Ayu’s ouster – the triumph of politics of unreason

Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers is said to be celebrating Dr Iyorchia Ayu’s ouster as the national chairman of PDP through a vote of no confidence passed on him by the party leaders. No one expected Wike to do anything less. Victory invites celebrations to rub it in. Wike has every reason to congratulate himself and savour his victory over Ayu.

He fought the former senate president from the first day he was elected national chairman of the party. He insisted Ayu must go. Wike organised and funded the so-called G-5, a group of PDP governors who wanted Ayu out as chairman. They have now got their wish. It is the triumph of the politics of unreason all over again.

Ayu has lost the battle for the party leadership but the war within the party is not over. It will continue to rage long after Wike has emptied his last champagne flute. The war in the party is bigger than Ayu and much older than his chairmanship of the party. PDP has wobbled since 2014 when its mass desertion by those who benefited from it began. The lingering crisis may yet consume the oldest political party in the country. Ayu’s ouster exposes once more the rotten under belly of our national politics. Our political parties are like no other anywhere in the world, thus the bumbling giant.

If it is any consolation for Ayu, at least three national chairmen of the party before him were removed on the orders of President Obasanjo. The late Chief Solomon, the first national chairman, was removed after he led the party to victory in 1999; Barnabas Gemade, now a senator, succeeded him but he too was removed by the president and replaced with Chief Audu Ogbeh, who lasted in that position just as long as it pleased Obasanjo. The baton was then passed on to retired Col Ahmadu Ali in whom Obasanjo was well pleased and so he lasted the distance.

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None of the men was removed from office for incompetence or disloyalty to the party. None of them was removed in accordance with the laid down procedure in the party constitution.  They were removed because Obasanjo had crowned himself the national leader of the party and empowered himself to do as he wished. The state governors happily followed his footsteps and crowned themselves the state leaders of the party.

The chairmen of the party at national and state levels were and are rendered redundant. A president elected on the platform of a political party is its servant and ought not to be allowed to crown himself the party leader. It is elementary that if a president grabs power not granted him by the party constitution, he does grievous injury to the party and its constitutionally recognised leadership at national and sub-national levels.

I have made this point before elsewhere, but it bears repeating because it is part of the malaise that has created permanent instability in all the political parties and made it impossible for the politicians and their parties to commit to building and sustaining party structures as the pillars of democracy and drive good governance.

The instability in the political parties and lack of internal democracy thereof reflect on the larger Nigerian nation. Part of the consequence of this jaga-jaga is that disputed elections have become the hallmark of our party politics. We have become the pathetic laughingstock on the African continent. A giant with King Pago legs is an anomaly in human nature.

You could say that PDP is a victim of a) sustained bad luck and b) the twisted nature of our party politics. But the PDP wahala points to a deeper malaise in our party politics. We have not got it right. And we refuse to get it right. If we were minded about getting it right, PDP that produced three successive presidents – Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan – would have been the viable means by which we could.

PDP was reputedly the biggest party in Africa. But neither its size nor its being in power for 16 years could save it from haemorrhaging badly in 2014, when the Nigerian factor intruded in its affairs. Without an iota of shame, we witnessed its former governors, former legislators at national and state levels and other beneficiaries of the party desert it for the new political party, APC, cobbled together from AC, CPC and other breakaway fringes of other political parties.

Jonathan and other committed leaders of the party, such as former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Senate president David Mark, fought back to save the party. They could not staunch the haemorrhage and the party lost the presidency and most of the states to APC. It has been on the side lines of political power for eight years now. And if the current electoral fortunes of APC are sustained by the highest bench in the land, PDP will trudge in the wilderness of its enveloping oblivion.

When Ayu took on the job as chairman, the party under a new national leadership faced the immediate challenge of repositioning itself to prepare for the 2023 general elections. Before the Obidients captured our imagination as possibly a new political force championed by youths, PDP was the only party big enough to square up with APC. I am sure it was no small trembling in the ruling party that given the scrappy and incompetent performances of the Buhari administration, PDP could return to Aso Rock. Given the chance and the support of his party leaders, Ayu could have provided the strong political and intellectual leadership the party needed to staunch its haemorrhage and come alive again. Wike, out of spite or bad belly or self-importance dammed that possibility.

Despite the naked provocations by Wike and co, Ayu remained calm. He chose party unity and needed no one to tell him that if the party must make a strong showing in the general elections, its leaders and members at all levels must unite around its common cause of putting its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, where he wants to be – Aso Rock.

But Wike that a party torn by internal crises and sabotage cannot rise to the challenge of rallying the troops and taking on its opposing political parties. They believed Ayu was the problem whereas they were the problem. Their robust internal sabotage in pursuit of Wike’s entitlement was destructive of party unity and cohesion. The internal wrangling and sabotage weakened and further damaged the party. PDP lost the elections it ought not to have lost so badly to the ruling party, itself swaying in the wind like a tall iho grass of my youth.

They chose to treat Ayu as an unwanted entity in the party. And just to show how much Ayu must be made to carry the watering can, two days after he was ousted the new party leadership recalled its suspended members – Shema, Anyim, Ortom, etc.

Our political pluralism is best served when we can do better than desert one political party and crowd into another at quadrennial electoral intervals. Each time we do, one party becomes comatose; we lost the benefits of political pluralism and our political become merely constitutionally approved vehicles for winning or capturing or stealing political power. We are then left with the foolish challenge of trying to build a strong democracy with the feet of mud.

PDP needs more than fasting and prayers to remain relevant in our national politics. Its leaders cannot, I imagine, find it funny that the party continues to lose because those it sponsored into government houses and the legislatures desert it at their convenience. I can think of no remedy for this because our politicians do not stand on principles. They stand on short-term gains.