Of PDP and vision for reconciliation

Vincent OgbulaforGroup Politics Editor, Idowu Samuel, writes on the efforts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at reconciling warring factions in some of the state chapters of the party.

National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, must by now be heaving a sigh of relief on the recent breakthroughs that seem to be attending to his efforts to crack the nuts of crisis which have been bedeviling his party. Being the largest assembly of strange bedfellows among the political formations in Nigeria, the PDP is naturally predisposed to hot internal strives capable tearing it apart any day. From day one of its evolution, the ruling party had been an enemy unto itself, given the large scale of bickering and animosity that characterise members’ relationship with one another.

On assumption of office as the party’s national chairman, Ogbulafor openly took a vow to redefine the code of conduct within the PDP. He has been aiming to remould the party as one big family, capable of holding its head and taming whatever misunderstanding that may arise among its members. Succinctly put, the PDP national chairman had resolved to make the issue of reconciliation of members the main thrust of his initiative at re-building the party and making it to endure in government for as many years as it desired. He had hardly settled down in office when he began to grapple with internal wrangling among members in different states of the federation. Indeed, Ogbulafor had an acid test in having to resolve crisis in three states of the federation including Edo, Anambra and Adamawa.

The PDP in the three states, and even more, had gone into flames on the backdrop of congresses for the local government elections meant to determine which particular force would be in control in the states concerned. The first attempt made by Ogbulafor was to mitigate the tension in Edo State. In Edo, the PDP had been factionalised with both the state governor, Professor Oserheimen Osunbor, and an old horse in the party, Chief Anthony Anenih, leading each of the factions. The battle for supremacy between the two leaders was so intense that both conducted parallel local government congresses which produced two independent chairmen, one representing the interest of the governor and the other standing for Chief Anenih.

The governor, being the number one citizen of the state, seemed to have an upper edge on the other faction of the party. That provoked the Anenih faction into laying protest before the national headquarters of the party, a development that prompted the PDP national hierarchy to summon the two factions with the motive of entreating them to solve the crisis amicably. That never worked until the party decided to solve the problem its own way. It happened two weeks ago when the PDP resolved to look beyond the ability of the two factions to come together in crisis resolution. All the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party did was to annul the party’s offices in the state with a view to distributing them equally between the two factions. It was only last week that the efforts by the PDP to mitigate the crisis in Edo State began to give results. The NWC had to meet the leadership of the two factions and harangued them about the necessity for an amicable resolution of the crisis between them through compelling sacrifices by each of them.

The idea of harmonising the state offices did not seem to go down well with the governor’s faction which felt aggrieved that the PDP only allowed the Anenih faction to wield the power of the party in Edo State. At the moment, the effort by the PDP to mediate in the crisis seems to be tending to futility in the face of threat by some supporters of the party to go to court. The crisis in Adamawa State, however, seems to be giving the national headquarters of the PDP some moment of relief. Few days ago, members of the state House of Assembly compiled some 16 impeachable allegations against the governor, Air Vice Marshall Murtala Nyako. The legislators meant business, having sworn by the Holy Bible and the Qur’an never to relent until they ensured the ouster of the governor. The allegations against Nyako bothered on mismanagement of the state fund, all looking real and conveying an impression that the lawmakers had caught their governor by the wrist.

The PDP headquarters moved in promptly and dragged both the governor and the legislators to the presidential villa where the Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, played the role of mediator. On the long run, the PDP prevailed on the lawmakers to drop the impeachment charges against the governor in the spirit of brotherhood and oneness. They all agreed. Last Tuesday, however, the PDP was to make a show of its success in mediating in the crisis in Adamawa State politics. It assembled the two factions at the national headquarters for the media to take note of how it went about negotiating peace in the state with the main political stakeholders. At the meeting in Abuja, the Speaker of the Assembly, Mr. James Barka, declared a ceasefire with the governor, and told the PDP chieftains that the war was over. He even shocked the media men present by disclosing that the legislators never served Nyako the impeachment notice. Nyako grinned from ear to ear on seeing the speaker harping on the preparedness of his colleagues to henceforth work amicably with him. Both the speaker and the governor had full embrace which symbolised that the problem between them was truly over, at least, in the interim.

A similar situation prevailed in both Imo and Anambra states. The PDP, weeks ago, waded in and drafted Chief Jim Nwobodo to mediate in the crisis in the two states. Two weeks ago, Nwobodo returned to Abuja to give what the PDP considered cheering news about how his Action Committee went about mediating in the crisis within the PDP in the Southeast.

After identifying the issue of discontentment among PDP members in the South-East against the congresses in each of the hot spots as the main problem confronting the party, Nwobodo gleefully reported his achievements to the party. He said of Anambra State, “for lasting peace and unity of the party, the only recommendation that the party could reach was to dissolve all congresses from ward to the state level and call for fresh election with an ad-hoc committee set up to supervise these elections. The PDP keyed into those recommendations with a view to executing them as suggested.

The Nwobodo-led committee also reported its breakthrough in Imo State as the chairman told the party that the only option for resolution of the crisis in the state lied with the agreement by members that the congresses in the state would be conducted after the ruling of the Court of Appeal in the state.

The implication of the attempts by the Ogbulafor-led PDP is that the party is gradually waking up to a new dawn in which emphasis on reconciliation is considered the necessary option for reshaping the party’s future. All the same, the party needs not lose sight of discontentment of members in states like Edo against its resolve to sideline the state governor in the scheme of things, as it advances in its drive to unite the party.