By Ehichioya Ezomon
The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), rather than doing critical reviews, to know where it got it wrong, has adopted a strategy of blaming others, but itself for the party’s electoral failures.
Because of its overlordship it propounded in the famous declaration: “PDP will rule Nigeria for 60 years” nonstop, the party never gives room for a possible change of the status quo, even when its power projection was cut short in 2015.
So, it has “fall guys” to pin its losses on: President Muhammadu Buhari; the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); security agencies, especially the Police and Military; and thugs “recruited” by the APC.
Let’s look at the reactions of stalwarts of the PDP, following its “unexpected” defeat in the November 16, 2019, governorship election in the states of Bayelsa and Kogi.
Its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, accused the APC-led Federal Government of trampling on democracy with utmost impunity “comparable to Hitler’s Germany and Samuel Doe’s Liberia.”
It charged security forces with aiding armed hoodlums to invade polling centres, “to shoot and kill innocent citizens, cart away ballot boxes, and stuff them with already thumb-printed ballot papers in favour of APC.”
“It is distressing that under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration, votes no longer count; power and governance no longer derive from the people but violence, manipulations and the barrel of the gun,” Ologbondiyan said.
In a related tone, the governorship candidate of the PDP in Kogi, Musa Wada, said the election was like a declaration and execution of a war against the people.
“What happened in Kogi was an organised war against democracy; coup against the people and seizure of power through brigandage and the barrel of the gun, with members of the police and other security agencies coordinating the stealing of people’s votes,” he said.
Likewise, the PDP candidate in Bayelsa, Senator Diri Douye, said: “For us, the rule of law is under threat in this democracy; anarchy is looming in this democracy; democracy is being raped. All the figures reeled out (at the poll) are a charade and a ruse.”
Outgoing Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa, while providing video clips of the reported poll rigging and violence, said: “What took place… was a military coup… Not only was the Army directed to take over our place, but to collude with the APC thugs to unleash terror on our people.”
Crowning PDP’s “outrage” was its National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, who called on the UN, EU, AU and ECOWAS to impose international sanctions on the leadership and political officeholders in the APC, the INEC, Military and the Nigeria Police (NP).
Smartly exempting the PDP and its members “involved” in the poll fraud, Secondus suggested travel bans on the leadership of the listed institutions “for abusing their offices and aiding or allowing acts that led to electoral fraud and violence.”
Yeah, Hitler’s Germany, Samuel Doe’s Liberia, barrel of the gun, war against democracy, coup against the people, declaration of war, stealing of people’s votes, rape of democracy, et al., indeed!
It seems the PDP lives in an alternative universe, and needs to be brought back to earth, which the Presidency did through its Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu.
In a rejoinder to the PDP outcry over the poll, Shehu urged the party to accept its defeat with grace instead of “casting aspersions” on the exercise.
He said: “Predictably, we have seen the accusation of fabricated results from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party. Yet, the only fabrication is PDP’s conduct.
“It has now become standard procedure for the party to challenge any poll that does not return its candidates. Election is good when the PDP wins. The opposite is the case if any party, other than the PDP, wins.”
Shehu noted the practice of political parties accepting defeats, and getting their act together to prepare for subsequent elections, such as the APC did in the February 2019 polls, in which it lost five of its states to the PDP.
But rejecting the poll results, as the PDP did, doesn’t reflect what happened,” he said, adding, “Instead, the electorate gets mudslinging. Improvement is not sought, but cries of victimisation; this is not an atmosphere in which democratic debate can thrive.”
More worrisome, though, is PDP’s projection for any election: It must favour it; the incumbent or challenger will rig against it, and this must be trumpeted throughout the election.
Thus, by adopting, as a pastime, criticism of electoral outcomes that do not favour it, the PDP appears to care less about self-examination, and changing its strategies for future elections.
In any case, isn’t the PDP the brainchild of emasculation of the electoral process in Nigeria, during its 16-year rule between 1999 and 2015, before it lost its controlling power?
The ploy of “Rig and ask the loser to go to court” was introduced by the party during its “do-or-die” politics of “capturing” states with “Garrison Commanders” under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, and the next government he “installed.”
In its hegemony, the PDP shockingly “captured,” in the 2003 elections, five of the six states of the South-West zone controlled by the opposition Alliance for Democracy (AD).
The apex of the party’s electoral heist was in 2007, such that the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua admitted that the process that brought him to power was contrived (by Obasanjo and PDP).
Re-elected Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi, in a veiled reference to that era, expressed his readiness, and that of the APC to meet his opponents in court over the November 16 poll.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents after visiting President Buhari, he said: “I told you, sometime back, that the issue of winning the election was not in question, but the margin with which I would defeat my opponents, and that I would have no reason whatsoever to go to the (election petitions) tribunal. However, going to the tribunal is their (opponents’) right, and if they so wish, we will meet in court.”
Well, that’s giving the PDP a dose of its own medicine, taunting it with its mantra of asking poll losers to “go to court” after it had “rigged” its candidate(s) in as president, governor or lawmaker.
Will the party learn, as the APC did, to restrain itself from roasting the process of election it loses, and have recourse to the courts, to remedy any alleged anomalies? Perhaps, on a later date, but not with the current leadership of the platform!
* Mr. Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.