PDP AND THE PARADOX OF GOLIATH

The weak can overcome the strong. Some political lessons in the last general elections, argues

The Peoples Democratic Party is still the largest political party that has signboards and presence in the cities, towns, villages and hamlets scattered in all the nook and crannies of Nigeria – according to a nuclear physicist, Professor Wale Oladipo, PDP National Secretary on NTA Saturday, May 9. Paradox is logic, a statement that contradicts itself. “‘I always lie’ is a paradox because if it is true it must be false.” Goliath was a giant Philistine warrior from Gath who was a slingshot. Goliath is a person who is unusual, something that is abnormally large and powerful, a behemoth, monster or colossus.

Is the PDP an imaginary paradox of Goliath? If the hypothesis is accepted then it can be used as a tentative theory, a proposal intended to explain certain facts and observations in the polity, including the 16-year-old political and governance sojourn of the PDP from 1999 to 2015. The PDP bestrode the Nigerian political firmament like a colossus, a Goliath. Any discussion of the biblical Goliath is incomplete without a David, a kid, but a future King at the time. The phrase “David and Goliath” has taken a more secular meaning, denoting an underdog situation, a contest where a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger, stronger adversary and defeats him.

The PDP was the much bigger and stronger political adversary of the All Progressives Congress. Like Goliath boasted for 40 days challenging his adversaries to send out a champion of their own to decide the outcome in a single combat, the PDP boasted that it will rule Nigeria for 60 years and challenged other parties. It was the ruling party and determined Nigeria’s destiny, both foreign and domestic, controlled all three branches of government, the armed forces, security forces and agencies with powers of coercion and had more governors, lawmakers and pulled the levers of the purse including the Central Bank of Nigeria and also appointed Professor Attahiru Jega as the electoral umpire.

In no time, David and Goliath confronted each other, Goliath with his armour and javelin, David with his staff and sling. The paradox showcases David’s identity as ‘the agent of change’ and Goliath as ‘the agent of continuity’. However, while David and Goliath slugged it out on the campaign trail hurling insults at each other, disseminating hate campaign speeches, advertorials

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and other things that politicians do, ordinary Nigerians had the civic duty to vote for whoever, watched on TV, attended rallies under the sun and rain, where they were fed ‘promises’ of Eldorado or paradise on earth as the politicians prepared to feed only their stomachs.

Most Nigerians had the intuition that the PDP must win considering the power of incumbency. The PDP had succeeded in making it so, more like engineered intuition but unbeknownst to many Nigerians, the PDP was going through the process of ‘paradoxical sleep’, a recurring sleep state during which dreaming occurs and nothing else. Goliath may have gone against his precepts because David emerged from a ‘democratic presidential primary’ while Goliath emerged from a ‘presidential consensus candidacy’. On March 28, David cut Goliath to size and ‘PDP faithful’ started decamping to the APC which said it should be called ‘the governing party’ not ‘the ruling party’ – causing many Nigerians to wonder the difference especially when many APC stalwarts have big hungry stomachs.

The chickens came home to roost – the blame game began in earnest. Who caused Goliath to fall? There was an amalgam of reasons. Party members went for the jugular of others. It was the presidency, praise singers, kitchen cabinet, PDP governors, the NWC, the hate speech makers – Fani-Kayode, Okupe and Fayose the death-wisher, lack of internal democracy, absconding with cash-dollars without delivering voters, betrayal from the north, moles within PDP. Olisa Metuh said inter alia, “the type of campaign we generated made it impossible for our leaders in the north to garner support for our candidate (Jonathan) because of the hate campaign. . .” Harold Lasswell defined politics as “Who Gets What, When, and How”. President Goodluck Jonathan who graciously conceded defeat may have redefined Lasswell’s definition when he hollered “for those running away and those cross-carpeting, they will come back on an empty stomach. . .” No PDP member alluded to APC’s defeat of PDP and APC’s victory at the polls. Despite what the nuclear physicist said, the paradox here is that ‘if it is true that PDP is the largest party in Africa then it must be false because APC is transiting towards May 29’. www.nnamdiebo.com