The crisis in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party says so much about its autocratic structure. Can it survive?
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been in turmoil for quite some time. The possibility that the party has entered a stage of inevitable terminal implosion is now the subject of most political discussions among Nigerians. The walkout by seven governors elected under the party’s platform along with many other influential leaders and members at the August 30th special convention is only a more open dramatisation of an intrinsic incoherence and long standing dysfunction.
In the unfolding political drama, the breakout faction has constituted a ‘New PDP’, named a skeletal executive comprising mostly of persons estranged by the central nexus of the parent party and gone ahead to erect structures to justify their claim to a greater commitment to a sense of purpose. In the political gale, legislators elected under the ‘old’ PDP have massively announced their allegiance to, and support for, the ‘New PDP’ in a move that has seriously exposed the previous numerical majority of the ruling party in the National Assembly to tangible risk. The speed and decisiveness of these moves do not look like overnight skirmishes.
The PDP must be credited for receiving the baton of transition to civil rule from the military in 1999. In this regard, it was in a position to renew the Nigerian promise on basis of definable ideals of better politics and more accountable and responsible governance. There was no better person to perform this much-needed transformation than former President Olusegun Obasanjo. With an illustrious background in the military at the apex and experience in civil life garnished by considerable international exposure, Nigerians expected so much from Obasanjo.
Unfortunately, the tragedy of the PDP is in many ways linked to Obasanjo’s egocentric presidency. He related to the party as a private estate; changing its leadership at will, altering its constitution whimsically and failing to institutionalise a credible party structure. Obasanjo’s less powerful successors inherited this party format and have largely deepened its crisis. At the core of this crisis is the lack of a clear ideological anchor. A collective of strange bedfellows from across the length and breadth of the nation could at best be a nationalist rallying point. But devoid of a common belief and a clear moral or political imperative, the party degenerated into an all comers bazaar of corruption and irresponsibility.
Under President Jonathan, the free fall in the party has deepened to this point of near irreversible coma. Party leaders were hired and sacked to suit presidential whim. The basic tenets of its own constitution were routinely violated. In state after state, rival factions of the party engaged each other in endless court processes. With no national executive to call the combatants to order, flux and disorder were gradually enthroned as the norm.
Policy and perspective differences between the president and some governors in the party were mostly differences of tendency. In other places and other parties, the emergence of such contending tendencies should be a positive development that could even strengthen the party. But here, the emergence of persons with different perspectives on national issues has been treated as ‘challenging the president’ and showing ‘disrespect to constituted authority.’ With a national executive that seems powerless in places where authority is required and disruptive where unifying clout is called for, it is a miracle that the PDP has survived this long.
For those who want the PDP as it has been to endure, the recent developments must be a nightmare. For others with a more dynamic and activist perspective, the development is a desirable inevitability. It is quite possible that the PDP could survive the present crisis. Whether it will emerge stronger from it is another matter. For now, the value of the crisis in the party is in many lessons. First, leaders who undermine democratic institutions with autocratic manoeuvres can hardly expect to rest easy. Second, different tendencies are inherent in the evolution of political parties and refusal to accommodate them could only engender crisis. Third, a political party in a multi-party democracy cannot serve the ends of a personal autocracy or a pre-determined private agenda.
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