10th September, 2013
A rebellion of seismic proportions rips the PDP apart, putting its supremacy and even its existence in jeopardy
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is accustomed to landslides. Since 1999, when democracy returned to the country, it has recorded landslide electoral victories. It is also not unfamiliar with tremors, a few of which shook it badly, but not fatally. But on 31 August, the party was rocked to its foundation when the party split into two, with the creation of a new PDP. Members of the new faction, led by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and seven governors, left from Abuja’s Eagle Square, venue of the party’s special convention, to announce their split from the main body and precipitate a crisis that has created a seismic effect.
Efforts, to put out the fire, which began a day after the convention, will continue on Tuesday. The day after the convention, a hurriedly convened meeting attended by President Goodluck Jonathan, four of the governors in the new PDP and other stakeholders, and presided over by Chief Tony Anenih, produced no meaningful outcome. President Jonathan, as shown on television, appeared after the meeting looking frazzled, an indication of the magnitude of the problem.
A meeting scheduled for last Tuesday was called off after members of the new PDP said they they are unwilling to participate in further peace taIks for the time being. It was gathered that Governors Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), the four governors of the new PDP that attended the first meeting, did so without the consent of their colleagues. The seven governors of the new PDP, it was learnt, have agreed that the decision to participate or stay away from any forum convened for resolving the crisis will be jointly taken. This is said to be in a bid to prevent the Presidency from breaking their ranks. Except for those actively involved in hatching it, the plot which led to creation of a faction within the vaunted biggest party in Africa took many, including Jonathan, by surprise.
As delegates were taking their seats, they were handed a thin bundle of stapled white sheets of paper. It was later discovered that the papers contained some names of candidates suspected to have been endorsed by the Presidency and the party’s top echelon for election into vacant positions on the party’s executive committee. But in confirmation of suspicions, names of most aspirants whose loyalty to the President and commitment to his re-election bid were considered doubtful were not on the list.
Notably absent was the name of Dr. Sam Jaja, a candidate for the position of Deputy National Chairman and loyalist of Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi. Jaja, immediate past Deputy Chairman of the party, was one of the officials forced to resign their positions about two months ago after the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, announced that they were not properly elected. For the President’s loyalists and the party’s National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, INEC’s announcement was a boon.
This was because Jaja and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola were deemed to have been planted by Amaechi with the support of some of his colleagues as Deputy Chairman and Secretary of the party at the party’s convention in March 2012.
They were thought to have been installed to rein in Tukur, who was backed by the President for the position of National Chairman. The two men confirmed suspicions about their briefs in office by giving Tukur a torrid time while they were members of the party’s National Working Committee, NWC.
Oyinlola famously took advantage of Tukur’s absence from the party’s national secretariat to rally other members of the NWC to rescind the dissolution of a faction of Adamawa State Executive of PDP loyal to Governor Nyako, which had been carried out by Tukur. The action of the two NWC members, though immediately endorsed by PDP governors, led by Amaechi, was later reversed by Tukur, who described the behaviour of the two men “as a case of betrayal of trust”.
The continued stay of the two men in PDP NWC was further endangered by the increasing unpopularity of Amaechi among the President’s loyalists, who had become displeased with the governor for championing causes like the court action against the maintenance of Excess Crude Account, opposition to the establishment of Sovereign Wealth Fund and the call for probe of fuel subsidy payments. Jonathan’s loyalists argued that by being at the vanguard of such, Amaechi, who was also the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF, was trying to portray President Jonathan as a clueless leader. This, they contended, was with the aim of damaging his chances of contesting in 2015, a stituation they claimed Amaechi was planning to exploit to become a running-mate to a Northern presidential aspirant, widely speculated to be Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State.
For the Presidency, there was therefore the urgent need to cut Amaechi to size and sever every link he had in the decision-making organ of the party.
An Abuja Federal High Court presided over by Justice Abdul Kafarati, in its judgment in the substantive suit filed by the Ogun State Chapter, held that Oyinlola was not fit to occupy the position of National Secretary of the party after a court in Lagos had cancelled the zonal congresses through which he emerged. The judgment was received with joy in the President’s camp and the party immediately complied with the judgment by removing Oyinlola from office. This was in spite of the fact Oyinlola not only appealed the judgment, he also instantly approached the Abuja Court with an application for stay of execution of the order, which sacked him from office. PDP had also opposed Oyinlola’s application, arguing that the judgment, which Oyinlola applied for a stay of execution, was belated because he had since been removed from office, as ordered by the court.
While ruling on the stay of execution recently, Justice Kafarati held that the judgment, which sacked Oyinlola, was a declaratory order that could not be stayed. The judge also agreed with PDP’s argument that there was nothing to stay, as the judgment had already been complied with. However, PDP could not conduct election to fill the position vacated by Oyinlola at its 31 August convention because appeals filed against the initial judgment of the Lagos court are pending. With Oyinlola out of the way, the Presidency used NWC to hijack the leadership of Rivers State chapter of PDP from Amaechi and suspend him after he was re-elected Chairman of NGF against the wishes of Jonathan.
