The opposition must not die

The PDP must not die. No! I take that back. The PDP can die if it likes. It does not concern me. The party is not alive to its health needs. The PDP is like somebody that has heart and kidney issues. Persons with such health conditions are usually very prudent in consumption. They do not go about eating and drinking anyhow and indulging in habits that can complicate their conditions. As it is today, PDP has heart and kidney ailments but it still goes about drinking ogogoro and smoking igboo as well as consuming other dangerous drugs that induce hallucination instead of solution. This is called self-affliction and there is little another person or even God can do to help.

Not long ago, former President Goodluck Jonathan alluded to the futility of attempting to wake up a man that is pretending to be asleep. He was specifically addressing the festering political crisis in Rivers State and the naked display of triumphalism by Nyesom Wike in the face of key institutions and actors of state who are pretending to be asleep and waiting to be woken up to their functions. The PDP is also pretending to be asleep. In fact, the party is acting worse. It is pretending to be sick which is why curing it is proving difficult. All the therapies are falling flat. Even if all the doctors, including native and witch doctors in Nigeria, are to stop every other thing for the PDP, the party shall refuse to come around. It shall still remain pretentiously sick and graduate into feigning death. 

Any entity steeped in this depth of illusion does not deserve to live in reality. And so, for all it is worth, the PDP can choose to die if it is tired of living. There are standby undertakers in the APC to conduct the burial. Partisan politics will not stop if the PDP dies. What must not die is the opposition. The PDP does not equate the opposition. If the party has decided to become a department in the APC or rearrange its own initials to read APC, it is not forbidden in a multi-party democracy. What is forbidden is the creation of a force majeure, against which, nothing else survives or even stands. The APC has recreated itself in 10 years into a force majeure that denies others oxygen. I am saying a one-party system is edging towards being a reality in Nigeria. Recent sermons by the APC’s national chairman, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, on party politics are a pointer. The man, who once had to furiously explain his innocence in a dollar appropriation video that forced his rechristening in some quarters from Ganduje to Gandollar, has fully recovered from the shock of that embarrassing revelation. He feels adequately rehabilitated to mount the podium to make wild suggestions on how party and parliamentary democracy should run in Nigeria. He says if China is very cool under one-party system, Nigeria could follow the same path and become cool too.

There is this nativity around Ganduje that makes him look like a local operator. Whatever he says tend to drop in value to a local matter that does not require rigorous reasoning to resolve. The same nativity runs through his delivery such that instead of provoking anger in his listeners with his statements, he is accommodated as a jester. I wouldn’t know if it is part of the APC’s larger scheme to have a national chairman who creates comic interludes to ease concentration on the real issues. The man talks with the dismissiveness of a Latin American Dictator. He talks as if nothing lies above the firmament.  But because he talks as if he is clowning, it is pretty difficult to say if he speaks the mind of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC or just talking.

Meanwhile, when the one-party state solution of Ganduje came up in the Peoples’ Parliament for ventilation, a contributor introduced an aspect that the proponent forgot to add. It was explained that part of the beauty of the one-party system in China is the public execution of corrupt public officers. That the chairman of the Communist Party, which has been ruling in China since 1949, following the Maoist revolution, does not flaunt the party as a safe haven for corrupt politicians, the same way that Adams Oshiomhole, as chairman, flaunted the APC. It was Oshiomhole who said though any corrupt act be as red as scarlet, it would become as white as snow, the moment the culprit stepped into the APC. This patently foolish counsel of Oshiomhole has been reworked into a Solomonic wisdom that is guiding many political office holders into safety and even higher offices after their mindless looting of public funds at their previous stations.

