SAN FRANCISCO, July 29, (THEWILL) – The recent ruling of the Supreme Court, which affirmed Ahmed Makarfi as the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Caretaker Committee may have cleared the coast for a united party.
But, while expectations are high that the PDP would now be able to present a virile opposition to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, discordant tunes have risen from the Ali Modu Sheriff’s faction, who the apex court voided his national chairmanship of the party.
Sheriff revealed this danger signal through his boycott of a recent reconciliation meeting called by the Makarfi leadership, after the court ruling. Other developments have since heightened fear that PDP is yet to get its acts together.
This is not totally unexpected given that Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State and his Rivers State counterpart, Nyesom Wike, both of whom belong to the Makarfi group, had earlier hinted that they might dump the party if Sheriff was named the party’s national chairman.
The threat to dump the PDP should Sheriff win, was further echoed by the Chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees, BoT, Senator Walid Jibrin and another member, Chief Bode George.
Last week’s defection by some Sheriff’s loyalists in the Southwest and those of his ardent supporter, Senator Buruji Kashamu from Ogun State, showed that the intention to defect in an event the ruling went the other way, was mutual.
These PDP leaders had last week at Ibadan, defected to the Mega Party of Nigeria, MPN with a promise to adopt a new name.
According to them, the Makarfi group did not extend the expected olive branch to them, but rather resorted to granting them “a general amnesty” as if they were militants. These Sheriff followers said they felt disappointed that the new Makarfi leadership did not carry them along.
This action indicates why political settlement is more preferable than allowing the courts settle an internal wrangling in a party. As the heat of electioneering for the 2019 elections gathers coupled with the Supreme Court ruling, defectors should rather be returning, not leaving the PDP fold.
THEWILL cautions the new leadership to eschew all forms of animosity and constitute an enlarged reconciliation committee to bring members of the former faction on board. This is critical for both sides to prove to the electorate that personal ambition was not the aim of the almost two years leadership tussle.
If these leaders from both sides were truly motivated by the zeal to serve, they must succumb to internal democracy in the party by reconciling all parties, rather than creating or joining a new party, that may not be the viable alternative.
It is also instructive that politicians imbibe the culture of tolerance and purposeful leadership within the party before attempting to rule a more complicated Nigeria. With the existing awareness among the electorate, their antics could cost them their ambition into elective offices in whatever party that they may find themselves.
The PDP’s founding fathers should intervene to put the party in order so that naysayers would realise that the party poses a formidable threat to the APC in the upcoming general elections.
It is only a united PDP that can achieve this feat, given its recent show of strength in the Osun senatorial bye-election, where Ademola Adeleke of the PDP, defeated the APC candidate Mudashir Hussain, in a fair contest.
THEWILL urges the Makarfi leadership to urgently, in consultation with all stakeholders, use this period to regain the trust of Nigerians. It must concede some grounds to leaders of the former leadership, so that it would truly be a case of no victor, no vanquished.
THEWILL urges the new leadership to leverage on the apex court ruling by showing more commitment to reconciliation, as well as bringing unity to the state chapters which had been torn along the lines of the various factions.
Sheriff must however recognise the right of some chieftains of the party to be aggrieved over what his activities in the party for the past fifteen months, which they believed made PDP suffer defeats in the Edo and Ondo governorship elections. The sacked chairman and his co-travellers must therefore meet the mainstream PDP halfway if they really mean well for the former ruling party.
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