by Funke Egbemode

Once upon a time, PDP reigned and ruled Ogun state. Then the leaders and elders of the party became too full of themselves… They went to battle, pushed each other down the same staircase that took them up, crushing the party in the process.

They started small; just a few good and not-so-good men who wanted to make a difference while they also made profit. As the days passed by, their numbers grew. As their ranks swelled, their influence grew. Their wealth also grew. The group was known as Good Men’s Club (GMC).  Soon they became the envy of many. More people joined and their clout grew in direct proportion to their size.

The little city club soon spread across cities in the land. In fact, the club soon swallowed other city clubs. Members became small gods and acted as such. Their problem wasn’t just their size but their ever growing wealth, strength and influence. All eventually led them into a multitude of sins. They now had too much money they knew not what to do with. They enlarged their coasts and acquired everything in sight. They shut up every voice that spoke against them.

But because of the patronage and material affluence at their disposal, more men flocked to the GMC. Soon the club stopped battling to resist temptation. It simply fell into it. It was easier that way. The members knew where all the temptations were. Nobody needed to lead them. And GMC was so at home with all the brands of sin. The money drew more men to them. All their successes were also headed in the same direction, their head.

Swollen head, swollen ranks, deepest of pockets and limitless access to temptation… GMC soon became sinfully proud. Even as we speak, the Good Men’s Club is still influential, still very rich. Only now they seem to be on a determined road to self destruction. To people who have watched them over the years, the only logical conclusion for the affliction currently ravaging GMC is that the club, having gone all the way to the top, has nowhere else to go but down. And since the staircase that took them to the top of their game is still there, the downward journey shouldn’t be difficult. The club is steadily descending.

However, there are two baffling angles to the GMC’s rise and fall story. It looks like members are struggling to push one another down the slope. Secondly, the elders and leaders of the club are busy drinking cognac and smoking Captain Black tobacco in designer pipes to notice the stampede on the staircase. With the din and cacophonous confusion going on around them, the leaders of GMC are still dancing with their wives and concubines and celebrating what used to be. They are totally oblivious of the havoc being wreaked around them.

All the in-house committees are at war with one another. Young members are threatening to beat up old members. When they are not struggling over who heads what group, they are holding one another’s ‘agbada’ over who is or has become too powerful. When they are not expelling founding members,  they are swinging swords of Damocles over the heads of those they decide have committed hara-kiri. Yet the endless stream of full-figured fine girls and choice red wine won’t let these old men do the needful. The only saving grace for GMC for now is that the confused men on the staircase are yet to remember that the journey to the bottom of the ladder can be done faster in the elevator. The moment they find the elevator, GMC would finally sink and rest in peace.

Somehow this story reminds me of the confusion going on in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the largest party in Africa. All the big boys in the party seem to be on the staircase right now, ready to trample one another to death in their deadly power game. There is enough mutual distrust and suspicion to sink a warship in PDP and we, the people, just can’t understand the nature of the affliction that has overtaken  the party that threatened to rule us forever. Why are they fighting over everything? Why has fighting become the only thing we get to report about the ruling party? How come even children can predict where the rancour in PDP will end and self-acclaimed political men of timber and calibre can’t see beyond their fat cigars? Yes, the drama is entertaining and the intrigues produce great headlines every day but has the PDP become so sinfully proud that it cannot see that it is on a shameful staircase to perdition?

I know that too much money and clout has left PDP in drunken stupor and its elders with a disgraceful false sense of non-existent power and clout, I will still remind them of what awaits them as a political group.

Once upon a time, PDP reigned and ruled Ogun state. Then the leaders and elders of the party became too full of themselves. One man felt the other was getting too big for his boots and needed to be cut to size. One elder felt the other  was overbearing and controlling. They went to battle, pushed each other down the same staircase that took them up, crushing the party in the process. In their arrogant bids to cut each other to size, they now have no size, no clout. The opposition came, saw the fighting elephants sprawled in the mud but still cursing each other anyway, took  the staircase and used it to climb to the top. In Ogun, PDP is part of the history of how the state became what it is today, just because a few big men became too big to sustain their success.

The Yoruba say when a child falls down, he looks in front of him but when an old man falls, he looks behind, obviously to see what made him trip so as to avoid a repeat. So how come the elders in PDP are not learning from their terrible fall in Ogun? Why are they determined to replicate what undid them in Ogun on a national level? Is it that there are no elders in that party or what? Wait. Perhaps Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, former PDP Chairman, was right after all. Remember while on a campaign trail pre-2011 elections, Ogbulafor took a memorable swipe at the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)’s party symbol, the broom, saying that when you see a fully grown man waving a broom in broad daylight, he is either mad or is a witch. Maybe he was right. Maybe ACN has bewitched PDP and that is why the ruling party is scrambling for doom.

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