For instance, one of the explanations given for the unchecked haemorrhage on the PDP that has kept it in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) of the political systems, is the call on its members to move to the APC so that their sins can be summarily forgiven. For the crook, nothing tastes sweeter than his immediate conversion into a champion without an attendant cost or pain. I am saying this proposal of a one-party state from Chairman Ganduje that sounds stupid should be taken seriously too. Let’s separate the message from the messenger. The APC under BAT, has a way of making stupid and ordinary things look stupendous and splendid. They call the state-sponsored systematic decimation of opposition parties, resulting in mass defection of opposition politicians to the APC, freedom of association and freedom of expression. President Tinubu’s offshore shuttles including a two-week stay in Paris purportedly to gain the required quietness to review performance at home, is called a leadership style by his handlers. 

Last week, we came close to having a national celebration because an alleged loan of $3.4billion naira from the IMF to contain the COVID-19 pandemic was fully repaid. The presentation was outlandish. It registered as if it was the entire external debt overhang of about $50 billion that was lifted off the country. The CBN Governor, Yemi Cardoso spoke on it. The Finance Minister, Wale Edun also did. Professor Muhammed Ali Pate, the Health Minister and his information counterpart, Alhaji Mohammed Idris Malagi, also spoke. The speakers spoke in a manner that suggested the repayment of a $3.4 billion loan that was spent under an omnibus expense head called COVID-19, was a measure of fiscal discipline of the Tinubu administration. That is the way of BAT and APC. They cannot be outperformed in rogue marketing. They can pass a rusty iron for gold. 

Clearly, there is cause to be vigilant. BAT has shown an unusual capacity to put money to good use to create novelties. He can destroy totems and thereafter pacify the angry gods with money. We keep saying, ‘no man is God,’ no man is God! Agreed! But we should not be deceived. A man can decide to become God. It doesn’t matter if he gets to destination or not. And so, the real challenge, is in getting man to understand that, in concept, content and magnitude, man is man, and God is God. This is where we are in this country. Getting BAT to understand has not been easy. The only consolation is that BAT is in flesh and blood and lives among us. We can hold conversations in English or Yoruba with him. He is also opened to mortal afflictions. Rebranding his medical visits to France and elsewhere, as working visits by Bayo Onanuga, does not affect the fact of his mortality. BAT is not God and cannot be. He must not have his way all the time. God, alone, retains the capacity to meet His purpose at all times.

The point cannot be overemphasised. No conspiracy between the APC and PDP to birth a one-party system in Nigeria should stand. This calls for diligence and vigilance. Whatever that is left in the PDP is working towards reinvention. Senator Bukola Saraki, former governor of Kwara State and former President of the Senate is at the head of the new efforts. His choice is perfect. There is something in mysticism called karma. It is called poetic justice in literature and retribution in broad-based belief systems. It simply means the overarching cosmic forces insist on accountability in areas where man-made institutions failed flat. Science calls it cause and effect or action and reaction. It further explains that action and reaction are same and equal in magnitude.

Let me come clear. Shebi, Bukola Saraki was high up in the league of the N(ew) PDP formation in 2014 that occasioned the cataclysm that brought the PDP to its current sorry state. The league leader was Atiku Abubakar. Other members include Rabiu Kwakwanso, Rotimi Amaechi and Aliyu Babangida. The Urhobo say obore obo soro, oyee uyovwi vwa. The head carries whatever that is brought upon it by the hand. It is now full cycle and the destroyers of the PDP have been fished out by karma to rebuild it. The most the rest of all can do is to wish them luck in their reparation endeavour. The party must bear its cross with stoic equanimity. It has no option.

Our mistake, however, would be to insist on the PDP playing the role of the opposition. The real opposition to the APC is neither the PDP nor any other political party for that matter. They are the people of Nigeria. And so, as earlier noted, Ganduje should be accommodated as the jester, who shows up in-between acts in a typical Shakespearean tragic plot, to offer comic relief. The charge for vigilance is just in case BAT is up to a fresh stunt and may want to replot the comic lines by Ganduje into another moving tragedy. This must not happen. One-party system cannot come as an option. The PDP can die if it chooses, but the opposition must live. 

READ ALSO: 2027, opposition parties’ opportunity to save Nigeria — Lukman