by Oluwatosin Fatoyinbo

If the governors persist, Mu’azu will have no choice but to step aside. Most importantly, the party cannot do a proper repositioning if the chairman and the governors are at loggerheads.

Nigeria a great nation
PDP a great party
Obasanjo and Atiku will take us to the promise land

It sounds like a thousand years ago when these jingles ran on all national television and radio stations. It was in the build up to the 2003 presidential election. At that time, the fact that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was a great party was not in doubt. As it would turn out, Obasanjo and Atiku were returned into government effortlessly. Fast forward to 2015 and the once great party is tethering on the brink of destruction. While Atiku is a stalwart of the new ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Obasanjo showed us yet once more the ever dramatic side of his personality by comically supervising the shredding of his PDP membership card. APC now has majority in the National Assembly and as governorship seats. Rather than regroup, the party is bickering and throwing tantrums; and the man at the centre of the crisis is the man nicknamed the game changer. Since they call him the game changer, I thought it appropriate to use the game of football as an analogy.

In a game of football, when a manager is procured for the sake of achieving an objective; say for instance to win the league or to qualify his team for a spot in the UEFA champions league and he fails to achieve that objective, he does not need to be told that he might lose his job. Football club owners are not patient enough to watch you make mistakes over and over again (except Arsenal perhaps). They are more concerned about getting results from their huge investment. Politics in many ways is like a game of football; you lose some and win some. Nobody will complain if you win the league but fails to win the UEFA champions league but when you miss out on all of it, then something is either wrong with the players or the coach. Imagine that instead of winning the league this season, English champions, Chelsea FC got relegated to the lower league division. Jose Mourinho does not need to be told of the need to resign. Often, it is the manager that gets booted out and that is how the game of football. And sincerely, I think that should also apply to politics. It’s the Ed Milliband resigned as the national leader of the UK Labour Party. But in Nigeria, politicians won’t ever let go. When a National chairman is removed some months to an election, you expect that the replacement should supply what was or is missing in the man who was booted out. Such was the story of the man Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu. He was called the game changer, he indeed changed the game. Alhaji Mu’azu, a two term governor of Bauchi state was brought in as the replacement for the much maligned Bamanga Tukur. Mr. Tukur, it was who mishandled the G7 crisis. The game changer was supposed to help reduce the effect of the G7 crisis but he never really did anything about it.

I have attempted to explain below three reasons why Mr. Game changer should be changed:

a. The Youth versus Alhaji Mu’azu
To say that PDP youths aren’t impressed with Mu’azu will be an understatement. The PDP had always won using its old ways and there was that evanescent belief that the party will sail through 2015 using the same old tricks. It took many persuasions before the party hierarchy understood the powers of the social media and even when they finally caught up, it was done in parts and bits. It is bewildering really, considering the fact that President Jonathan declared his intention to run for the 2011 presidential race on Facebook, and got a massive reception from Nigerians on that platform. After 2011, social media became the bane of the PDP, with the social media face of the PDP messing up big time. While the PDP was comfortably napping on social media, the APC made massive investments in gathering and supporting a social media team, the PDP social media team was led by young people who did so out of their loyalty for the party and not as a result of help from the party. PDP youth watched in shame as the APC set up a strong Situation Room to monitor the election, it is not deniable that that investment paid off. If the party must rise again, it needs new faces to enter into the next phase. And as it stands, the young men and women in the party are some of its greatest assets. If the youth in PDP champion its revival, the game changer has to be changed and replaced a chairman who understands the role of modern technology in electoral systems.

b. The Governors versus Mu’azu
When the next government is sworn in on May 29, APC will be in control of Nigeria. The national assembly will be dominated by the new ‘governing party’ (and by the way APC is not the ruling party, they have said they are only the governing party). The APC will also be in firm control of majority of the states of the Federation. To be precise, APC will have 22 broom waving governors while the PDP will have just 13 umbrella wielding governors. Already, feelers suggest that the incoming governors don’t want Mr. Mu’azu in charge by the time they are sworn in. And truth be told, if the party intends to prevent these governors from defecting to the new ruling party, their egos will have to be stoked. Mr. Mu’azu is currently in a battle of wits with the hot headed governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose. Love him or hate him, Fayose delivers and is not going to be sacrificed for Mu’azu. If the governors persist, Mu’azu will have no choice but to step aside. Most importantly, the party cannot do a proper repositioning if the chairman and the governors are at loggerheads.

c. 2019 in view
Four years look like a very long time. Not in politics. In the next couple of years, PDP needs to reorganize and restructure in such a way that it would be ready for the 2019 elections. But before then, there will be elections in some states in some odd years, Anambra, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Kogi, Edo and Bayelsa. Of the seven states mentioned, PDP has two states, if the party does not work smart, the possibility that it might lose those states are rife. Though this may depend largely on the performance of the APC led federal government. Edo and Osun are controlled by the APC and winning the states under federal control may proof difficult unless the Buhari government absolutely underperforms. I can never understand Osun state, despite the hype about Ogbeni Rauf; I have never been convinced by the bearded governor. In saner climes, a governor who refuses to pay workers for more six months should no longer be in power (I heard Suswam also owes workers), but the people of Osun preferred him to PDP’s Omisore. Whether the trend will continue in 2018 is yet to be seen but Ogbeni will have no excuse the moment the new government comes into power. Hitherto, his argument had been that the Federal government was starving Osun because it belongs to the opposition. Edo may be dicey because of the South South anger. Generally, there seems to be a cold anger in that region. The people are aggrieved that their ‘son’ didn’t have the opportunity to be in government for another term knowing full well that another opportunity is unlikely to come anytime soon. Due to all these dynamics, I feel strongly that the PDP is dire need of a younger and more vibrant chairman. Adamu Mu’azu just does not fit the bill.

But whatever the party chooses to do, it’s obvious that it has a huge task if it must return to power anytime soon.
“Rather than the strength it takes to not lose, it’s the strength to stand back up after a loss that is sometimes more valuable.” – Ryo Shirodaira

Just my two cents!

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God-chaser, Lawyer, Music lover and Arsenal fan, Oluwatosin tweets @Tosinfat

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