Senator Makarfi is a good man who got entangled in PDP’s drama and is now struggling to extricate himself from the mess because his ego and Modu Sheriff’s daily taunts would not allow him to walk away cleanly.
Makarfi was a magnificent governor of Kaduna State. He built excellent roads. He rehabilitated long neglected healthcare facilities. He was a humble, unassuming man who built bridges across Kaduna’s multiethnic and multi-religious divides. I was a witness to all these.
Makarfi was a peace builder who, confronted with multiple, recurring ethnoreligious crisis, confronted it frontally and put in place a security architecture that restored peace to Kaduna State.
He then granted chieftaincy autonomy and self-determination to the peoples of Southern Kaduna, satisfying their long agitation to be removed from the control of Zazzau and removing a historical source of tension and resentment.
Makarfi is fondly remembered in Kaduna today in part because of his record of accomplishment and in part because his successors were abysmal and failed to build on the foundation of stability and development he laid.
But bad things happen to good people and Makarfi finds himself held hostage in a dying political party.
It’s a shame really because Makarfi has defied the Nigerian political disease of cross-carpeting and party promiscuity. Unlike many other politicians of the fourth republic, Makarfi has remained in one political party, the PDP, despite the party’s fragmentation and troubles and despite the party being currently in the political desert.
There are very few politicians in Nigeria today for whom this is true, who have remained in one political party since the return of democracy in 1999. The other prominent politician who has been similarly consistent in his party identity is Sule Lamido, former Governor of Jigawa State.
Politicians and principle should not be mentioned in one breath. That is precisely why Makarfi deserves special mention. He has stuck it out, clung on, and refused to obey the urge to opportunistically defect to the ruling APC. He refused to ride the Buhari wave like many people did to either secure power or remain in power and retain their political following. Northern politicians who refused to jump on the Buhari bandwagon in 2014/2015 deserve points for political courage and conviction, for their very lives were at risk.
This is all why Makarfi must be told the truth, that PDP is dead. He has made his point. He has paid his dues. He has given it his all but a comatose party kept alive only by the ego of its usurper-chairman cannot be saved. Someone needs to break this to Makarfi. He is a good man trapped in a tragi-comedic vortex. There is no need for him to continue to sully his hard-earned reputation for decency by tussling with Modu Sheriff.
Those who know and love Makarfi should tell him that, if tomorrow he announces that he is leaving the PDP for Sheriff and his gang and joining the APC or a new party, his case will be treated and judged differently from that of many others, and history will look kindly upon his choice. No one will hold the decision against him or invoke it to question his principle. For everyone knows that even a principled, steadfast man should know when the fight is over, when to wisely detach himself from a lost cause.
The ability to walk away from a doomed project and reinvent oneself is itself another kind of principle.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Moses E. Ochonu is Professor of African History at Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Africa in Fragments: Essays on Nigeria, Africa, and Global Africanity (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2014).
This yr own opiniion.Hold it to yrself.