by Funmi Egbemode

A colleague confident that PDP would bounce back said the party would do what it had always done and close ranks and shut all of us out. That is one confidence dance I won’t be part of. As far as I can see, PDP’ll never be the same, at least for a long time to come.

If not that good etiquette says that it is in bad taste to tell a man suffering the consequences of his bad ways ‘I told you so’, I would have thumbed my nose and say ‘ntoo’ to PDP. If not that I am a good girl, even if I say so myself, I would have organised a gloating party to celebrate the scramble for and the partitioning of this incorrigible ruling party.

Yes, because I warned them. Oh, how I warned them. I, like millions of Nigerians, saw this PDP 1 and PDP 2 coming and we alerted them. Inspite of many readers of this page’s objections to my many warnings, that I should  rather encourage PDP to press the self destruct button, I kept on warning the party. But did anybody listen to me? No, the party was too far gone in its reprobate ways, too focussed on everything  ruinous and too determined to jump off the cliff. That was why I had a good laugh on Thursday night as I watched Senator Florence Ita-Giwa and a group of female peacemakers in PDP telling the warring factions to sheath their swords and ‘step away from the precipice’ and let peace reign.

I almost choked on my vegetable soup. Those guys want to sheath their swords all right, but they want to bury it in somebody’s back. I can also assure Senator Ita-Giwa that the PDP has the patent for dancing at the edge of the precipice. No one else does it like members of that party. Their death wish has no Part 2.

Someone asked me if this is the end of PDP. I am still pondering the question. A colleague confident that PDP would bounce back said the party would do what it had always done and close ranks and shut all of us out. That is one confidence dance I won’t be part of. As far as I can see, PDP’ll never be the same, at least for a long time to come. When I wrote, ‘PDP!!!, share the whatever’, you didn’t believe me. Then I wrote  ‘PDP!!!, bring down the house’, you thought I was joking but you guys should have taken me seriously when I wrote ‘King Okonji’s fading kingdom’.

If you still think I’m an incurable pessimist, you can continue to ignore me. I know that  some people with persecution complex would conclude that I have been paid to run PDP down today. To those ones I say you are welcome to your stupidity and ostrich business. Feel free to call me names even. All you and I know is the PDP is fading fast because most of the time the PDP bus has no brakes and is being driven by an alcoholic.

However, much as I would have liked to dance and swirl to the I-told-you-so song playing in my head, common sense tells me that the death of PDP does not necessarily mean life for Nigeria. I am a strong believer in the unity of Nigeria. I even believe Nigeria is unbreakable. But my dear country is bursting at the seams even as PDP is groping blindly on the floor looking for what is not really lost. Like a colleague said, our collective destiny is literally in the hands of the PDP. Our national fate, right now and the fortunes of the PDP are joined at the hips. That is a sad harsh fact but today is a day for saying it as it is. If you do not believe me, let’s consider this hypothetical scenario.

Let us assume that the drama playing out in PDP is about automatic ticket for President Jonathan. That it is about whether he should run or not.  It is about whether there should be  presidential primaries or not . it is about zoning. All of that are legitimate quests and fears. Now, from where i stand, that automatic ticket is not looking so sure right now. And what if no automatic ticket for Jonathan turns out to be no ticket at all for Jonathan? That would mean the first time a sitting president in Nigeria would be going home after a term. It would also mean the first time an incumbent president would bid for a second term in vain since 1999. Could that also mean that the South South would feel affronted and insulted? Would they be asking us why it is when is their turn to enjoy the ‘akara’ that an ordinary soft beans cake became a bone? Would they return to the creeks? If they start wearing those dreadful looking red scarves and hoods again, what would it mean? Would there be force majeurs and crude shut-in? Would there be violence and blood beyond the creeks? Would the Nigerian state fold its arms while a section of the country hold our collective wealth hostage? Would there be counter violence, more blood, massive deployment of air and land forces? Would another civil war be staring us in the face? These are just hypothetical questions, don’t forget, to show how the misfortunes of a party can affect the whole nation, how a party’s arrogance and over-confidence can ruin a country.

Hypothetically, PDP can ruin Nigeria.

But we did not have to get to this point. PDP had many chances to redeem itself but it frittered it all away. PDP ignored a little itch, watched it fester into leprousy. We’d always known PDP was heading for disaster but we were not exactly sure how it would manifest. Maybe next week or sometime later, we will retrace the journey that brought the ruling party to this sorry pass but for now, I’ll attempt a last ditch effort to save what is remaining of my hope for an unbreakable country.

You see, the biggest victim of what is happening in PDP is President Goodluck Jonathan. If this sh-t finally and totally hits the fan, the big masquerade who’d be left holding the short end of the stick would be Mr President and my heart goes to him. My people say when a lame man goes out to foment trouble, it is the able-bodied men in his family that will pay the price.

Mr President, you have allowed bad advice to hold you hostage. You have believed blind men who told you they can read the map and guide you. You have allowed old men to tell you they are marathon race champions. And now? You have to carry the can all alone. Or if I am wrong, ask those great men who have made enemies for you in every region of this country to tell you what they stand to lose if you don’t get a second term? They are political jobbers who will negotiate their next meal tickets with the next king. They will crawl into any palace and do whatever they have to do. They will even tell your opponents that they warned you but you were stubborn.

Mr President, ask Alhaji Bamanga Tukur what he has done for you lately and compare it with the growing army of opposition within and outside PDP. How did we get to a point where the National Assembly took over the Rivers State House of Assembly? Who was telling everybody who didn’t agree with the PDP Chairman to get out of the party and what was that supposed to achieve? Nyako, Amaechi, Wammako, Lamido were all told they were free to leave the party at different times. What kind of father tells every stubborn son to leave the house? Under Tukur, we witnessed the birth of the Wise Men from the North. We saw time-tested politicians and elders of this nation welcome them into their homes. We saw governors  sticking together and calling the bluff of both President and Tukur. Governor Amaechi said Jonathan was his leader. Babangida Aliyu said he would not leave PDP. They wanted Tukur out. He was not a good leader, they insisted.

Small me, I warned the President that he couldn’t say for sure who was on his side after that Governors’ Forum face off. My President didn’t listen to me or his aggrieved party men. The party kept on suspending and expelling everybody, generating tension everyday. Yes, PDP is big but it is not invincible. There is a limit to how much tension and discontent even PDP can take and that’s the lesson in all this.

I will end with this short story from a Yoruba proverb.

Adasinil’orun Obinrin Odogo

Elewure nwa ewure

Alaguntan nwa aguntan

O ni ki won je ki oko oun o de.

One morning, the  people of a village woke up to find their sheep and goats missing and went from house to house searching. When they got to Odogo’s wife’s house, she smiled like a fool and said everybody with a missing animal should wait for her husband to return from his journey.

Doesn’t that just implicate Odogo as the thief of goats and sheep? Has Odogo’s wife not put her husband into trouble by her statement? When Bamanga Tukur was elbowing other members and telling governors they were free to leave the PDP, who was he implicating?

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.