The fact that elements like Jaja, whose loyalty to Tukur and support for Jonathan’s 2015 ambition is doubtful, would be screened out of contesting at the special convention became more evident with the announcement of the convention planning committee made up of who-is-who of the President’s supporters. These included Professor Jerry Gana (Chairman), Governors Godswill Akpabio (Deputy Chairman), Gabriel Suswam (Benue), Isa Yuguda (Bauchi), and Ahmed Gulak, Political Adviser to the President.
A source said members of the committee were specially selected to freezee out aspirants deemed to be opposed to Jonathan’s second term ambition as well as Tukur’s continued stay in office. Though Jaja had indicated that he would be seeking re-election to the position of Deputy Chairman, which was zoned to the South-south geo-political zone, it was an open secret days before the convention that the Presidency favoured Uche Secondus, a former occupant of the same office, for the position.
Secondus, who also hails from Rivers State, shifted loyalty from Amaechi to Jonathan during the crisis that led to the disqualification of Timipre Sylva, the former governor of Bayelsa State, from running for a second term. Sources also said the President was determined to have total control of the structure of the party, especially in view of the agitations for removal of Tukur.
The calculation was that if those who have been campaigning for Tukur’s removal succeed, the Deputy Chairman may be asked to take over in an acting capacity, a prospect dreaded by Jonathan and his supporters. To ensure that there was not a repeat of the unexpected victory of Amaechi at the NGF election, the Rivers State chapter of PDP was also nudged into suspending Jaja a few days before the election. This was done to give a veneer of legality to his exclusion from the race, though the party’s constitution does not empower a state chapter to sanction a national officer. Also suspended were 15 commissioners loyal to Amaechi, who would have been delegates to the convention.
This magazine gathered that the suspicion that the Presidency and the leadership of PDP were out to manipulate outcome of the convention began to mount when the Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba Committee saddled with the task of screening of aspirants postponed the exercise to a day to the event. Still, this magazine gathered, the seven governors, like they did during the NGF election, had hoped that they could spring a surprise despite all the manipulations. It was gathered that they had mobilised support for their favoured candidates to reach out to all delegates.
The seven governors, however, realised that there would be no surprise victory for Jaja at the convention when former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, mounted the podium to announce the procedure for voting. Nnamani announced Secondus as the sole contestant for the position of Deputy National Chairman.
Immediately, the seven governors, led by Atiku, abandoned their delegates and headed for the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, where they announced the formation of the ‘new’ PDP, with Abubakar Kawu Baraje as National Chairman. Oyinlola was named National Secretary. Speaking immediately after, Baraje complained of increasing repression, restrictions of freedom of association, arbitrary suspension of members and other such violations by the Tukur-led faction of the party. “Not only has the constitution of the party been serially violated by Alhaji Tukur and fellow travellers, all the organs of the party have been rendered virtually ineffectual by a few people who act as though they are above the law.
“Unfortunately, they get encouragement from the Presidency, whose old calculations are geared towards shutting out of any real or imagined opposition ahead of the party’s presidential primary for the 2015 election,” he said.
Baraje listed other sins of the party leadership under Tukur as including arbitrary change in the date of the convention, use of illegal delegates, refusal to convene the meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee meeting once a quarter as stipulated by the party’s constitution and failure to abide by the decision of NEC that officers who were forced to resign their positions will be returned to the same positions during the special convention. The other sins of Tukur listed by Baraje include non-recognition of Senator Andy Uba as the party’s candidate in the forthcoming Anambra State gubernatorial election, suspension of the governors of Sokoto and Rivers states without following due process and illegal dissolution of Adamawa State Executive Committee of the party. “We are not and have never been a political party where one man will be taking decisions for all members and where once you do not kowtow before the Presidency, you are deemed a rebel that must be crushed. That is not the PDP bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. That, I dare say, is no longer what PDP under our leadership will represent,” Baraje concluded to the shouts of Change Dole 2015 (Change is a must in 2015).
The action of the breakaway faction immediately stripped the convention, which was still in progress, of lustre. Other governors began to leave the venue of the convention when they learnt about the action of some of their colleagues, virtually abandoning the President, who waited till the vote count was completed late into the night. The President, it was further gathered, was even more embarrassed that there was no inkling that Kwankwaso and Lamido, who had gone round the pavillions waving at delegates in company of the former vice-president immediately they arrived at the venue of the convention, were planning a rebellion. The two governors, alongside the governors of Niger and Sokoto states, also went to the presidential pavilion where they paid homage to President Jonathan.
