Witch-Hunting In The PDP

Editorial

What Karl Marx said in his book, The German Ideology, that the ideas of the ruling class have ever been in every epoch the ruling ideas is very true, given the kind of witch-hunt that is taking place in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Now, the turn of events in the party has shown that it is President Goodluck Jonathan and his cohorts in the party who decide what is truth and who gets what, how and when. And whatever they believe, or want to believe is true is final and binding on the members of the party, no matter whose ox is gored.

Recently Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and his Sokoto State counterpart, Aliyu Wamakko were suspended from the PDP. However, the incongurous thing about that ignoble suspension is that the governors were not given fair hearing before they were axed. They just woke up to hear that they had been suspended from the party.

While Governor Wammako was suspended for refusing to pick Alhaji Bamanga Tukur’s call, Governor Rotimi was axed for refusing to reinstate the suspended Chairman of Obio/ Akpor Local Government Area, Timothy Nsirim and his deputy, Solomon Eke who were suspended by the Rivers State House of Assembly for allegedgly spending public funds recklessly. Earlier Mr. Godsday Orubebe, Minister of Niger Delta Affairs had said Governor Amaechi does not respect the president. However, the affected governors have come up to defend themselves in the public space.

Whatever spurious reasons the party has given for the suspension of the duo, Nigerians know too well that it is not unconnected with the recently conducted election of the Nigerian Governors Forum and the president’s second term ambition. And it is irksome that they were suspended without being given fair hearing. Those moves,  indeed, show not just political rascality but also  a party that does not respect the rights of its members to fair hearing.

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Now the game is that a ruling cabal within the PDP, in the guise of the National Working Commitee  just sits down, frames up a lie and garnishes it as truth. And that truth becomes law. Within the ruling party, there is  a ruling clique that metes out punishment to erring offenders.

Which goes a long way to show that there is no internal democracy in the party. That, indeed, is why the party is enmeshed in a deep crisis. And it also lends credence to the popular saying in George Orwell’s Animal Farm that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. What obtains in PDP and, nay, Nigeria now is not the kind of democracy Nigerians hankered after the dark days of military regimes.

President Jonathan’s desperate moves and witch-hunt is reminiscient of the Stalinist Great Purge in the former Soviet Union. This do-or -die politics is not the kind of democracy  we want. The President and his hatchet men should shield their swords and give peace a chance. Until there is internal democracy within the PDP, the party is gradually sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

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