PDP’s 2023 Presidential Election Loss: The View From the Other Side.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=744189466943575

Aare Dele Momodu posted the attached video with the caption, “Before the PDP primary…we all vowed to support the winner.”

My response:

My very respected uncle Bob Dee, this post is to provide a view from the other side, to set records in proper perspectives, and to present a balanced narrative for your audience to form their opinions.

While I am not a card-carrying member of the PDP, I have supported it ardently since 1999. In these last elections and until now, I ALIGN with the Integrity/G5 group and their ideologies and position So, permit me to use “We” in my communication, though not a party member.

Responding to your caption- “We all vowed to support the winner,” I agree with you, except that we all made that vow, EXPECTING THAT EVERYONE WOULD PLAY FAIR!

Despite that not being the case, we eventually kept to that commitment until it was apparent the party leadership and their ‘cabal’ had no plans to do the same. Till now, it seems unbelievable that in a contest, one party cheats and expects everyone to move on while they enjoy the spoils of crime.

Follow the chronology of incidents that led us to where we are today.

A position was supposed to be zoned to the South. Our governors agreed on it across party lines, with the party’s support. Unfortunately, Some people who had come to see themselves as our masters in the party connived, and conveniently for their agenda, chose to throw it ‘open.’

We accepted the unfairness of that action and still went into primaries confident of our work in mobilizing the support of party members/delegates across the country.

At the presidential primaries, as stipulated in the program of events for the convention (a document expected to be followed by decent people of character), all candidates delivered their addresses, and voting began. In his address, Wike restated his commitment to working with whoever emerged, expecting a fair contest.

What ended up happening? Seeing that voting was not going their way, a biased planning committee chairman (David Mark) allowed only ONE aspirant to speak AGAIN against all rules of fair competition!

We again accepted that injustice.

The aspirant goes on to say he is withdrawing, and If he had stopped there, it would have been a little better. Instead, he instructs his supporters to vote for another aspirant! …while in the middle of voting! Uncle Bob, let me remind you that the electoral law that bans campaigns 24 hours before an election was not designed by idiots. It was for a purpose.

The clearly manipulated process ends, and we accept the outcome as painfully and as cheated as we felt.

Then the ‘masters’ go-ahead to rub salt upon injury, as we see videos the next day where a National Chairman with no value at all to the party, and who is supposed to be a neutral player, publicly tells the ‘cheater’ “YOU WERE THE HERO OF THE CONVENTION,” clearly showing a pre-planned agenda with pre-determined intentions.

As painful as that also was, we accepted that injustice as well.

The ‘winner’ sets up a committee to select a Vice-President because he said he didn’t want to repeat the 2019 situation when he didn’t carry the party along in choosing his running mate. Seventeen distinguished party members met in a committee he constituted and in their wisdom, considered the following factors:

a. Appreciation for immense and unquantifiable contributions to the party, b. Compensation for what they knew was an unfair process that produced the Candidate. c. Electoral value to the ticket, and d. Finacial and logistical contributions needed to run the elections.

Considering these factors, 14 out of 17 said the ticket should be given to a particular person- Wike.

Rather than honor his word, the Candidate turns around and jettisons his committee recommendation, suddenly saying they were ‘advisory,’ and picks a running mate who has almost no electoral value on a national scale.

As painful as it also was, we accepted.

Then, for the first time, despite all the injustice, oppression, abuse, insults, disrespect, ingratitude, and daylight robbery, we make one single, fair, and simple request: The party has done something wrong by sending the ticket to the North. It should not compound the problem by having The Candidate and The National Chairman from the same region. We asked, can ‘an arrangement of necessity’ be made to immediately correct that anomaly and have the Chairman resign AS HE SAID ON NATIONAL TV so that the other region can have a sense of belonging? Also, considering that it was glaring that the National Chairman lacked the capacity and confidence of members to lead the party into a victorious election. Those who feel they own the country and the party and are masters over us changed their narratives again and said we should sit down, mope, and work like servants. They said when they win, they will effect the change!

Who believes people who have been dishonest from the get-go?

Who enters into an agreement with a habitual breaker of agreements?

If you have broken every promise you made before the election, who says you will keep this one after the election?

Where I am from, we say, “You no fit dey beat pikin’ then say make e no cry.”

At this point, the battle line was drawn, and it was a simple fight- either we ‘stay and work for the party as always and remain perpetually enslaved people to a group with no electoral value, who abandon the party when it’s time for work and return when it’s primary’s time? Or fight to be respected, regarded, and appreciated for the sacrifices made for the party?

Any man born of quality sperm will always choose FREEDOM over SERVITUDE and SLAVERY.

Despite all these, the window for reconciliation was left open for a long time, but people who didn’t mean well for the party misled the Candidate not to do what he knew was right to do. (It is on record that Wike committed to the eventual winner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, just a few weeks before the election. He waited that long, hoping for the right thing to be done). Instead, it was all ego and arrogance from the Candidate’s camp.

I always tell people that the first place the PDP got it wrong, which started this misfortune, was rewarding Atiku and his cohorts, who caused the party loss in 2015 with the ticket in 2019. If there is no consequence for bad behavior, bad behavior becomes an attractive trend.

