Saving The PDP: Before The Streams of Oblivion Come Calling

Editor’s note: The 2015 general elections in Nigeria brought many changes to the political structure of Nigeria. While the APC and president Muhammadu Buhari are learning to embrace their power status, the PDP is adjusting to its new role as the main opposition party in Nigeria. The Naij.com columnist Japheth Omojuwa says that in order to survive and, more so, to effectively fulfil its role, the party has to make all the right choices about its leadership.

The only people not likely to agree that the People’s Democratic Party (the PDP), Nigeria’s former ruling party, needs to be saved from itself are the very people eating out of its decomposing carcass. The PDP has become a living dead, parts of it literally dead and decomposing, while certain elements within it are keeping its last flicker of light alive. Most of those keeping it alive are not doing so for the common good of party and country, they are doing it just so they can feed off what is left of the once mighty giant that ruled Nigeria to its feet until the 29th day of May, 2015.

Nigeria cannot afford another walk in the wilderness of meaningless opposition. The PDP held sway for over a decade and a half simply because the opposition never got its acts together. The then-ruling party enshrined the attitude of anything goes and bashushu politics because it really did have no competition until the All Progressives Congress (APC) was formed. More than anyone else, the PDP itself knew it was invincible at the time its then party chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, declared in 2008 the party would rule for the next 60 years! That boast expired at the turn of seven years. Their reign of impunity had reached its fullness as Nigerians swept it away at the polls.

PDP, giant on its knees

Now that the giant is on its knees and dying, who will save it? Some people may not agree with this assertion but there are indeed still some good people within the party that can help it provide Nigeria a virile, productive opposition. The Olisa Metuh-esque form of opposition that looks to condemn the APC even when the president decides to eat and not use the toilet cannot put the party in good stead for the right kind of opposition Nigerians desire.

Instead of focusing on issues of development, the Metuh-esque opposition focuses on mud and pettiness. For a party whose leadership killed what was left of Nigeria’s relationship with its main allies, one found it particularly puzzling that such an entity would find fault in the new government’s moves to repair such important multilateral relationships. For every new day Metuh-esque opposition decides the direction of the main opposition party, its strength will further wane, its usefulness will dwindle, and in time, its coffin will be nailed!

We do not want such a tragedy. Irrespective of the sort of leadership the party offered our country, it is out of power now, and we need it to succeed at being an opposition party. In a world where the Nuhu Ribadus and the Donald Dukes of this world exist, the Ayo Fayoses and the Olisa Metuhs should be allowed to exist given their fundamental human right to live, but the microphone should never end up with those who talk for the purpose of just creating meaningless sound. Those within the PDP who have something useful to say per time should be the voice of the PDP. Either that happens, or they sink further into the abyss of oblivion. The point of no return, a lo rami rami!

Being a failed ruling party is one thing, failing at being an opposition party is another, and to fail at both ends would be to fail into the enduring hands of irrelevance. The PDP designed its own misfortune by orchestrating injustice within its fold. It can reverse its ways and give the current party in power a run for its money. President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat and that was a gracious act, one he’d always be remembered for. The PDP must go a step further by conceding that that government failed Nigeria. There is no repentance without admittance of guilt. There is nothing to repent from if you do not admit your wrong. That the PDP has been reduced to a party where its own workers pointedly accuse its national publicity secretary of corruption is a pointer to the fact that something needs to give. That the PDP can come to a day when paying its workers is a herculean task should make it obvious it is not impossible for it to lose its last legs except something gets done.

Online representation

The party must rid itself of those who claim to represent it on the Internet, infesting rational online conversations with content devoid of respect and common sense. The PDP had lost the online conversation before it lost the national elections. If it doesn’t clean up its act online by washing off itself from jobless youths who cannot feed except with the token paid by the party, it will continue to lose online and everywhere else. Even online, there are calm heads with content who can represent the party in a respectful way, without further alienating it from Nigerians who only want the best for the country. Positioning a party that has lost the centre as an enclave of ethnic interests cannot help either.

You cannot have Jimi Agbaje in your midst in the Southwest and then insist on known election-riggers and those who are able to claim to have once been trained in the ways of areaboyism as your image. Except the PDP really took the Agbaje campaign line, “I am not one of them,” to heart, he should be playing a central role in the reformation of the PDP.

Ensuring effectiveness

There you have it: to build a system that can effectively compete in a world where jokers are not allowed to thrive, you need, before anything else, the right people. The spine of the new PDP should be the likes of Donald Duke, Jimi Agbaje and Nuhu Ribadu. This is not to say there are no other people of good conscience, it is just to say that these three gentlemen should represent the image of the new PDP. It is a disservice to the idea of Common Sense, if those who genuinely love the PDP believe that the Olisa Metuhs of this world and their online infestations that once alienated them from Nigerians will help them become the party Nigerians will learn to love. Nigerians cannot hate those who make up your perception and then come to love you. That is an anomaly that will never get a chair to sit on, nor a ground to stand.

Just in case the PDP has chosen to die a natural death, let it be known than Nigeria’s Active Citizens have already stepped into the role of providing productive opposition to the government in power. We just would love to have a virile political party in place, in case we would have to pay the APC in the same coin we paid the last political party that took Nigerians for granted.

Japheth Omojuwa for Naij.com

Japheth Omojuwa is a renowned Nigerian social media expert, columnist and Naij.com contributor.

The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.

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