John Okiyi Kalu
Sometime between 2014 and 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nominated President Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate for the Presidential election and urged all her members to work for the victory of the party. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a ranking member of the party and former Vice President led Alhaji Bukola Saraki and others to decamp to the then opposition APC to support the emergence of Alhaji Muhammed Buhari as President against common sense and party supremacy. A PDP Governor from Rivers State aided and abetted the sabotage and they all celebrated afterwards.
The suffering of the people started. Obviously, the rebels wanted PDP to go into extinction in furtherance of whatever was their objective. As God would have it, some PDP Governors and other leaders kept things going and the party survived even though it lost the Presidency and many Governorship seats.
Nigerians have suffered untold hardship as a result of that sabotage by Atiku and co from 2015 to date and all the then PDP rebels must know they bear a huge chunk of the responsibility for what we are passing through today as a nation. They facilitated the Buhari presidency because of their selfish interest even when they knew Jonathan would have done better.
Four years down the line, Atiku and Co returned to PDP and the party graciously handed her Presidential ticket to hm in order to return to power. Interestingly, even though Atiku won the presidential election in his Adamawa state he barely managed to beat Buhari who polled 377,488 votes against 412,266 polled by Atiku. That was in 2019. In Katsina State for the same election, Buhari won Katsina State with 1,232,133 votes against Atiku’s 308, 056. votes. However, Buhari did in Katsina what Atiku could have done in Adamawa! Atiku performed better in Rivers State than his home state of Adamawa scoring 473,971 votes against Buhari’s 150,710 votes.
Fast forward to 2022 and Atiku again returned to claim the PDP presidential ticket at a time the overwhelming majority of Nigerians and party members wanted power to shift to the south for justice and equity. Whether we admit it or not, even the leadership of PDP anticipated a southern candidate, hence, the decision to cede Parity’s Chairmanship position to the north. The south, particularly the southeast and south, which gave the party her highest plurality of votes in 2015 and 2019 didn’t make the cut again because of Atiku.
Those blaming Wike for the current impasse within the party are not wise. Wike has not dumped the party yet and to date, he has not directly attacked Atiku. At best, he has maintained an ambivalent position that is neither here nor there with regard to supporting the candidate of the party. I can easily guess that Wike will not dump the party no matter the provocation but he can choose to stay on his own and do nothing to support the party financially and with that critically important posh required to produce better numbers than Atiku garnered in Adamawa in 2019.
Wike and his group should be pacified, not vilified because those arrayed against them were not better party members in the past. A situation where the Atiku camp has allegedly gone ahead to share key positions is even more laughable and insulting to some of us. Do you want to reward the betrayal of Tambuwal with Senate Presidency while Bukola will get SGF?
Kedu nke south east ketara? Anyway, when Atiku betrayed Jonathan in 2014/15 he had a Rivers State PDP Governor as an ally. Maybe karma is at work to reward him unless he makes haste to resolve whatever is the grievance of Wike and his group. Leadership is about solving human problems and in 2014/15 Jonathan failed to solve his problem with Rotimi Amaechi and the end thereof is suffering for all Nigerians under Buhari.
If Atiku fails to resolve his problem with Wike, my best guess is to tell him to kiss the election goodbye because that would have confirmed karma at work to throw up someone else as President. The rest of us can brace up for something worse than Buhari unless the miracle of obedience happens.
