WITH recent events suggesting troubling crises within the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the South West, keen political observers would be kind to submit that the party is on tenterhooks.

It becomes more worrisome with general elections knocking so loudly. If you take into cognisance the expected merger of some opposition parties in the country, then PDP cannot afford to be having such self- destructive impasse. But how did things come to this sorry pass?

Firstly, it is important to point out that there is no political party all over the world that does not experience intermittent internal upheavals.  What is different is the energy exerted to curtail such, or alternatively find solutions.

Each chapter of the party has had its fair share of crises, but it is curious that it is OgunState’s internal woes that have proved to be intractable. And this is the state that produced former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who recently resigned as chair of his party’s Board of Trustees. That resignation has come to show that it was more a protest than altruistic.

Issues surrounding the Ogun chapter crisis began during the administration of Otunba Gbenga Daniel, former governor of the state. Being a PDP member the same party as Obasanjo, it was not surprising that issues will boil over more so when the former president retired with idle time to spare. With no state matters to keep him busy, Obasanjo reverted to Ogun matters, including that of PDP. It did not take long before he clashed with the former governor.

I may not know the details as there may not be real details, but ego trips. However, officially, following a disputed PDP state congress in 2008, a harmonization of the Ogun PDP factions followed in 2010- sequel to a National Working Committee, NWC, directive as supported by a court order meant that if the party wanted peace that was the green light.

Unfortunately, the governor spurned this opportunity. He mistook the determination of a faction of the party that was interested in the rule of law and harmony for Obasanjo’s caucus.

This much Daniel sold to the media, more so when Senator Iyabo Obasanjo was spotted among this group. Truth be told, Obasanjo was a late entrant to the harmonized executive. Further more, by this time, both the former president and the former governor had fallen out. So, whoever was not with Daniel was with Obasanjo.

That was what was then variously called the JMK, or OBJ faction versus the OGD faction; whereas the brain behind the so-called OBJ/JMK faction was, in essence, Prince Buruji Kashamu, a business entrepreneur and party financier.

It was therefore, the insistence by the Daniel faction chaired by Joju Fadairo not to submit to the Dayo Soremi-led harmonized executive that tested our judiciary. Of course the court pronounced Soremi as the authentic chair and went ahead to recognise the primaries it organised towards the 2011 election. All the efforts made by the recalcitrant Fadairo proved redundant and ineffectual.

The Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, thus rejected nominees submitted to it by Joju Fadairo/Daniel. It was, therefore, repugnant to notice that after the election and through out 2012, the same Obasanjo who nominated Soremi as a consensus party chair, turned round to sponsor another set of party executives led by one Senator Dipo Odunjirin.

Do not forget however, that it was the same Soremi executive that produced the party’s guber candidate, Adetunji Olurin who is Obasanjo’s nominee. Obasanjo and his friends did not only arrange some renegades to take over the party secretariat opposite NNPC, Oke Mosan, Abeokuta, they felt too big to participate in party congresses and convention organised last year.

While Soremi organised ward, local government and later state congresses, Obasanjo and friends preferred not to present themselves to party members. They boycotted the congresses but waited till the last minute to anoint some friends as party executives.

Of course, it was this illegality that enraged Soremi and company to head once more to the courts. Incidentally these illegal party officials were same persons that got involved in the South West PPD executive and even the national working committee. As has been proved now, since you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand, those illegally nominated in the South West and NWC have been withdrawn through legal intervention.

It is not as if anybody is fighting former president Obasanjo, rather it is the rule of law where he preferred the rule of brawn. With his status and age, it is expected that the Ebora Owu should have long retired from partisan politics. He deserves and rightly so to be a true elder statesman.

In the meantime, as Ogun and the South West PDP battles to steady its ship, it is apparent that a new star has emerged in the state and zone. Prince Kashamu having used his personal funds, contacts and organisational competence to steer the party without violence, it’s time to give him more tasks and responsibility.

Although he has variously confessed not to be interested in elective or appointive positions, but good governance and centralism, the PDP needs to elevate such persons even now that the All Progressives Congress is about to birth.  Elder statesmen should consequently take a deserved rest and allow younger persons to prime the party in the zone to achieve unity.

Mr. UCHE NNADOZIE, a journalist, wrote from Lagos.