PDP: Challenge of leadership and 2007 fevers
By Cosmas Attayi-Elaigu
The ruling PDP, like other
parties faced numerous challenges in the outgoing year, leading to accords and discords among party members and its leadership.
Key among the challenges during the period included the primaries and convention that produced candidates for the party for the forthcoming general elections.
The national chairman of the party, Chief Ahmadu Ali had insisted that for any aspirant to be declared a PDP candidate the person must record a minimum of 50 per cent at the plebiscites at all levels.
``Our intention is to ensure that our candidates are popular and acceptable to the electorate," Ali said, adding that such a strategy would ensure a convincing victory for the party at the polls.
Run off elections were conducted in many constituencies at the state and federal levels, because aspirants could not meet the expectations of the party hierarchy.
Reports by correspondents of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), however, showed that all was not well in some parts of the country.
Allegations were rife that the party leadership had manipulated the results of the primaries in favour of the ``anointed''.
But the party's spokesman, Mr John Odey, defended the processes that produced the flag bearers, saying that the organisation had confidence in its panels that conducted the primaries at all levels.
``As you very well know, the PDP is a very large political organisation that has many competent members interested in getting elected to serve the people of this country.
``So there is nothing wrong if many members come out to express themselves in a brotherly manner," he said.
No wonder, a total of 31 aspirants collected the party's presidential nomination forms, including former President Ibrahim Babangida, and his two former deputies, Ebitu Ukiwe and Mike Aghigbe, as well as 10 governors and five female contestants.
The governors, who eventually gave up their ambition for Umaru Yar'adua of Katsina included Victor Attah of Akwa Ibom, Donald Duke of Cross River, Abdullahi Adamu of Nasarawa.
Others were Saminu Turaki of Jigawa, Ahmed Maikarfi of Kaduna, Achike Udenwa of Imo, Peter Odili of Rivers, Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu, and Sam Egwu of Ebonyi.
The female aspirants were Mrs Sarah Jibril, Princess Elizabeth Ogbon-Day, Mrs Mary Olutimayo, Dr Nancy Onyeka and Princess Hadiza Ibrahim.
Before the crescendo that was the national convention, the aspirants took turns via expensive publicity to tell Nigerians what they had in stock as the best presidential material for the country.
The aspirants toured the major cities, consulting with associates, traditional rulers and other pressure groups on the need to render their support for their cause.
Such campaign trains were dominated by assurances that they would sustain the reform programme of the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.
The programers included the privatisation of public enterprises, strengthening of the financial system, improved education and agriculture, as well as the boosting of the power sector.
The PDP was also confronted with the loss of its Anambra Government House to rival APGA, after a lengthy legal tussle over the 2003 gubernatorial elections.
The court compelled Gov. Chris Ngige to vacate office after three years of rule, and Peter Obi of APGA came in for a short while before he was removed for alleged misconduct.
There were impeachment crises in Bayelsa, Ekiti, Plateau and Oyo, leading the declaration of the state of emergency in Ekiti and Plateau.
There was also a six month court action over the removal of Gov. Rashidi Ladoja for his deputy, Adebayo Alao-Akala. Ladoja returned to his office after the legal victory.
There is further a serious chasm between President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, over the latter's alleged misapplication of monies from the Petroleum Training and Development Fund (PTDF).
Although Abubakar denied any wrong doing, a government panel found him culpable, leading to his suspension from the party and a move b y the presidency to remove him from office.
Abubakar, who described himself as the most probed vice-president in the world went ahead to accept the offer by Action Congress to fly its presidential flag at the polls in 2007.
This, again, sparked up calls on him not to return to the presidential villa at the end of his holidays in the United States.
Both the vice president and Obasanjo are said to have gone to court to seek legal interpretation on the status of the number two citizen in view of Atiku's now open romance with an opposition party.
Sections 141 and 142 of the 1999 constitution state that there shall be a vice president, whose qualification and election shall be the same as those of the president.
Section 143 states, inter alia, that the president or the vice president may be removed from office, ``Whenever a notice of any allegation in writing signed by not less than one-third of the members of the National Assembly is presented to the President of the Senate stating that the holder of the office is guilty of gross misconduct in the performance of the functions of his office."
The provision which grants the accused the right to fair hearing, explained that ``gross misconduct means a grave violation of the provisions of this constitution or a misconduct of such nature as amounts in the opinion of the National Assembly to gross mis-onduct."
Section 144 says that the two top citizens may also be removed by a resolution of the Federal Executive Council in the event of medical incapacity.
Arguments in support of the exit of Abubakar from office hinge largely on the report of the EFCC report that indicted him on the PTDF saga and his acceptance of the AC nomination to run for the presidency.
Some court decisions have already voided his indictment and the white paper on the matter.
Government has appealed all the legal declarations. Another contentious issue the PDP is facing is the decision to push for the amendment of its constitution, which says that only former chairmen of the party or a former president of Nigeria produced by the party could qualify to be appointed a chairman of is Board of Trustees. Some members, however, argue that it was intended to favour Obasanjo.
Many members who lost at the primaries have threatened to frustrate the party during the polls in the form of protest vote, while some are fleeing to other parties in pursuit of platforms to contest elections.
But Ali, in the defence of the PDP leadership, told journalists that the move was based on the concept of the emergence of a new kind of leadership that can transform Nigeria.
``It was aimed at moving away from the politics of transaction to a new order of the politics of transformation." ``The idea was never to shut out any aspirant from the race. It was merely the response of more disciplined, more focused ruling party, effecting a structured quest for leadership succession," he said.
The resolution of the above and the honest reconciliation of all segments of its membership remain the greatest challenge to the largest party in Africa in this election year.

(NAN Feature)