*An opposition party in disarray

By Ben Agande, Abuja

Senator Ali Modu Sheriff  pulled a  masterstroke  on Monday. He arrived the National Secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) early in the morning, accompanied by loyalists, including a  former National Secretary of the party, Professor Wale Oladipo; and a former Vice Chairman, Dr Cairo Ojuogboh.  After several hours of delay and long minutes of telephone conversation between him and the  authorities in the security services, Sheriff and his group gained entrance into the National Secretariat.

This  action came barely two weeks after the Caretaker  Committee of the PDP,  set up at its National Convention in Port-Harcourt, and headed by a  former governor of Kaduna State, Ahmed Makarfi, in an elaborate ceremony, had taken over the affairs of the  opposition party. It marked a remarkable escalation of the leadership crisis that had engulfed the PDP since it lost power last year.

Though there was a seeming lull in the crisis  with the coming  of Sheriff, the PDP can be rightly described as a party that has known little peace since it lost power to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015.

It would be recalled that, in the aftermath of its defeat and the subsequent resignation of Adamu Muazu as the Chairman of the party, the leadership that has emerged can, at best, be described as tenuous. Though Uche Secondus, the Deputy National Chairman of the PDP,  took over the reins of leadership following the resignation of  Muazu, his stay was temporary as the position of  Chairman was, in the tradition of the party, supposed to be held by a member of the party from the North East.

So, when it appeared that Secondus was not in a hurry to leave office or organize  the election  that would usher in Muazu’s successor from the North East, Ahmed Gulak, a former political adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, citing a  court order, announced himself as the Chairman of the party. Though not many people, both within and outside the party, took Gulak serious as his emergence was neither a product of an election nor appointment  by  any of the  organs of the party, his attempt at interloping into the leadership that he never publicly declared for, marked the beginning of the leadership crisis that has continued to dog the party.

Menwhile, the action of the former political adviser woke some concerned members of the PDP  from their slumber. Whereas  the National Working Committee  (NWC), under the leadership of  Secondus, initiated the process for the election of a  Chairman of the party that would complete the tenure of  Muazu, critical stakeholders launched  moves to install a candidate that is well heeled to manage the affairs of the PDP and reposition it for the arduous task  of reclaiming the presidency of the country in 2019.

Protestation

File: Senator Alimodu Sheriff addressing press men when he stormed the PDP National Secretariat, Abuja, on Monday, June 13, 2016, with his supporters.

Two governors of the party, Ayodele Fayose and Nyesom Wike of Ekiti and Rivers states  respectively,  known for their  fearlessness, settled for Sheriff; a man better known for his controversies.

Sheriff’s emergence as Chairman sparked  protestation from a broad section of the party. Femi Fani-Kayode, a former spokesman of the campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan led the pack. While describing what he called the imposition of Sheriff on the party as an “abominable monstrosity”, his allegation that “Sheriff was a man who encouraged the establishment of Boko Haram and supported a group that wished to suspend the Nigerian Constitution, wipe out the Christian faith”, found sync with not only members of the party but  also a cross section of Nigerians and further helped in galvanizing the huge opposition against Sheriff as Chairman of the party.

The opposition against Sheriff  made those who thought his choice was going to inspire confidence and ginger the morale of the already morose supporters of the party to have a rethink. Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy President of the Senate and the highest political office holder in the PDP,  moved in to check the almost certain implosion that a Sheriff leadership was going to cause in the party by convening a  meeting with  aggrieved parties who were united by their opposition to Sheriff.

At a  meeting that had in attendance  representatives of  the groups opposed to Sheriff, PDP governors, members of the party in the National Assembly, members of the Board of Trustees and other stakeholders, a compromise was reached  which entailed that Sheriff would serve in office for three months after which he would organize a  National Convention to usher in a substantive Chairman of the party. A truce appeared to have been reached and the PDP again appeared  poised to remain united once again.

But for a man who does not take no for an answer and has set the  record as one of the only two politicians in the country to snatch a ticket from a sitting governor, Sheriff had other plans up his sleeve. While setting up some committees preparatory to the convention, he sidelined stakeholders in the party and peopled the committees with  alleged  cronies, a move that raised the red flag among PDP leaders including Professor Jerry Gana and former Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu.

