Rotimi Fasan
ALL through last week the Peoples Democratic Party was in the news. This had been the case for two weeks running when the Party began its primaries into various offices in its fold from the local, through state to the federal levels. While the gubernatorial primaries were held about two weeks ago, it was the turn of the presidential aspirants to flex muscles against one another last week.

Although veteran presidential aspirant, Sarah Jibril, was on hand to add a feminine dimension to the event in a gesture that was more symbolic than was motivated by any genuine attempt at clinching the Party’s presidential ticket, it was clear to all that the real contest was between Atiku Abubakar, former vice president and incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan.

In the end President Jonathan, not unexpectedly, won the contest resoundingly with 2, 736 votes (32 states) to Atiku’s 805 votes (5 states, mainly in the far North). Jibril got a vote. But before the outcome of the presidential primaries, the PDP had in its practised way, put its members, particularly those aspiring for the presidential ticket on the edge of their seats by the last minute nullification of the authority of the  national chairperson of the PDP, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo to supervise the convention. He was restrained by a court in Enugu State from parading himself as chairman of the party.

This effectively side-tracked and stripped him of the power to conduct the convention of the Party that has now produced a presidential candidate for the April polls. The Convention Committee was itself the subject of protest as members of the Atiku Abubakar campaign team protested against what they considered the lopsidedness of appointments into it.

They wondered how the party could expect any form of impartiality from persons known to have been blatantly partisan in their support of candidates for the primaries, in this case, President Jonathan. And so it was that Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed, National Vice Chair of the PDP, was compelled to finish what Dr. Nwodo started and must have thought himself destined to perform.

Right at the Convention grounds a motion was moved for the appointment of the National Vice Chair to assume Nwodo’s responsibilities. Nwodo would momentarily found this difficult to bear as he, somehow, found his way to Eagle’s square, venue of the special convention,  and attempted to seize ‘power’ from the man chosen to act in his place.

Of the many faces that started the race to win the PDP ticket, only the three mentioned earlier were left to square up against one another. It was too clear from the convention venue, if not before, that Jonathan would win the ticket, a fact that was borne out by the warm enthusiasm with which his remarks were received. But the aspirants were given five minutes to make their campaign speech- five minutes they went on to exceed.

While Jibril would go through her speech that was wide on generalities but shallow on specifics in a rather breezy manner, Atiku Abubakar was more deliberate and direct in his subtle attacks on the person he called his ‘main opponent’. He restated his well-known stand on consensus or what he called agreement among people.

He sought to know how someone who could not be trusted to keep his words should be trusted to lead a nation. He had evidence, he claimed, to show Jonathan’s endorsement of the document that stipulated power should be rotated between the various regions of the country even if pretence seemed to have taken the better part of the President’s present thinking. He harped on his experience as a successful business person; one of the founding leaders of the PDP who had worked as hard as any to bring the Party to its present state.

Unlike those who wanted power for its own sake, he wanted power for the good of society, he concluded. By the time President Jonathan was invited to make his pitch at winning delegates’ votes, signals on the transistor radio I had been listening to suddenly disappeared. When the signals returned he was making his last comments having reached the conclusion that he would keep to the time and not join issues with Atiku Abubakar. He finished to a rousing applause by his supporters who started singing that he had won even before the first vote was cast.

Now the primaries have been won and lost, it’s clear who the real power brokers are in the PDP. No doubt the governors are the undisputed champions of the new PDP power house. Those they anointed won; those they ignored remained ignored. And if any of the governors’ opponents won, it was because they retraced their steps back into the governor’s camp in time.

This was the case with Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole who was almost done in by Gbenga Daniel.  Although the primaries recorded an unseemly number of parallel primaries that produced contending candidates who still lay claim to the ticket of the PDP, it was clear only those supported by the governors had the last say and laugh.

What this further signposts is the clear fact that the PDP can never remain the same party after the controversy-prone primaries that saw disaffected members defecting to other parties. While many of these governors have the full support of President Jonathan and had given him their support which they are likely to sustain through the presidential election, votes in the other elections would be shared among PDP members now scattered in different parties. That would be fitting justice for a party whose members cannot suffer defeat honourably but imagine they have divine right to win -at all costs.

Yet this cannot constitute final closure to the PDP primaries saga. If it’s the same PDP we’ve always known, one can expect more nail-biting fireworks in the courts. In the case of Atiku, what would he do next? Take to the courts to stop Jonathan, support a rival party’s candidate to fight Jonathan in the presidential elections or, like he had done before, look elsewhere for the actualisation of his ambition?

What would this say of his person and quest for power? How about the other politicians who subsumed their presidential ambition under his after he emerged the consensus candidate of a section of the Northern oligarchy? Would they continue to honour that agreement or take to the campaign trail in order to fulfil their dreams of leading Nigeria? We  wait the verdict of time- and history.