Even if that mistake was made in 2019, doing the same thing in 2023 was absurd and smacked of arrogance and political immaturity. ATIKU WAS NOT SELLABLE! HE HAS NOT BEEN SINCE HIS FORMER BOSS PUBLISHED ‘MY WATCH’. His constant jumping from party to party for tickets also contributed to a poor public perception of his personality and intentions.

Suppose the party, for whatever reason or calculation, felt that was the way to go; in that case, a running mate with value may have helped a little in assuaging the public’s perception of an Atiku candidacy. Imagine that all those projects Wike commissioned/flagged off almost every day for about five months had been done as a Vice-Presidential candidate. That would have given the ticket much goodwill and materials to campaign with. Surprisingly, an experienced politician like Atiku made an infantile political blunder by picking a weak running mate.

The APC, on the other hand, knowing the importance of a running mate’s political value in his region, was ready to take the risk of a Muslim-Muslim ticket based on deep strategy.

Which political value did Okowa give to the ticket in the South-South, talkless of Nationally? Even in his Delta state, how did Atiku stick with an Okowa over an Ibori who controlled a structure that has produced all the governors up until now, including Okowa?? A man who founded a political structure that survived ten years of his incarceration abroad and delivered electoral victories from prison??

My very respected Uncle Bob Dee, let us be honest with ourselves: the PDP’s loss had deep roots and stems that sprouted the flowers of dissent and ‘anti-party’ activities.

The latter was a NATURAL PRODUCT OF BAD SEEDS SOWN SUCH AS;

1. A biased National leadership that intended from the start to work for a candidate and deny others a fair playing field.

2. The several politically immature moves by Atiku, such as not bringing a powerful adversary like Wike to his side. You can’t be fighting an ASIWAJU externally and, in the same cycle, be fighting a WIKE and five governors internally! Did he forget what their opposition did to GEJ in 2015? Why, for God’s sake, did he think the outcome would be different this time?

3. Confronting a humongous and obscene financial war chest like Asiwaju’s needed all the resources the party could muster! How could they ignore the logistics and resources that Rivers state traditionally contributed to PDP elections, added to other aggrieved states? The glaring dire financial straits the PDP was in during campaigns hurt it badly, as was evident in the quality of its mobilization.

Monies raised from sales of forms and primaries that would have helped, found their way into hungry pockets of people who had been broke for so long and suddenly saw wealth that made them mad. People who didn’t care about the party but for their own gain.

4. Ignoring and treating the South as if they didn’t matter and elections could be won without them in a tribal-sensitive country like ours. Gauging the mood of the South should not have been from the Southern elites that hung around the Candidate. An independent audit of perceptions on the streets would have revealed that the statement “How Fulani go hand over to another Fulani?” was a familiar anthem among many masses who constituted the bulk of the voting public.

5. Listening and taking advice from ‘people with names, but no real influence,’ who misled him with lies and selfish interests. Many were close advisers we saw around him daily; others were in Buhari’s cabal working against BAT (who couldn’t deliver their Candidate in a primary), and old, spent political leaders with no actual influence anymore.

6. The damage Ayu caused the party with manipulated primaries across several states to favor Atiku. The PDP has never had as many litigations arising from primaries in its history as this last one. Who goes into an election with a divided and rancourous house?

And very importantly,

7. Treating the crisis as an issue about one man- WIKE, forgetting that 5+ other governors and several state chapters were loyal to their group! His performance in the primaries should have told Atiku that this was not about one man. Wike was just the arrowhead, mouth, and face of that movement that cut across several states.

Atiku displayed inferior leadership skills in managing the party’s challenges. This is surprising for a tested politician like him, who ran with the moniker “unifier.” Several years of contesting had apparently weakened him and made him weary. If the party felt Ayu was more valuable than Wike, who has contributed so much to the party, why blame Wike for giving his value to those who appreciated it? Atiku and his cohorts treated GEJ worse in 2015.

Wike was fair and considerate until the mistreatment and disrespect were too much, and no sane human could stomach them.

Going forward.

The PDP should move on, learning from its errors WITH A HUMBLE AND HONEST SPIRIT, and prevent a reoccurrence of such in the future. If we didn’t learn from 2015, we should learn from 2023.

What are the significant lessons to learn?

1. Reward, encourage, and appreciate loyalty and sacrifice to the party at all levels. The PDP member in any ward must be confident that he will be rewarded for commitment. Where that is absent, it becomes a ‘wild wild west’ scenario where anything goes.

2. ALWAYS ENSURE A FAIR AND LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR EVERYONE TO ASPIRE. If you can, canvas, campaign, and get support for your ambition without fear of manipulations from ‘powers.’

3. I am confident Gov Wike will not leave the PDP. This fight was for the soul of the party and a desire to see it returned to true, committed, and passionate members who have given their all, especially in bad times since 2015.

If it will save the party, the party leadership must reach out and work with all aggrieved members in amended ways for genuine reconciliation. This is not a time for arrogance, ego, or offensive rhetoric. If the party must survive and not go the way of extinction the way parties like AD, APP, ANPP, and other parties that once held sway did, reconciliation is the only way to go, and it starts with being fair and honest in apportioning blame to the right quarters.

This opinion ed was initially published on 14th July 2023.