Zoning to oneself

As if to prove his critics right, when the committee on zoning of offices of the party submitted its report, it curiously recommended that the position of the Chairman  be zoned to the North-East. But the recommendation  runs  contrary to the party convention.  Apart from the fact that the zoning of the chairmanship to the North  contravenes  the earlier decision of the party that it had zoned the presidency  ahead  of  the 2019 elections  to the North, zoning in the PDP  had always been between the North and the South and not the subsets of the zones as the Sheriff’s zoning committee curiously did. It was  alleged that Sheriff had zoned the chairmanship position to himself.

Even with this alleged anomaly, some party chieftains, including the governors elected  on  the platform of the PDP, were ready to give Sheriff a chance. A  National Convention was fixed for Port-Harcourt which was recognized by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), thereby taking the wind off the sail of the rival group, headed by Gana, which had also fixed its convention for same day in Abuja.

But as thousands of party faithful converged on Port-Harcourt for the convention, the governors, who have ascribed to themselves the role of custodians of the party, began an honest soul searching to unravel why the opposition against Sheriff had continued unabated despite the assurances he had given that he meant well for the party.

According to  Fayose, one of the earliest fans and promoters of Sheriff, the soul searching by the governors unearthed  a  Sheriff that was, while publicly pretending to be working for the greater interest of the greater majority of the party members, was secretly working to feather his nest in his alleged ambition to be the presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2019 elections. And to use the loyalty of the governors, he promised quite a few of them that he would offer them the vice presidential ticket when he gets the ticket for the election. It was at this point that the governors moved against him.

PDP Wadata Plaza

When the party went for its convention in Port Harcourt and a faction organised a parallel convention in Abuja, the latent threat that had lurked in the background became more potent. Critical stakeholders in the party, therefore, had to be pragmatic in advancing solutions that would halt the slide of the PDP into oblivion. It was this position that informed the dissolution of the Sheriff-led National Working Committee by the National Convention of the party and the setting up of the Makarfi-led seven member Caretaker Committee.

But for a man who does not take no for an answer and has set the enviable record as one of the only two politicians in the country to snatch a ticket from a sitting governor,  Sheriff did not take the moves to oust him from office lightly. He dragged the PDP to court. Ironically, weeks before the party moved against him in Port Harcourt, Sheriff had vaunted that he would lead the party to taking over from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

It was the fear of possible breach of peace from the supporters of the contending forces that forced the police to take a proactive measure to deny all the parties as well as workers of the party access into the party secretariat last Monday when he and his supporters stormed the place.

In a related development, the contending forces, which had hitherto tugged at the soul of the PDP, coalesced to save the party. At a meeting convened by the Board of Trustees, all the caucuses of the party endorsed the Makarfi-led committee. With that move,  Sheriff, who had declined to attend the meeting, was left in isolation, even though he remained resolute at laying claim to the leadership of the party.

So the importance of the assumption of office of  Makarfi and members of his team is not just in its symbolism but, in the potentials, this represents  especially as the party struggles to navigate the various political and legal land mines that lay ahead of it.

But with what happened on Monday, what many considered as Sheriff’s calm acceptance of his fate was really an incubation period for the stunt he pulled. He forcibly took possession of the office when no member of the PDP NWC would possibly be around.

While it remains to be seen how he will remain in charge with all the organs of the party against him, Sheriff has, to many party chieftains, demonstrated that he is well versed in the principle: What the chicken cannot readily get, it spreads away using its talons.

While the Makarfi-led Caretaker Committee resorts to the judiciary to claim back its mandate from Sheriff, the secretariat of the party in the last one week has witnessed daily protests by both supporters of Sheriff and Makarfi.

As Nigerians watch with keen interest to see how this crisis will be resolved, the danger in the prolongation of the leadership tussle will not only have dire consequences on the PDP but also  on the country’s nascent democracy as the nation would be deprived of a robust opposition that a strong PDP would have provided.