Emmanuel U. Ugwu

We had assumed that we knew the Peoples Democratic Party. We knew the party’s trivia. We knew its humble beginnings. It was a spin-off of G-34. We knew its logo. The tricolour umbrella. We knew its command centre, Wadata Plaza. We knew the genealogy of her chairmen. ( Solomon begat Audu, Audu begat Barnabas, Barnabas begat Ahmadu, Ahmdau begat Vincent, Vincent begat Okwesilieze, Okwesilieze begat Bello, Bello begat Bamanga and Bamanga begat Adamu.) We knew her decapitation curse. We knew her motto. Power to the People.

But the leader of the party, President Goodluck Jonathan, rid us of our delusion. He said PDP was not a political party. PDP was a less serious concern than that. The party was a culinary party. The raison d’être of the party was to be a society for eating and drinking.

At the presentation of the F-grade report of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, President Jonathan remarked, “I encourage members of the party not to become disillusioned because we lost the presidential election and decide to go where they will fill their stomachs or something. It’s not easy. I have been here for five years plus, you hardly satisfy even 15 per cent of those who work for you.

“Those people running and those already cross-carpeting, they will come back on an empty stomach because they will touch the primary members of their party, before they get to you. They know you are hungry: Before it will get to you, the food will be gone.”

This revelation of PDP as a gastronomic cult cracks the riddle. It helps explains why the party’s 16-year reign is a paradox of greater national wealth producing increased citizen misery. A cell of cannibals was feeding off their countrymen.

In retrospect, the motto of the PDP was a sham. Power to The People was not the capsule of the directional principle of the party. That’s why the party mouthed it for nearly two decades but did not deliver it. Billions of dollars were poured into some black holes in the name of power. But thicker darkness prevails across Nigeria today than when PDP began promising “power to the people.” They say the witches are to blame.

PDP, the culinary party, would have continued the pretension to conducting governance had the voters decided not to cut the reel. They would have carried on the despoilment of the land, like a plague of Egyptian locusts, if the electorate had acquiesced to the party’s scheme to hold power for 60 years. And the reason why they consume anything in sight would have remained a secret cult’s secret.

The party has been haemorrhaging since the electorate voted it into relegation. Jonathan, the incumbent who lost PDP the Presidency, felt responsible for persuading remnants of the membership not to join the exodus. And the most effective way to keep the would-be defectors was to paralyse them with the imagery of kwashiorkor outside the fold.

If they emigrated because of hunger, Jonathan warned, in Lag-