How Obasanjo Destroyed PDP

FORMER President Obasanjo, as we can see,
used the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to
rule Nigeria for eight years. As soon as he
assumed office in 1999, he made up his mind
to reduce Nigeria to a one-party state, his pet
party system which he canvassed vigorously
while Nigeria conducted its transition to civil
rule programmes. The first part of this serial
chronicled how he shrivelled the opposition
parties and made the PDP into a colossus that
dominated the political landscape. Eventually,
most leading lights in the opposition parties
decamped to the PDP.
By 2007 when Obasanjo was constitutionally
forced out of power, PDP was at the zenith of
its power and glory. It had 26 out of the 36
governors, 260 out of the 369 members of the
House of Representatives, 85 out of the 109
senators and an emphatic command of the
majority in the state legislatures and the 774
local councils. It was at this point that the
party started priding itself as “the largest
party in in Africa”, and some of its chieftains
boasted that the PDP would rule Nigeria for
“sixty years”.
The size of the Party was largely as a result of
Obasanjo’s repression of the opposition
parties, which became unattractive for
politicians tocontest for power. The party was
so powerful that Obasanjo suddenly developed
an ambition to grab extra terms of office for
himself when he was nearing the end of his
constitutional two terms. To succeed, he
nullified the membership of the party and
ensured that all party members were re-
registered. This, of course, ensured that those
Obasanjo did not want in the party were
weeded. These included former Vice President
Atiku Abubakar and former Governor of Abia
State, Chief Orji Kalu.
When his tenure elongation plans failed,
Obasanjo put his Plan “B” into effect. He
opted to unilaterally install his successor in
office. He chose a terminally ailing Governor
Umaru Yar’ Adua of Katsina state for
president and paired him with a quiet, self-
effacing Governor of Bayelsa State, Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan as Vice President. He also
planted his cronies as governors of the
various states. He even planted them in
opposition parties.
A case in point was in Imo, where the
Obasanjo ordered the PDP to withdraw from
the governorship race and support Chief Ikedi
Ohakim, who had decamped from PDP when
he failed to get the ticket at the primaries and
ran on the ticket of the Progressive People’s
Alliance (PPA).
Obasanjo’s ambition, at this juncture, was to
become the Life Leader of the PDP, such that
he could wield great political influence and
lord it over the occupants of Aso Villa from
Ota or Abeokuta.
The plan ran into storms, however. When Yar’
Adua assumed power, he refused to dance to
Obasanjo’s tunes. He was determined to leave
a legacy of his own. Obasanjo was not given
any space to maneouvre. But unfortunately,
Yar’ Adua became seriously sick and died in
2010. Obasanjo jumped out of his political
doghouse and started prompting Jonathan to
run on his own terms in 2011, even though
many northern leaders preferred that he
allowed one of theirs to replace him.
Soon, Obasanjo found out he had lost his
place in the PDP even under Jonathan. It was
so bad he was almost ignominiously booted
out of his Board of Trustees Chairman post. In
the middle of 2013, he resigned from the post.
President Jonathan was later on to describe
Obasanjo as “a goat seller who, after selling
his goat, refuses to release the rope”. The Ota-
born chicken farmer went home and started
the war that led, ultimately, to the end of
PDP’s reign.
In January 2014, he published one of his
series of scandalous open letters to President
Jonathan, accusing him of every abominable
sin under the sun, including training snipers to
kill his political opponents. A man under
whose watch many prominent people were
murdered was accusing a president who never
recorded a single such incident in his five and
half years as President!
Between April and May 2014, Obasanjo went
round many states of the North and persuaded
some of the governors he planted in power to
run for president to replace Jonathan. Some of
these were: Governors Sule Lamido of Jigawa,
Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano, Magatakarda
Wamakko of Sokoto and Babangida Aliyu of
Niger. Some of these OBJ-made governors
were at the forefront of the rebellion against
Jonathan.
The tipping point came when five of the rebel
governors decamped from PDP and joined the
newly amalgamated All Progressives Congress
(APC) which was put together by Asiwaju Bola
Ahmed Tinubu and General Muhammadu
Buhari.
From that point on, the rapid emaciation of
the PDP could no longer be stopped. Obasanjo
was relentless in his attacks on Jonathan.
Apart from writing public letters, he also
nudged some of his out-of-work former
ministers, such as Oby Ezekwesili, Nasir el
Rufai and lately, Charles Soludo, to slam the
Jonathan administration each time they got
the chance to go public. Obasanjo climaxed
his choreography with the public tearing of his
PDP membership card a couple of months to
the presidential election.
Of course, PDP’s fall from power under the
watch of President Jonathan was further
helped by the President’s failure to take
decisive steps when and where he needed to.
This made him subject to blackmail. Jonathan
surrounded himself with people who posed as
his lovers but were actually deceivers. They
took whatever they could from him and
abandoned him when he needed them most.
Matters were not helped by his sloppy
handling of the Boko Haram insurgency, which
grew from a small pox on the nose to a
plague that wracked the whole nation.
Perhaps, if Jonathan had been a little more in
charge and decisive, he would have prevented
some of the little problems that ballooned to
decide for him only one term in office. But
Obasanjo was the headwind that chipped
away, unchallenged, at the pedestal of his
presidential power.
Source:

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