By Rotimi Fasan
ONE  look at the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and it’s clear it is one mad house of hostile room mates with clashing ambitions. But these apparently hostile roommates are nevertheless united by their common greed for power and the unmerited perks that come with it.

They may fight, bicker and trade punches but none of these unhappy roommates are ready to walk out. When they do which is very rare, they almost always manage to retrace their steps and find their way back into the mad house- from Atiku Abubakar, Orji Uzo Kalu to Ayo Fayose, among too many others; it’s as always the same old song- nobody hates the house enough to walk away for good. Sooner than later those who appear to have walked away for good do so only to raise their market value by allying with erstwhile enemies in order to secure a greater purchase on the slippery floor of the mad house when they return.

And though it controls both houses of the National Assembly as well as Aso Rock Villa, the relationship between members of the PDP in the legislative and executive arms couldn’t be more acrimonious. Not even governors of the party are at peace with the President to say nothing of the party chair.

Everyone is at each other’s neck. The situation, as it is, appears primed to get worse. The President has no answer for the many problems assailing the state. Not only does he lack the experience; he lacks the courage to learn, much less do what is necessary to move ahead. He spends too much time fighting fire ignited by members of his own household. Fires caused by desire to advance personal interests.

His own desire to remain in office beyond 2015 even when he has done next to nothing to justify his present mandate- his ambition to be a two-term president would not allow him to do even the little history has positioned him for. He would rather make compromises that only show him up for the excuse of a leader that he is.

For a while he tried to make it look like his media battle with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was driven by some high motive to break from the stranglehold of party leaders who have nothing but their pockets to protect.

Obasanjo on his part latched on to what is now folk wisdom, the fact that Goodluck Jonathan hardly knows his right hand from the left when matters turn to governance. He portrayed him as a weak leader, too confused and inexperienced to reassure Nigerians of his leadership in the face of backward forces of corruption, fake religion and ethnic militias ranged against his government.

But after the bruising media remarks, they all retired to a quiet Sunday morning breakfast at Aso Rock and a ‘return’ thank-you visit by the President at a London function, an initiative of the Obasanjo Foundation, to finally bury the hatchet of a contrived war to save Nigeria. Nobody could have guessed that both parties and their respective supporters were at each other’s throats only days before.

The confusion in the larger PDP household is not helped by the one in which the President is engulfed by his wife, Patience, who is determined to inflict her housewife, woman-versus-man knowledge of governance on everybody. She appeared again recently in her Brazilian Carnival Queen regalia to recount tales of her Seven Days Sojourn in the Land of the Dead.

The story retailed at the so-called thanksgiving service she held two Sundays ago came many weeks late. For someone the Presidency lied was never ill, admitted only went for a bed rest when rumours of her ill-health/death would not cease, it’s revealing to hear her story- from the Living-Dead’s own mouth, you may say.

Rather than staying quietly out of the media after what she claims is a miraculous comeback, Mrs. Jonathan is back at what made her absence last year immediately obvious- unnecessary media gaffes. Now this Permanent Secretary that is yet to put in a day at her BayelsaState’s ministry post is out campaigning for an office for African first ladies in Abuja.

And the foolish civil servants in the FCT have obliged her by proposing to appropriate funds for this waste of public funds. With other PDP women like Kema Chikwe who couldn’t resist putting in words for Jonathan’s 2015 campaign, Patience called for an office for the first ladies as if destitution was the only alternative.

Her utterance about how other countries jostled to be chosen to erect this monument to ineptitude is to say the least very touching and emphasises the quality of her thought and her recommendation for the position of first lady and permanent secretary all at once. One wonders what practical gain Nigeria is to expect from such building. In truth, President Jonathan did not start the rot that is grinding Nigeria down but he has done next to nothing to improve things.

Given this picture of things in the PDP,  the hunger for alternatives is such a seductive, in fact, inevitable thought. The PDP lacks ideological mooring of any sort. At least not in the sense political parties are expected to.

The one thing uniting members of the party is their raw hunger for power and a desire to hold on to it in perpetuity. This is the only ideology that binds members of this party. And it would do anything, as it has in many instances in the past, to win power.

Even where it was expected to sweep the stakes at elections, it inflated its victory in terms of voter statistics that rendered the whole process a sham. Many times winning votes of PDP members, including states that voted for President Jonathan in the last election, far outstripped total number of registered voters in an entire locality.

For this reason, everybody knows the PDP can’t be trusted to play straight. One major way to assess the electoral relevance of the party and other parties in present day Nigeria is to look at individuals within them imbued with the right political virtues and go with such persons.

To repeat: Perhaps the only way to decide on who or which party to support in Nigerian politics today is to look at and identify individual members of some of these parties who still have political virtues which translate into personal conviction for public good left in them.

Otherwise there is hardly anything to choose between one party and another irrespective of claims of ideological differences. But how many individuals can one identify in any one party and how far would such lone voices go in the vast wilderness of party hawks? Sooner than later such persons would be framed and ostracised for so-called anti-party activities.