GUESTCOLUMNIST

IKEDI OHAKIM

Following the dramatic resignation of his membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by President Olusegun Obasanjo, earlier this year, by publicly tearing his membership card, I did a piece in which I tried to situate the action of the eminent Nigerian leader in perspective. In the article titled, OBASANJO: WHAT HAPPENED?, I opined that it was quite ominous of President Obasanjo to publicly shred the “baptismal” certificate of his son, an aphorism which I deliberately employed to underscore the point that Obasanjo was the father of the PDP and indeed the father of the nation and an oracle of sort.

Coming just some weeks to the 2015 general election, President Obasanjo’s action signified that he was indirectly predicting the fall of the party. In the article under reference, I pointed out that President Obasanjo did what he did out of frustration, having continually failed in getting the leadership of the party to understand his body language or heed his advice on how to save the party. I did point out that though Obasanjo might not have couched his language of communication in the most elegant manner, it was our responsibility in the party to try to extract the message, rather than the resort to cajoling the elder statesman, which was becoming the preoccupation of some PDP and presidency officials.

Of course, President Obasanjo was not the only fellow who foresaw the PDP plummeting. The difference was that he was probably the only one who had the candour and sincerity of purpose to put his observations across without flattering those at the helm of affairs.

In appraising Obasanjo’s action of publicly shredding his PDP membership card, I had to inevitably take a cue from his evidently hard stance to lend my own shrill voice that the party was heading towards a crash. Again, because my piece came even closer to the general election, I was widely criticised for being a doomsday prophesy bearer. Even a top official of the party called for my suspension from the party for anti-party activities. I laughed. I had mentioned that the leadership of the PDP should have been able to prevent the exit of five of its state governors at one fell swoop. And that even so, the fellow who was brought in to run the affairs of the party thereafter failed even more abysmally than his predecessor in addressing the issues that eventually led to the defeat of the party.

I feel pained on the calamity that befell the party. This notwithstanding, I feel that a quick introspection has become necessary in order to let the party faithful know that in spite of what has happened, it is not yet over for PDP; and that from the ashes of the present ruins may still rise a greater party. I think there is need to let the teeming members of PDP realise that there is still a great hope and that as they say, after rain comes sun shine; the same as to say that there is a silver lining in the horizon. But that cannot happen if we do not first and foremost take stock and to put it in my own native parlance, to determine at what point the rain began to beat us.

Just as in my earlier piece before the general election, I maintain the position that the blame of what happened to the PDP lies squarely on the door of its national leadership. As I noted above, President Obasanjo was not the only fellow who saw the ominous signs. I personally tried to communicate my own observations to the leadership of the party and even to the President himself in various private memos. To be sure, I am with millions of people all over the world in commending President Goodluck Jonathan for accepting the results of the presidential election so early and saving Nigerians from anxieties and probably a crisis.

However, while I also agree with the human angle theory of the “shoeless” Ijaw boy who came to Abuja and is leaving Aso Rock with his head and that of his entire family intact, I believe that President Jonathan was in a position to achieve more than that. As the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, would say, it is not life that matters but the courage which one brings to it. President Jonathan is a courageous man but it didn’t even need raw courage to have been able to save the PDP from the disaster that befell it under his watch. What he needed was not courage but a listening ability and capacity to employ the capability of others.

Unknown to many, the fate that befell the PDP was already dangling like the Sword of Damocles right from 2007. But Obasanjo was able to save the party from that calamity not because he was the wisest and most courageous man but because he has or had the ability to discern the danger. For example, the single act that saved PDP in 2007 was President Obasanjo’s swift move that saw Governor Peter Odili voluntarily opting out of the presidential race for the interest of the party and the nation in general. For, when confronted with the binary choice of either having Odili as the presidential candidate or having the PDP collapse under him, President Obasanjo in a deft move rallied leaders of the party to persuade Odili, who was already coasting to victory for the primaries, to drop his ambition; not through any presidential fiat but by consensus for the interest of the party and the entire country. That move ensured that the late Yar’ Adua, a Northerner, emerged as the party’s presidential candidate, instead of Odili and Jonathan his vice. That was what saved the party from what it finally suffered in 2015 under President Jonathan. Obasanjo was, of course, vilified by the less informed and they were many. How could he return presidential power to the North, which had “monopolised” it for several years? Is it not therefore a matter of grave concern that the big price paid by Peter Odili to save the PDP in 2007 was never put into consideration by the party? Odili was simply waved aside in a manner that piqued other well-meaning members of the party and which discouraged them from making further sacrifices for it.

Yar’Adua’s tenure was unfortunately cut short by his death and thus bridging the turn of the North which had a legitimate claim to