Iyorchia Ayu: A chair without cheer

IT may be quite trite to say that Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is embroiled in crisis over his position. In its history PDP has never had a non-controversial chairman, and internecine wars are routine. In his case, probably the worst since 1998 when the party was formed, Ayu is occupying office at the risk of continued alienation of members of the party in Nigeria’s South, the region whose turn it is to produce the president going by the rotational principle. Leading the charge against Ayu is Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, and his brother-governors like Seyi Makinde and Okezie Ikpeazu, together with party elders like former Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang, and ex-military administrator, Olabode George.

An ex-Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) chieftain who naturally purveyed Marxist orthodoxy, Ayu is no stranger to conflict. He was Senate President during the aborted Third Republic. He advocated strongly for the de-annulment of Chief MKO Abiola’s presidential election in 1993,  yet he joined the Sani Abacha government in 1994 as Education Minister after his impeachment by his colleagues. He would go on to serve as Internal Affairs and Environment minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo. Surprisingly, even with history as a mirror, the PDP chair has no scruples upsetting the national geopolitical balance and his own word to quit his present post once it became transparently untenable following a northern presidential ticket win. This is tragic flaw writ large.

There are many who believe that the ex-Armoured Corps General Olagunsoye Oyinlola, riding on the waves of resentment over PDP’s long marginalisation of the South-West and advocacy for the geopolitical zone’s cause, was set to clinch the crown before the tide turned: it was the turn of the South to produce the president and an Oyinlola chairmanship of the power party would have been untenable. The Okuku prince, placing regional interest over personal ambition, stepped down and retreated into a tactical corner. And then came Ayu who, following the emergence of a northerner as presidential candidate, was expected to have thrown in the towel as a matter of honour. But Ayu embraced real politik, promising to step down if Atiku won the presidency. This was a radical shift from his promise to step down if a northerner emerged the presidential candidate. And so Ayu, leading the incongruous charge for a Fulani Muslim to succeed another Fulani Muslim after eight horrendous years, is holding tenaciously to his chair of no cheer; a chair that provokes angst over the ethnic, military and political imbalance that characterised military rule in the country critics for decades, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s rule in the last eight years.

Ayu is not unaware that as a way out of the imbroglio in PDP leadership and demonstration of good faith and honour, the chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin, has resigned from his position, paving the way for ex-Senate President Adolphus Wabara. In Achebe’s A Man of the People, the tide turns against the cabinet minister, Chief Nanga, and other politicians in a fictional African country when a group of young but flawed revolutionaries begin to contest their seats, and with the following military coup the people begin to pan the politicians who have stolen too much for the owner of the goods not to notice. In the PDP crisis, we have a case of a region taking too much for the other not to notice: the national chairman, presidential candidate and BoT chairman, until Thursday’s NEC meeting, were all from the North. And for many in the party this ought to be nought.

Ayu, beyond the vote of confidence passed on him by the PDP’s National Executive Council (NEC) during its Thursday’s NEC meeting, knows that the crisis over his chairmanship will not go away. As he knows too well, in PDP, memories are short and chairmen typically don’t end well. From Solomon Lar, the party’s inaugural chairman following the party’s formation in 1998 to Barnabas Gemade, Audu Ogbeh, Ahmadu Ali, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo, Bamanga Tukur, and Uche Secondus, among others, it has been a case of the proverbial banana peels and the consignment of unwary actors men to oblivion. The huge exception of course is Ahmadu Ali, and the situation will remain so, at least in the foreseeable future.

Democracy came in 1999 but could not change the ingrained military intransigence in the Nigerian president: dispute with the then President Olusegun Obasanjo cost Lar his job. The president wanted to take over as leader shortly after his assumption of office but Lar favoured retention of the party structure. Barnabas Gemade, who proved quite pliable and was with Obasanjo everywhere he turned,  was later replaced with Audu Ogbeh, the Benue farmer in whose house Obasanjo danced and devoured pounded yam at an evening of reconciliation, only for the nation to hear that the man had been sacked thereafter. Ogbeh had warned Obasanjo’s Presidency of the drift in the polity in an open letter, and the Presidency had in turn replied that it had taken “judicious notice” of the implicit threat of military putsch in his missive. Ogbeh’s grouse was the anarchy that had enveloped Anambra State as the Chris Uba, a known ally and of the president, was accused of orchestrating the abduction of the then sitting governor, Chris Ngige, following the latter’s non-implementation of a pre-election agreement.

Enter Ahmadu Ali, himself an associate of Obasanjo, the only PDP chairman who completed his tenure and was replaced by Vincent Ogbulafor at the party’s national convention in 2008. Ogbulafor,  feuding with his state governor, Theodore Orji, faced a N100 million lawsuit alleging stealing and had to step aside. He resigned only two years into his tenure. His successor, Okwesilieze Nwodo, was also embroiled in a dispute with his own state governor, Sullivan Chime. The result was a High Court ruling halting his chairmanship on the grounds that at the time he became chairman, he was not a card-carrying member of the party.. Dr. Haliru Mohammed, a former Minister of Communications during the Obasanjo/Atiku administration, served as acting chairman and was succeeded by Alhaji Kawu Baraje, who also had only a brief stay in office. His successor, Dr. Bamanga Tukur, did not complete his tenure: he too was embroiled in brickbats with his state governor, a retired naval chief, Murtala Nyako.

Tukur’s removal brought in Adamu Mu’azu, an ex-Bauchi State governor under whose tenure the political opposition dislodged PDP from power for the first time since 1999. Mu’azu was accused of being a mole who worked to actulaise President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 electoral win. Senator Ali Modu Sheriff’s one-year tenure was marked by controversy, among them the lingering debate over how he had handled the emergence of the terror outfit, Boko Haram, as Borno State governor. And like Mu’azu, he too was seen as an opposition mole. Ahmed Makarfi had a one-year stint, during which he battled Sheriff to a standstill and Uche Secondus, his successor who was propped up by River State governor, Nyesom Wike, was also sacked after falling out with the same governor.

One reason the current crisis in PDP has festered is its leader’s approach to criticism. When the Rivers helmsman fires salvos he may be doing that in personal capacity, but he carries the weight of a region’s pain behind him. There are many who, although neither effusive nor combative like Wike, are nevertheless pained by their party’s presidential offering, knowing that it ought to be the turn of Southern Nigeria to produce the president. Already, this sentiment, muted but not ineffective, has led to the party’s haemorrhaging of members via the Obidient movement of former Anambra State governor, Mr. Peter Obi.

But the leader appears to see in Wike’s criticisms only the picture of a young rebel and not a region’s anger. Speaking in an interview with the BBC Hausa Service, he said:  “When we started PDP, these children were not around. They are children who do not know why we formed the party. We will not allow any individual to destabilise our party. I was voted as PDP chairman for a four-year tenure and I’m yet to complete a year. Atiku’s victory doesn’t affect the chairman’s position. I won my election based on our party’s constitution. I didn’t commit any offence. I’m only reforming the party, so I’m not bothered with all the noises.” The Rivers helmsman, who wants to drown yet another chairman in the river of political intrigue, replied that those Ayu called “children” put him in his present post and would help PDP lose the 2023 ballot.

But there is a snag: if Ayu is relieved of his job, it is yet another northerner that will replace him, going by the party’s constitution. Ultimately, with methodical Ayu—according to his son Shima, Ayu once read an entire manual before driving his new car—and his critics refusing to shift ground, Nigeria is poised to witness intense drama ahead of the 2023 election. It is the proverbial case of the chicken on a rope: there is rest for neither. And the opposition are taking “judicious notice” of PDP’s internal civil war.