“We shall have to practise to lead our life based on our needs, not under the influence of our greed.” ― Lobsang Tenzin
Who owns the People’s Democratic Party? Is it the people as the name implies? Today, there are two PDPs, one belonging to Nyesom Wike and working closely with the ruling APC, and another led by the flagbearer Atiku Abubakar. None of them can stand strong as a credible opposition party.
How and why did the party get to this crossroads? A one-word answer is GREED! The party’s leaders saw sugar and jumped at the Greek gift, engaging their faculties in the reverse gear. They did not care a hoot about the aftereffects of the sugar or its wheeler-dealer source until it had entered their bloodstream. Sugar is a strategic dainty with hazardous side effects!
High blood sugar levels can result in permanent damage to parts of the body such as the eyes, nerves, kidneys, and blood vessels. Medics warn that constant hyperglycemia (excess glucose in the bloodstream) ought always to be referred to physicians or the diabetes care team.
Transpose these unhealthy conditions into the nation’s body politic, and it becomes apparent that sugar is money. Politics needs money just as the body needs sugar, but too much or inordinate consumption of it can kill. If you have money in politics you will be like the man carrying the palm fronds passing by some hungry goats, possibly moving in the opposite direction. Chances are that all the goats will immediately change direction and follow you. The way putrid attracts flies is the same way money attracts in politics.
You are done for if you are into it without enough money. You may find yourself completely at the mercy of the moneybag doling out cash. In over three decades of my reporting politics, a third of which I spent hobnobbing with the main opposition PDP, I can authoritatively state that money and lack of it remain the centre of the party’s biggest challenges.
For politicians, principles, and integrity take sudden flight when money is at issue. Hating or liking you by politicians is largely dependent on your greed and ability to look away when their soul is being enslaved by money.
It is perhaps against the above scenarios that we can understand and situate the plight of the PDP, which has been precariously struggling for oxygen to survive since 2015 when it lost power to the APC. For lack of the much-needed political sugar, the once biggest political party in Africa exposed itself to a dangerous fortune hunter who has now put it in a permanent struggle to live. Even though at some point PDP found a life wire, a dutiful provider of the much-needed sugar and former Governor of Rivers State and current Minister of Abuja, Nyesom Wike, the greed and indiscipline in the consumption of the sweet product by the critical stakeholders in the party laid the foundation for the recurring problems.
Therefore, having acquired such a high level of sugar intake without any level of admonitory, it was bound to have a consequence that resulted in a high blood sugar level for so long.
It is perhaps for such sweet things and their repercussions that Ndigbo says, “Ihe na ato uto, na egbu kwa egbu” (whatever is sweet has its bitter side that even kills).
All organs of the party, including the NWC, NEC, and BOT have remained mute as Wike seats in the APC chair directing affairs in PDP. If you are surprised at their muteness, we are not because the sugar in them from Wike’s table has gone so high, and is now diabetic and at the point of destroying their organs and invariably the party. Wike is a uniquely charitable man, his mouth is also liberal and easy and quick going. Trying to grandstand with Wike if you ever took his sugar can be dangerous and PDP chieftains are aware of this fact and none is brave enough to brave it with.
Unlike faith-induced charity for which confidentiality is demanded, political charity demands open reparations immediately. Those who think that the PDP problem is as simple as suspending Wike whose atrocities against the party are legion, are ignoring the fact that the sugar has turned diabetic.
What Wike is aiming to do is to hold the PDP for Tinubu so long as he keeps him as FCT Minister. By 2027, Wike will pretend to be running for President under the PDP but only block the PDP for Tinubu who will keep him as FCT Minister for eight years. That is why he said that Wike is not just a minister but his adviser. Why not, holding the PDP down is the biggest achievement as far as Tinubu is concerned.
The extent of the PDP ailment can better be measured if you recall that Wike as just a governor of one state was able to hold PDP for eight years, now he is still governor of Rivers State by proxy, plus governor of the FCT (at least confirmed by the PEPC). Also, he is a presidential adviser, plus the federal might and the known judicial swagger of both Wike and Tinubu.
If PDP governors were unable to fund the party when they were united, is it now that half of them are one leg in PDP, another leg in APC that they can? Is it the party elders who lavishly participated in the licking of Wike’s sugar and are high-degree diabetics who will have the energy?
Moreover, since the PDP elders are used to free funds, none of them would be willing to finance the party because they cannot match Wike & Co. Besides, a lot of the elders are losing faith in the party. The BOT who are supposed to be the soul of the party has become almost moribund after over 75 percent of them visited Port Harcourt to commission projects.
Is there a way out or is the situation hopeless? There is still a way to cure the diabetics but since the sore is festering and not healing, the surgeon’s knife might be the best option to save life and prevent the spread of the sore.
As things stand now, the old men in the party cannot wrest the party from Wike and Tinubu, whether through the courts or politically. They need more will and resources to do that. The youths who did not leave the PDP to the Labour Party with Peter Obi to form the Obidient Movement can do something to take back their party if they will not behave like the goat that sees the man with palm fronds.
The reason they must act fast is that the PDP is fast drowning, it is not a northern party, it has never been a South West party, the PDP fast losing South-South and, of course, South East, its main base for 23 years. If the youths recover whatever is left of the party, they can then begin to seek alliance if they want to make an impact in the next dispensation.
Let nobody deceive you that Tinubu will anger the north and they will return to PDP. It’s not going to happen, Tinubu is a politician, he did not disrupt the zoning of his party to bring in Abdullahi Ganduje as National Chairman for nothing. You see how Rabiu Kwankwaso has been struggling ever since. You could see how Tinubu is tactically taking over all of the nation’s cash cows: CBN, Customs, FIRS, and still counting. When the electioneering comes and he deploys money in the north they will fall flat. He did it when he was not President when ruling governors were falling for his money, now he is on the throne, who is in the North as a politician who will not see dollars and die. But even if the so-called North is going to reject APC, is PDP their possible destination? Certainly not.
Moreover, Peter Obi, Wike, and Tinubu have proved that there is no longer a monolithic north by their political records in this dispensation.
Tinubu got the ticket of his party against all the permutations of the then President and the national chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, Wike was cruising to defeat Atiku until Tambuwal’s great sabotage and Obi also proved to be the biggest change agent of this time, the miracle political yoke breaker.
The painful facts remain that until PDP members and leaders declare a jihad on their notable enemies like egoism, arrogance, corruption, selfishness, and greed, the likes of Wike will continue to remain relevant.
Let us end this conversation with Jacques Yves Cousteau’s admonition: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insects.”
If therefore PDP must survive its current challenges of freeing itself of Wike’s vice-grip, it must say, like Olivia Christian, “Diabetics may have taken away the sugar in my blood, but it will never take away the sweetness in my life. God help us.
*Abonyi, a journalist is a foremost public affairs analyst
