By Ochereome Nnanna
A FRIEND of mine always says“anybody who marks his own exam papers will get an A”. That was exactly what the new Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, did in appraising the 13 years since the Party took charge of the affairs of the country from the military. He claimed that the party “has put the nation on the path to sustainable development and steady economic growth as the basis to stabilise and consolidate the nation’s democracy”.

The Party has its good side. One of the greatest points of appeal of the PDP is its detribalised, de-sectionalised character. In other words, it is truly a national party which no section has succeeded in hijacking even though three leaders from the West, North and South-South have called the shots over the past 13 years. Even the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, which was touted as a “national party” was perceived to be a reformed Northern Peoples Congress, NPC; a party of the Northern political oligarchy.

PDP is, indeed, the largest party in Africa. All its other rivals – the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN; All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP; All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA and the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, are regional parties with very limited national appeal by comparison. Some of the PDP’s state governors have done extremely well, but based only on the individual leadership abilities of each state’s chief executive. The PDP is an efficient, ruthless election winning machine able to weather the diversities of Nigeria with little stress. Its generally poor record notwithstanding, the PDP does not seem to be in danger of losing its majority status soon, unless some unforeseen social revolution takes place in the political behaviour of Nigerians.

The greatest weakness of the PDP is that it lacks vision, focus and character. There is no sameness of programmatic or ideological reflex noticeable between the PDP Federal Government and any of the states governed by the party. Rather, each elected leader simply does his own thing and quits the stage. There is no PDP way of running the economy, the polity and tackling corruption. There was no identifiable common thread between the PDP Federal Government run by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan either on the economic or political fronts.

Obasanjo, midway into his eight years, introduced an economic reform known as the National Economic and Empowerment Development Strategy, NEEDS, drawn up by Professor Chukwuma Soludo as the Chairman of the National Planning Commission. The states were supposed to adopt the SEEDS offshoot from the programme while the local councils were to take up the LEEDS. But in the end, not even a single PDP state did so. The Yar’Adua regime came up with its Seven-Point Agenda which was never even articulated for the lower tiers of government to adopt.

As soon as he died, his successor and former Vice President, Jonathan launched his brand-new National Transformation Agenda, which was also never codified into a PDP charter of engagement. Even the Vision 20-2020 programme has been regularly sloganeered upon, but with little evidence of how far we have gone in actualising it. The economy has grown in size, yet poverty has spread, with attendant rise in violent crimes and damning human development indices. Nigeria is always rated among the poorest and war-torn countries in the world. All these happened under the watch of PDP.

In terms of political leadership, PDP under Obasanjo dragged this nation through the most lawless governance ever witnessed, with the president being the chief culprit for the instability of the legislature, executive, the judiciary, the PDP and other rival parties and some states in the federation. Yar’Adua’s period witnessed a cooling of heat as he committed himself to the rule of law. Jonathan continued in the same vein, though many would point to the Justice Ayo Salami controversy as a dark spot. The constitution of an Electoral Commission led by Prof Attahiru Jega helped us in conducting an above-board general election in 2011 as confirmed by international observers. But the post-election violence which trailed the unpatriotic and unguarded statements of the presidential candidate of the CPC, Muhammadu Buhari, went to show that even the opposition was no less desperate for power than the PDP.

Despite billions of dollars thrown into efforts to address nagging national problems, such as the power sector and petroleum products supply little has been achieved. Rather, there are mounting evidences of corruption and sabotage which make progress impossible. The financial sector is in a mess, with bank failures and collapse of the stock exchange a major factor for impoverishment of millions of Nigerians, especially those of the middle class.

Poverty is a major factor oiling the wheels of violent crimes and terrorism, which the current PDP Federal Government seems helpless in addressing. Corruption, especially in the public sector, has never been as widespread as in the 13 years of PDP rule, and there is little to indicate that the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice is inclined to tackle it.

In view of all these glaring evidences of rudderlessness and lack of purpose, the PDP’s claim to have put the nation on the path to “steady economic growth” can hardly be justified with concrete evidence.

My fear, though, is that we may never soon be able to do away with the PDP. The other parties are too weak, too localised or too unambitious to stand as credible alternatives. The best they try is to forge alliances, but we know, from Nigeria’s history and political behaviour, that alliances or gang-up attempts only favour the ruling party in the end.

Unless something happens, we may wake up, 20 years down the line, to find ourselves still in the grips of PDP with things pretty much the same as they are!