Many party members interpreted this to mean an end to the cold war between the governors and the Presidency. Bisi Olatilo, the compere at the occasion, gleefully remarked: “If Lamido is here, who else is not here?” After the homage to the President, all the four governors moved to the Jigawa pavilion and sat there for some time, to the admiration of their supporters, before leaving to inflict what is undoubtedly the biggest injury on the party.
The new PDP has also continued to dig its heels in spite of efforts by the main party to call its rebellious members to order.
Baraje told journalists last Monday that the group would open its National Secretariat and also unveil the names of more national officers later in the week. But this had not happened as at the time of going to the press. Sources said members of the new PDP may have decided to soft-pedal because they have information that they have been placed on a round-the-clock security surveillance. The new PDP, according to some reports early last week, has also completed plans to set up state chapters that will be run by interim officers. Also, the Baraje-led executive committee, which is insisting that the faction of the party it is leading is the authentic one, asked a Lagos High Court to restrain Tukur and Secondus (Deputy National Chairman), Mrs. Kema Chikwe (Women Leader), Olisa Metuh (National Publicity Secretary) and other persons elected at the party’s mini- congress from parading themselves as members of the National Executive Committee of the party. The new PDP backed up its demand with a long list of alleged violations of the party’s constitution by the Tukur-headed leadership.
The infractions for which the Baraje-led PDP also wants the court to compel INEC to deregister the Tukur-led faction include failure to notify the electoral commission of amendments to the party’s constitution as required by the Nigerian constitution. The Baraje-led group noted that the constitution was amended in 2009 to give effect to the 2012 constitution. The group, however, said it has discovered that “strange clauses,” which were not part of the proposed amendment and were not approved by the party convention and the National Executive Committee as required by law were inserted into the new constitution. It added that the insertion of the strange clauses has rendered the current PDP constitution “forged and invalid”. Furthermore, the Baraje-led PDP also noted that the allegedly forged constitution was also not filed before INEC as required by the constitution, a failure which they said make the “constitution upon which the 2013 convention was held an invalid document and the outcome of that convention invalid, as it was held with no valid constitution”.
The group also contested the legality of Tukur’s occupation of the office of National Chairman, arguing that his membership of the party was not properly approved as stipulated in the party’s constitution after his expulsion by the National Executive Council of the PDP in 2001. Tukur was expelled from the PDP on 31 May 2001, alongside seven others. The Baraje group noted that Article 10(b) iii of the PDP 2009 Constitution and Article 8(17) of the 2012 amended constitution states that any member of the party that loses his membership by expulsion can only return to the party with the approval of the party executive at his ward, state and national levels, which shall give him a waiver. But they alleged that Tukur never complied with this provision in the PDP in the way he returned to the party. “Since the expulsion of Bamanga Tukur in 2001, he has not complied with the above requirement of the PDP constitution, meaning that his purported participation at the 2012 convention, where he was elected was a fraud and invalid, as he is not yet a member of the party,” the group said.
Members of the new PDP also asked the court to declare the 31 August special convention of the PDP illegal based on participation of ‘illegal delegates’, the disqualification of elected delegates by the Screening Sub-committee of the National Convention Committee and the failure of the party to comply with the provision of Section 85(1) of the Electoral Act. The referenced section of the Electoral Act mandates political parties to give INEC at least a 21-day notice before it convened any convention, congress, conference or meeting for the purpose of electing members of its executive committees, and other governing bodies. This provision, the Baraje group noted, was not complied with by the Tukur faction, as it ratified the conduct of the 2013 National Convention on 22 August and the congress took place on 31 August, nine days apart. Other grounds on which the new PDP wants the special convention to be annulled include participation of unelected delegates from the South-west zone, the decision of the screening sub-committee to conduct the screening of delegates less than 24 hours before the convention, an action which does not afford disqualified delegates opportunities of appeal and the wearing of party vests, which suggested campaigning for votes by Secondus at the convention venue.
This, the Baraje-led PDP said, was a violation of Article K, Page 8, of the PDP Code of Conduct for Conventions, which states that “a party member, aspirant, candidate or agent shall not canvass for votes within the vicinity of the congress venue or party primary convention”. The Lagos court will begin hearing the case on 9 September. The new PDP started to gain ground less than 48 hours after it came into being. About 26 senators and 57 House of Representatives members, all elected on the PDP platform, indicated their support for the Baraje-led arm as at last Monday. Rattled by the unexpected groundswell of support for the new PDP, Tukur said: “There is only one lawfully recognised PDP and I am firmly in charge.” He also branded the Baraje faction as “impostors,” “undemocratic and unpatriotic elements,” which the police and other security agencies should go after. “All persons elected on the platform of our great party at all levels, who identify with these enemies of the oneness and greatness of our party, shall have their seats declared vacant as required by law,” Tukur added while threatening to invoke Section 68, subsection 1(g) of the 1999 Constitution against members of the party in the National Assembly who have pledged allegiance to the new PDP.
