most
powerful political party in Nigeria. It is the party of the President.
It controls more than two thirds of elective and public positions in
the country. It has demonstrated a determination to continue to
dominate the country's politics. 
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