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By John Alechenu

This report takes a cursory look at the unending drama among the Governor Nyesom Wike-led Peoples Democratic Party Governors (G5), the national leadership and the possible effect on the party’s electoral fortunes.

It’s exactly 41 days to the much-talked-about 2023 general elections. The frenzy which often accompanies electioneering is in the air with political parties falling over themselves in a bid to woo the electorate to vote for their preferred candidates.

However, with elections looming, the internal wrangling within the biggest opposition party – the PDP – appears to be distracting party supporters from the task ahead.

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has led four of his fellow aggrieved colleagues to wage what observers describe as a war of attrition against the party’s national leadership and, by extension, its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

As things stand, the G5 Governors, namely, Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), have chosen to keep Nigerians guessing over their preferred presidential candidate.

The aggrieved governors have so far rejected all entreaties by Atiku and his supporters to sheath their swords and support his aspiration.

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The G5 Governors have made good their threat to steer clear of the party’s presidential campaign as long as party Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, whose ouster the governors have demanded, remains on his seat.

They have flagged off governorship, state and National Assembly election campaigns in each other’s states while avoiding any party event where either the party’s presidential candidate or the National Chairman is present.

Penultimate Thursday, the G5 Governors were in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, to flag off the re-election campaign of Makinde.

Members of the public and party supporters, who were expecting to hear a pronouncement about their preferred presidential candidate, left the historic Mapo Hall, venue of the campaign, disappointed.

The G5 insist there would be no truce unless the national chairman, an Atiku ally, resigns. Their agitation has a short and complex history.

Accusation

In the immediate, Wike and his colleagues accuse Ayu of being uneven-handed in handling the party’s presidential primary which Atiku won.

They also accuse him of playing a less than salutary role in the emergence of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State as Atiku’s running mate.

Ayu also stands accused of reneging on his promise to step aside should a northerner emerge as the party’s flag bearer after the presidential primary.

Although the National Chairman and his supporters have made several spirited attempts to explain the limit of his powers in influencing certain party decisions and the reason for his continued stay, the governors are not prepared to bulge.

Pundits, however, trace the remote cause of the conflict to the scramble for the soul of the party shortly after it lost power in 2015.

Those in this school of thought argue that this set the stage for what culminated in the leadership tussle which, at some point, had to be resolved by a decision of the Supreme Court before the Convention that produced Prince Uche Secondus as National Chairman.

Former Bauchi State Governor Adamu Mua’zu, alias game changer, was National Chairman when the party was sacked in 2015. He resigned and was replaced by Secondus.

The transition from Mua’azu to Secondus didn’t come cheap. A struggle by some governors not surprisingly led by Wike to outsmart their colleagues as well as other founding fathers, led to a series of litigations before the Convention which eventually produced Secondus.

Wike simply tried to fill the gap left behind by fleeing party leaders who jumped ship to join then-opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

Party watchers can recall that Wike and his former Ekiti State counterpart, Mr Ayo Fayose, were instrumental to the drafting of former Governor Ali Modu Sheriff of Borno State (who until his appointment was not a party member) as acting National Chairman.

In a move never before seen – at least in the PDP, the G5 Governors have elected to remain within the party‘s ranks while openly campaigning against its presidential candidate.

This is certainly not the first time PDP Governors are rebelling against the choice of presidential flag bearer.

It happened in the 2014/2014 election cycle when five governors, namely, Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Rotimi Ameachi (Rivers), Aliyu Magatakarda Wamako (Sokoto), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), walked out of the party’s National Convention.

Their grouse was that then-PDP President Goodluck Jonathan breached an agreement for power to return to the North after serving out the two years left of the tenure of his late boss, Umoru Yar’Adua, and serving a four-year term of his own.

Their decision set the stage for several party stalwarts in the national and state assemblies to ditch the then-ruling party. Those who remained simply sabotaged the party from within.

As then-Imo State Governor  Rochas Okorocha succinctly put it during a dinner held in honour  of  APC governors after the 2015 elections,  the entrance of the 5 PDP governors into the APC “transformed a fledgling opposition into a national political movement. … The moment the PDP lost five governors was the moment it lost the presidency and its planned 60 years in power.”

The current face-off between the G-5 Governors is different from what transpired in 2015 in a number of ways.

Unlike in 2015 when then-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, led a substantial number of legislators to join the governor’s revolt, a sizable number of PDP legislators appears supportive of the current position of the party’s National Secretariat and Atiku.

The minority leaders in both the Senate and the House of Representatives and other principal officers have cast their lot in favour of the party’s candidate.

Fighting from within

Wike, who has been in the news since the dispute started, has told all those who care to listen that he and his colleagues are prepared to remain in the PDP and fight from within.

Speaking through his media aide, Kevin Ebiri, in a statement issued last year, Wike alluded to the 2014 governors’ rebellion.