The section states that: “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a member if being a person whose election in the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected; provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored.” But the constitution also stipulates that such lawmakers would retain their seats if they can prove that their old party is factionalised. This provision of the constitution, it was gathered last week, was what most of the lawmakers, who wasted no time in dismissing Tukur’s threat, are relying on. “The process of declaring the seats of members of the National or state assembly vacant or calling lawmakers back is well known in the constitution. To wake up and say he is going to recall people back or declare their seats vacant shows that he is ignorant,” Baraje said in response to the threat.
Tukur’s bluster sharply contrasted with the reconciliatory attitude of other party leaders early last week. Anenih, for example, after the meeting at the Presidential Villa, acknowledged that some of the aggrieved governors have genuine grievances that need to be addressed.
But it was gathered that the decision to forcefully move against the rebellious members of new PDP and lawmakers pledging loyalty to them was taken at the meeting held last Tuesday. The decision, it was further gathered, was taken to scare away members from pledging loyalty to the Baraje group. It was also gathered that part of the decision taken at Tuesday’s meeting was to place members of the new PDP under security watch to ensure that they did not succeed in setting up structure for the party in Abuja or any part of the country. The party was also planning to file an action at Federal High Court, Abuja, against Baraje, Oyinlola and Jaja for alleged contempt of court. The party wants the court to jail them for a minimum of one year each for allegedly committing criminal contempt. Some of the conditions that the aggrieved party members are reportedly putting before Jonathan, especially, the demand that he should not run in 2015 and the sack of Tukur, may be tantamount to asking for the moon, a source told this magazine last week. Rather than give in to such demands, he said, the Presidency is ready to confront the rebels, an action that may lead to eventual collapse.
Sources said the intervention of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was planning to hold a meeting with PDP elders last Friday, is even being viewed with suspicion by the President and his loyalists. Obasanjo is close to most of the rebel governors and was instrumental to the election of some of them in 2007. But others think that the party will survive the crisis as it did during such challenging times in the past. Loyalists and supporters of the President like former Federal Commissioner for Information, Chief Edwin Clark, believe that the rebellion within the ruling party will peter out in no time.
Clark told reporters last week that Obasanjo was the big masquerade behind the split, with the purpose of foisting Governors Lamido and Amaechi as president and vice-president respectively in 2015. Clark added that the former vice-president has always been disloyal, citing his alleged sponsorship of the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM, as a platform to contest the 2015 election.
Reno Omokri, a media adviser to the President, is also confident that the PDP can conveniently absorb the current shock.
“Since 1998 only the PDP has remained intact. Other parties formed with it have faded away. The reason the PDP has staying power is because it has an inbuilt conflict resolution mechanism, which is at work even now,” he said. Omokri recalled that the party faced similar crisis in 2006 when a group led by its former chairman, Solomon Lar, set up a parallel faction to seize control of the party from the then chairman, Alhaji Ahmadu Ali. The Lar group had similarly appointed Shuaib Oyedokun, former Deputy National Chairman, as the leader of its own faction. This was in the heat of the battle for the control of the party between Obasanjo and Atiku. The rebellion was triggered by the suspension of the then Plateau State governor, Mr. Joshua Dariye, and the expulsion of Dr. Chris Ngige.
Attempt by the Lar faction to set up its own secretariat was frustrated by the Police and the group soon fizzled out. Perhaps, it is with the benefit of such hindsight that Chief Ebenezer Babatope, a PDP chieftain in South-west, asserted in a newspaper interview last week that Nigeria’s political history has never recorded a successful rebellion against an existing political party. “I can assure you that the PDP is as strong as a rock. We respect our constitution and the Nigerian people who put us in power and we will never joke with the supreme will of the Nigerian people. Those who announced that they were going to form another PDP know that they were only joking. The constitution does not guarantee what they have announced. We know very well that they were acting a script that has long been written,” he said.
But the crisis this time is coming at a time that there is a resurgence of the opposition in the country with the formation of All Progressives Congress, APC. So, will the split benefit the opposition? For one, many political analysts believe that the split may affect the overwhelming dominance of the National Assembly by the PDP with the defection of some of its members to the new PDP. Chief Tom Ikimi, an APC chieftain, said the split in the ruling party will result in realignment of forces. “I see a lot of alignment and realignment towards 2015. Some governors, who were afraid to express their views, can now do so,” he reasoned.
Overtures are already being made by opposition governors under the aegis of the Progressive Governors Forum to their colleagues in the new PDP and it is believed that if the President responds to the rebellion with more strong-arm tactics, he may eventually drive the breakaway PDP governors into arms of the APC, a move that will signal an end to PDP domination of Nigeria politics and may also put an end to his 2015 ambition.
—Ayorinde Oluokun/Abuja