Daniel’s cross

One would need to think like the Biblical Daniel to be able to appreciate what must have been going on in his mind when he was, for no just cause, thrown into the den of lions. We all face such difficult moments in our daily lives. Two events dominated the media space in the last two weeks; one was the resignation of the former governor of Ogun State and Director General of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation, Gbenga Daniel from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and partisan politics and the sham called supplementary governorship and houses of assembly elections in some states. The one I find interesting for the moment was Daniel’s resignation and the icing on the cake, the purported decamping or defection of same into the rival All Peoples Congress (APC) barely twenty four hours after the announced resignation.

The issues raised in this matter bother on morality and betrayal of trust. Some argue on the propriety of the time he did; too early when Atiku is still in court trying to challenge the results of the election and reclaim his “stolen” mandate.

Just like I would give more than a penny for the thought to have a peep into the minds of the Biblical Daniel to know how he felt while in the Lion’s den, I have the same compulsion to read through the mind of this modern age Daniel.

The Atiku presidential campaigns gained a lot of traction on the strength and assumptions that there was money to be made by a lot of people. It has the largest number of support groups that refused to function as volunteers which they should be, but cut out as a paid employment in expectation of gratifications and rewards. At the last count, the number of support groups was over one thousand and each boasting of having membership across the length and breadth of the country with a minimum of 1,000 members each. And on the average, over one million people claim to be members of the various support groups. Daniel’s crime number one: fulfilling the desires and expectations of over one million people will be a tall order so he could have unwittingly thrown himself in the den by choice.

Atiku also is on record as the longest and the most recycled presidential aspirant (candidate) in the recent history of Nigeria’s democracy. In the course of the years he has built a large retinue of personal staff who remain on his permanent payrolls and have by right carved a territory, formed a paternalistic view and claim a hold on his purse. This is a hell hole far deeper than a lion’s den into which Daniel plunged.

Perhaps, and most probably if Daniel was fishing in familiar territory, some of these challenges could have been easier managed, it looks like he was alone, home and dry. The PDP appeared like a hostile terrain when most of his colleagues and contemporaries in the party since 2003 left in search of other plausible windows of expressions and political survival.

Daniel in a conservative PDP could be a total stranger and this cross he had borne ever since he got elected on the platform of the party in 2003, he has been fishing in hostile waters, his progressive political ideology have clashed severally with the party’s ideology. His political views, dispositions, conducts and temperaments have been antithetical to what the PDP stands for and he was never too far away from constant brushes with the powers that be in the party. The entire problem of PDP started from Ogun State around 2009 where he, as a sitting governor was stripped of the power to control the affairs of the same party which he nurtured for over six years. Several attempts to stage a comeback were clearly rebuffed by the “owners of the land and party”, even when he sought to lead the party as national chairman, deploying all arsenal in a nationwide campaign for an office which was assumed to have been zoned to the South West as a strategic move to strengthen the party in the region, until he was persuaded to step down like most other contestants from the South West.

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Not done yet, on the strength of the colourful campaign in his chairmanship bid, Daniel got another rare opportunity to prove himself, capacity and commitment as he was appointed to lead the Atiku presidential campaigns where he deployed his dexterity in the management of men and resources. He was able to steer Atiku to victory in a keenly contested primaries with about twelve contestants in Port Harcourt. And no sooner has he done what was considered unthinkable than the “owners of the land” rose again. This Daniel must be cut short at all cost.

Politics of principle must be rooted on a solid foundation, and political leadership is a function of followers and those who believe and trust in the capacity of a leader to take the right decision and lead them to a safer destination. Should a leader wait till all those who repose their trust in him leave in droves or one after another before re-establishing his leadership? Those who criticise Daniel definitely are not those who want to follow him, but more of those who feel he was at a time the man who usurped their daily bread, those who felt he did not allow them to milk from the Atiku presidential campaigns, those who are also threatened of what they fear might be his next political moves, and of course those who genuinely felt concerned with inadequate information about the cross he had to bear and what he must have gone through.

If Daniel’s supporters insist he should and must lead them to another party, logic prevails he must hearken to the voices of those who truly believe in him and trust his leadership and not those who he cannot truly please no matter what he does.

Yiseyon writes in from Badagry Lagos, Nigeria.