Search Blog / Web

Custom Search

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Nation: Atiku’s lamentation of PDP’s loss of South-west

The Nation
A news breaking website. Truth in Defence of Freedom 
Atiku's lamentation of PDP's loss of South-west
Jul 28th 2013, 23:00, by Femi Odere

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar's piece in The Nation on July 2, titled "How to Resolve PDP Crisis" was such an interesting read. Atiku seems to believe that the crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party is largely self-inflicted because it had derailed from the vision of its founding fathers. The Turaki Adamawa also harped on what the party must do to reclaim its lost glory in the piece.

Although, Atiku may have riled a significant segment of his supporters and admirers for being unprincipled, having gone back to his own vomit in light of the humiliation he suffered as a sitting vice president from his boss. But consistently principled he has been in denouncing the crude and reckless power play of his party's leadership hierarchy. As a key founding father, one can hardly fault Alhaji Abubakar for shouting himself hoarse in his attempt to draw attention to a party that seems to be taking a rapid nose dive less than five years after, in his exuberance, a top party apparatchik boasted that the party would rule for the next 60 years.

Atiku's piece can be divided into three distinct parts. In the first part, the former vice president went down memory lane as he tried to acquaint his readers with what seems to be the philosophical underpinning and vision of PDP's founding fathers that conceived and gave birth to this behemoth, which Atiku probably believe, and rightly so, that may have lost its soul. As one of the founding fathers, Atiku's conviction that a party platform with "credible internal capacity to produce leaders who will be committed to the public purpose…because it is within such a national party that…can guarantee national harmony, promote human development and safeguard the freedom and dignity of all citizens" is no doubt noble.

But it appears Atiku is probably the only founding father with this noble ideal. And if not, it had since been jettisoned and replaced with acquisition of power in its crudest form, flagrant violation of the rule of law, inordinate and reckless pursuit of personal wealth in the name of politics, and in-your-face looting of the collective patrimony ever since those founding fathers made that singular blunder of inviting the chicken farmer from Ota to be the party's CEO. The party had never known peace since and probably never will as the acorn seed of discord he sowed before he left the helm had grown into a mighty oak.

The mid-section is the former vice president's lamentation of PDP's loss of the South-west to the opposition and his admonition to the South-west party leaders that the "trend be reversed" in the region. He also suggested what needs to be done for the party to rid itself of its self-inflicted crisis and return to that philosophical ideal for which it was founded in the last leg of his piece.

One is especially curious as to why the former vice president suddenly developed this nostalgic feeling about the South-west and hence, his insistence that "PDP cannot afford to depart" from the region. If the basis of his reasoning is that any government in Nigeria can hardly be considered relatively successful if it's not at peace with the South-west, then he's probably on point. But if he had chosen the South-west as a case study in order to show the extent of the party's degeneration in the region's body politic, then he's being clever by half as the facts did not support his case study.

As a veteran politician who has been in the trade probably longer than he can remember, Atiku knows full well now that a party does not need the South-west to be the government at the centre. But he is also politically astute enough to know that God helps that government at the centre that had not only lost the South-west but also the respect and acceptance, no matter how tacit, of the people of this region as that government may never know peace in its lifetime. It's politically naïve of the former vice president to think that his PDP have even a fighting chance, outside of doing what it does best, in coming back to political reckoning in the South-west geo-political zone. And this is why.

Contrary to his assertion that "PDP became a very strong political party in the South-west as a result of the efforts and commitment of leaders who commanded the respect of the generality of the people of the South-west" which culminated in its control of the region's levers of power, its control was primarily due to the massive and blatant rigging of the 2007 elections which have gone down in infamy as the worst election in Nigeria's history. It was an election in which INEC, the electoral umpire was in full collusion, and the stage for it having been set by then President Obasanjo with his "do or die" declaration. The rigging was so egregious that the facts of any case in respect of that election brought before any judge with any iota of conscience left in him/her could not have been overlooked. And that was why the courts overturned the governorship elections in three South-west states of Ekiti, Osun and Ondo.

The "startling reverse" that the fortunes of the party took from 2011 in the region was not only due to the people's realization that the party is really clueless as to what governance was about, but they had come to terms with their inherent progressive political philosophy, which is fundamentally opposed to the conservative political ideology of PDP at the centre. His assertion that his "party didn't come to this sorry state in the region because the party men failed to deliver good governance to the people" where their "landmarks of achievements…dot the region" is at best delusional.

It is also important to put into proper perspective the emergence of PDP in the political landscape of the South-west, in case Atiku did not know or conveniently choose not to know. The emergence of PDP in the driver's seat of the politics of the South-west in 2003 was the result of the dummy sold by Obasanjo to the region's progressive governors before the elections, but which was steadfastly rejected by then Governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu who consequently became the last man standing among them. Secondly, the people of the South-west, with their votes, made it abundantly clear to their leaders then that they were in a hurry for development in all its facets.

Atiku Abubakar would do well by focusing his attention to fixing the big umbrella at the centre as well as the smaller ones in other geo-political regions that are drenching their members and the hapless people where these umbrellas are still open. The only renegade state left to be liberated and brought back into this regional family of progressives is the degenerate government in Ondo. And it's only a matter of time.

 

• Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...