PDP: Has the bubble burst?

LEON USIGBE writes against the backdrop of the Court of Appeal judgment, which on Thursday, ousted the National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

THURSDAY’S Court of Appeal’s decision nullifying the May 21, 2016 National Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), may have thrown spanners in the works of the main opposition party that has been labouring to be back on its feet. It has effectively restored Ali Modu Sheriff as the national chairman of the party.  That is bound to rile the mainstream group, led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi. The controversial convention gave birth to the Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee contraption which has now been placed on the back foot by the judgment.

The May 21, 2016 national convention was suspended by an order of Justice Ibrahim Buba of a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, following a suit filed by Sheriff, the national Secretary, Adewale Oladipo and the national auditor, Fatai Adeyanju, asking the court to stop the convention pending the determination of the substantive case. They had claimed that their tenures had not lapsed and therefore, election could not be conducted into their offices.

Sheriff, though, had gone to Port Harcourt for the convention with the hope of being confirmed as the national chairman and his tenure elongated till 2018, as had been agreed at the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the party. But the tide apparently rushed against him as party stakeholders, particularly state governors elected under the party, changed their minds and conspired to do away with the former Borno State governor. Sheriff read the handwriting on the wall and having initially distanced himself from the suit, on the morning of the convention, hurriedly called a press conference to announce its postponement, while relying on the court order. He left Port Harcourt.

The convention went ahead without him under the leadership of then deputy national chairman of PDP, Uche Secondus. While it complied with the court order not to conduct election into the offices as directed, it however resolved to dissolve the Sheriff-NWC and in its place, established the national caretaker committee ,even though no such thing is provided for in the party’s constitution.

Sheriff rejected the convention’s outcome, as he insisted that having been elected at the NEC of the party, his tenure would lapse in 2018. By his claim, the PDP was factionalised from that moment. An attempt to have another national convention led to the conduct of parallel national conventions in Port Harcourt and Abuja by both the mainstream led by Makarfi and PDP Stakeholders Forum under the leadership of Professor Jerry Gana. The second Port Harcourt national convention extended the tenure of the national caretaker committee from the original three months given to conduct a fresh convention to one year, while the Abuja convention set up a 57-man Steering Committee, with a former deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu and former Education Education Minister, Tunde Adeniran, as co-chairmen.

With no amicable solution to the brewing leadership crisis in sight, the police on May 23, 2016 moved in to seal off the national secretariat of the party in Abuja, to allegedly prevent access to both factions and a possible breakdown of law and order. Both sides have since operated from two different temporary national secretariats in Abuja while claiming to be the authentic national leadership of the party.

With the leadership crisis, the division in the PDP had gone straight through the middle, with factions developing from the ward, local government, through the state to the national levels. Many members, including elected representatives have also relied on the division to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). But, while the more malleable members are finding solace in the APC, elders and stakeholders of the party had launched series of fence-mending efforts to re-unify the party. The peace moves made no impact, with both the National Caretaker Committee and Sheriff sticking to their positions.

However, in recent weeks, there appeared to have been a ray of hope of an amicable settlement, with the submission of the report of the Jerry Gana Strategy Review and Inter-Party Committee. The committee represented a virile attempt to address all issues that led, not only to the ouster of the party from power in 2015, but also the ones that engendered the extant leadership crisis. Having thoroughly analysed the problems, the committee made recommendations, which were being expected to be scrutinised and adopted by the national leadership  All this seems to have gone up in smoke now, with the decision of the Appeal Court.

Judging by the attendance at separate meetings of both factions since the advent of the crisis, it is not difficult to conclude that the national caretaker committee commanded the loyalty of the majority of the party membership. That is where the PDP is now in even more quandary. What will the fate of a huge number of the party members, including the state governors that had failed to recognise Sheriff as the National Chairman? Only time will tell.  But Sheriff has his work cut out as he begins a new phase as the leader of the PDP.