By now, after another foiled plot to unseat Acting Chairman Umar Iliya Damagum, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) must be sick and tired of its fratricidal war. Ambassador Damagum is former Rivers governor Nyesom Wike’s ally, in fact his point man in the party, his main battering ram. Mr Wike himself must be having nightmares over the party’s relentless battles and plots mostly targeted at him and his allies......See Full Story>>.....See Full Story>>
He may already be keenly aware that his perspective in the party has become jaded and untenable. Nevertheless, he obviously wants the ambassador to remain as national chairman until the end of next year in order to help checkmate the presidential ambition of former vice president Atiku Abubakar. He also wants to be acknowledged as one of the party’s main influencers, while hoping that most of the PDP governors would appreciate and probably be sympathetic to his point of view.
Both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Wike are at the centre of the PDP crisis. Others, including PDP governors, Board of Trustees (BoT) members, and party leaders and executives, are a supporting cast. Given how the political dynamics in the party is playing out, the former vice president may seem to party elders to be the lesser of the two evils. He may exhibit poor judgement and his calculations remain almost permanently off-key, but party stakeholders probably consider him dangerous only when presidential politics come into view.
Way before election, he is mostly absent or detached, while he is also never too keen on the contentious process of building or rebuilding structures, preferring to reap where he did not sow. He will not be too fussy about what the governors do or say, and will seldom take umbrage when they taunt his position or when they go at each other’s throats. More, he is not averse to alliances, and will as soon sell the party down the river as pulverise dissenting party leaders not awed by his wealth or smitten by his controversial reputation.
Once presidential election politics begin, however, he will end his hibernation, shake the party up, demolish and dilute alliances and platforms, and hope that approximately one year of active and frenzied campaign can yield him the great prize. Indeed, his unwillingness to breathe down the necks of the governors makes him more tolerable than his fearsome rival.
Mr Wike is a tectonic force in the party. The party needed him years ago at its lowest point, and he stepped in, manned the ramparts, nursed the orphan back to health, showered her with love and attention as she grew in stature and comeliness, and finally thought of having her all to himself. It was, therefore, galling to him that someone else sauntered in before the presidential poll, plied her and her uncles and nephews with money and gifts, and tried to elope with her.
The party was for a time naturally divided between Mr Wike’s politics of entitlement and Alhaji Atiku’s fecklessness and betrayal. For more than a year, the party was in a quandary, wondering how to respond to the former vice president’s amoral politics and the former Rivers governor’s sense of entitlement. They were indebted to Mr Wike, and had no illusion about Alhaji Atiku’s realpolitik, but they were also torn between repaying the kindness and constancy of the former and standing up to the exploitation, self-centredness and short-termism of the latter.
What has worsened their dilemma is the increasing untenability of Mr Wike’s position. He is a federal minister under the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, he was also instrumental to President Bola Tinubu’s electoral victory, but he has intensified his fight to retain the Rivers State PDP structure.
The party naturally wonders what he needs the structure for: to deny Alhaji Atiku the Rivers vote again should the former vice president clinch the presidential primary, or lend it once again to the APC? Either would be counterproductive to the PDP, party elders reasoned. So, reluctantly, they have also begun to fight Mr Wike and his proxies, and have uncharacteristically started to support Rivers governor Siminalayi Fubara notwithstanding his appalling and amateurish politics.
It is unclear too whether Mr Wike is not baffled by his own politics, by the choices he has made, and by the cruel and unforgiving options facing him from which he must chose sooner rather than later. He has been a revelation as minister, and is probably the best performer in the Tinubu cabinet. A practical man rather than an ideologue, he has won the president’s confidence by his unshakeable loyalty, far better than most APC ideologues, and has shown his dependability as a fighter and armour bearer.
His politics in Rivers, not to say his judgement regarding the selection of his successor, might have been gross and outlandish, but he remains charismatic and a force to reckon with. Yet, there is a limit to how even a genius can manage politics riddled with contradictions.In many ways, the crisis in the PDP has come to a head. Mr Wike and his group, including the party’s acting chairman, now know where they stand.
The PDP governors are also beginning to show their hands, indicating that they may be closer than ever to taking the bull by the horns, especially seeing that some of them harbour presidential ambitions. Alhaji Atiku is also beginning to be frantic, and has come out clearly to side with Mr Fubara, regardless of the abysmal politics of the governor. In fact, he has not forgiven Mr Wike for costing him the presidency, a blow he is adamant on avenging with his characteristic brutishness. Somnolent PDP elders who waited to see which way the cat jumps now appear sure, and are thus more eager than anyone to damn the consequences.
They are tired of being beholden to Mr Wike and they want Amabassador Damagum out. They want their party back, though they may not be clear how to fund and sustain it. In short, all parties to the PDP crisis are readying themselves for a final showdown from which they may either emerge stronger or weaker. Given their current mood, they don’t seem to mind any outcome whatsoever. For them, it is anything but the inertia and indecision that had plagued them for years.