He said, “One thing I have always told people is if anybody is thinking, doing anything to think that we will leave PDP, foul.

“We will fight at the party. We are not like them, when, in 2014, they walked out from Eagle Square. They’ve forgotten. They walked out and joined APC. Is it not correct?

“Did they remain to fight inside the party? But we remained; they ran away. Now, there is a fight at the party, we will not run. We will fight it at this party.

“Those who run away from fights are weak people. We will not. So, everybody should know this is the state where we are so that nobody tells you all kinds of stories.”

Wike and his colleagues have held several meetings within and outside Nigeria all in a bid to firm up their position with regard to their political direction.

Their foreign tours have taken them to Turkey, Spain and several times London in the United Kingdom (UK).

The latest London trip has been the subject of several media speculations prominent among which was that they met with and threw their weight behind the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu. 

Both Tinubu and Wike have since denied the existence of any such meeting or agreement.

If the body language of the G5 Governors is anything to go by, they all appear to agree on one point: Power must go to the South after President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight uninterrupted years. Simply put, any candidate other than Atiku or Rabiu Kwankwaso.

They also appear to agree that today’s politics and the level of public awareness among the populace have given rise to local peculiarities which have made it virtually impossible for them to adopt a single candidate.

Wike, Ugwuanyi and Makinde appear to be tilting towards pitching their political tent with Asiwaju and, in exchange, he’ll accommodate their interests in their respective states.

Already, feelers from Rivers State indicate that the governor, whose prime interest is to ensure that his handpicked successor and candidates for the National as well as state assembly win, is said to be willing to do business with the APC.

For one, doing so will help him and the APC presidential candidate fix what some describe as “the Amaechi problem.”

These feelers have apparently struck a raw nerve in the Atiku camp, prompting a response from one of his several media aides.

Specifically, Atiku’s Special Assistant on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu, said, “Governor Wike needs to pay more attention to his health if he intends to hobnob with the APC against the wishes of his people in Rivers State.

“He continues to work for the success of a man whose mental and physical state is suspect.”

Open Campaign

In Enugu, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, who is aspiring for  a seat at the Senate, has, so far, avoided an open campaign for the APC. 

Feelers from the state indicate that his campaign in support of Asiwaju’s candidacy is being spearheaded by his close associate who calls him leader, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, himself a member of the PDP and former governor of Enugu.

Nnamani, one of Tinubu’s contemporaries, has been very vocal about his support for the former Lagos State governor and is said to enjoy the support of Ugwuanyi whom he calls his political leader in Enugu.

For Makinde, the choice of Tinubu appears convenient and expedient considering the mood among most governors in the South-West who had, at several a, announced their preference for a southerner, Tinubu, to be precise, as the next President.

Although he is yet to openly campaign for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has spoken glowingly about the candidate and even voiced his support for his endorsement by former President Olusegun Obasanjo a forthright ago.

Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu appears torn between Asiwaju and Obi owing to the growing popularity of Obi across the South-East.

A member of the Tinubu Support Group, Abdullahi Dauda, told Sunday Vanguard that he trusts Wike and his colleagues will go with Asiwaju because they know he’s the only candidate who has what it takes to win. 

He said, “These 5 PDP governors are not pushovers, they have been in politics and they know a winner when they see one. If you ask me, I can confidently tell you they are going with us all the way.”

The Atiku camp has remained positive about its principal’s chances. Their confidence stems from the fact that most, if not all, of the five states are traditional strongholds of the PDP.  The camp also has loyalists who are leaders and can hold their own in these states.

As Shuaibu puts it, “ The loud and repeated chants of ‘Atiku’ at the PDP rally organised by Governor Seyi Makinde in Ibadan where all the G5 governors were present, should serve as a wakeup call to the rebel governors. The people are clearly not with them.

“For Governor Makinde, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. Nothing can stand in the way of a moving train.”

An Abuja-based public affairs commentator,  Adakole Abraham, expressed the opinion that the 2023 election will be like no order before it.

He said, “This election will, in my opinion through up the kind of dynamics never before seen since our return to democracy in 1999. Why do I say so? For the first time, we are having three strong Nigerians from the three dominant tribes in the country.

“Two out of these three are perhaps contesting their last elections if age, physical and mental health are brought into play, these two, Atiku and Tinubu are veterans of several political battles they’ll be matching strength for strength, financial muscle and contacts.

“On the other hand, Obi will not be a pushover because of the largely youthful population behind him, now you also have statesmen lining up to endorse him. “

He further explained that the likelihood of leading parties failing to get the kind of majority they enjoyed in the past in the legislature is another possibility Nigerians may have to contend with.

Whoever wins this election will have to first deal with the socio-economic crisis that has reduced Nigeria from Africa’s leading economy to a nation which has over 133 million people representing about 60 per cent of its population living in poverty.