Bode George is a foundation member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He derives pleasure in the nostalgia of the past glory of the PDP which he fondly calls the Iroko. The Iroko is a mighty tree that lasts years and years without end. It survives through thick and thin. It spreads very broad and provides great branches for birds to build nests. It is also a great source of timber for wooden furniture. To say that a person or an institution is an Iroko is to ascribe longevity, invincibility, strength, spirit of accommodation, unity, love, and prosperity to the person or institution.
Unfortunately, as Bode George is reminiscing of the good old days of the PDP, it is wallowing deeper into perdition. After the meeting of the PDP Governors Forum in Ibadan recently, chaired by the Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, Bode George publicly and joyously declared, “the Iroko is back.” The governors stated their intention to consolidate the PDP and ruled out any coalition with other political parties. In just some weeks after the declaration, Gov Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State of the PDP defected with his entire PDP apparatus to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The Iroko was stabbed at the back and Bode George took note of the betrayal.
As if this was not enough, Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State openly declared his intention to defect to the APC and threatened every member of his cabinet of summary dismissal if they do not defect with him. The Iroko was further stabbed at the back. Bode wailed. The Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, Bala Mohammed, himself openly announced that he was going to work together with Peter Obi of the Labour Party in 2027. Yet another stab against the Iroko at the back from the very top.
The Supreme Court clearly held that PDP should decide who their Secretary General should be not the courts. This is a position that was zoned to the South-East and the South-East unequivocally decided that it is Ude-Okoye that will represent them at the National Working Committee of the party. They even threatened to pull out of the PDP if this was not upheld. Nyesom Wike, the APC Minister, and “leader of the PDP” endorsed Samuel Anyanwu for the post. The PDP snubbed the entire South-East and decided cowardly that the present Deputy Secretary-General, Arch Setonji Koshoedo, should act on behalf of the Secretary General.
The danger of sitting on the fence is that the party may eventually lose both sides. Wike has already declared war on Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and Peter Mbah of Enugu State for betraying their agreement on a whole range of issues. The South-East is not backing down on exiting the PDP if their demand is not upheld. The Iroko is continually receiving stabs unchecked.
The Iroko is no longer deluded that it can go it alone in 2027. Recently, Senator Abba Moro, the Minority Leader of the opposition in the Senate, declared that the PDP is ready for a coalition, with a caveat that the party will lead any coalition it’s part of. Meanwhile, the leader of the PDP, Nyesom Wike, has already declared support for the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, in the 2027 presidential election. Being the leader of the PDP, it’s obvious that as long as Wike remains a member of the PDP, it’s safe to say that PDP, as a party, has endorsed President Tinubu for the 2027 presidential election.
Unfortunately for Bode George, the last person he wants to be President is Bola Tinubu. Both men have been having a running battle from 1999 and Tinubu has always beaten him to it. Indeed, Bode George vowed to go into exile if Tinubu became President in 2023. Tinubu became President, but Bode George decided not to go into exile on the excuse that he couldn’t guarantee that Tinubu became President on the wings of free, fair, and credible election, and on the premise that Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, pleaded with him to shelve the exile option as Tinubu has no intention to vilify him.
There’s no doubt that Bode George also stabbed the Iroko at the back in 2023 as he openly endorsed the presidential candidate of another party. He believed the Iroko fielded a presidential candidate against the zoning arrangement recommended by his Party’s constitution. He forgot that the constitution of his party also frowned against anti-party activities. You cannot correct a mistake with another mistake. You cannot protest against the breaking of the law by breaking the law yourself. The question was, where were the statesmen of PDP when PDP chose a presidential candidate other than the one recommended by the constitution?
The truth is that each one of them was selfish and refused to zone the post to the South-East whose turn it was to produce the PDP presidential candidate in 2023. It was only Atiku Abubakar that was bold enough to declare that it was the turn of the South-East to produce the presidential candidate in 2023 and that if the party zoned it to the South-East, he will not contest.
The Iroko has so fallen that it cannot pay the ground rent for its head office. They are relying on the same Wike they are accusing of throwing his weight around in the party to pay for it. They want Wike to pay the piper, but they don’t want Wike to dictate the tune. This will be unnatural, but it shows the level the Iroko had fallen. Indeed, the Iroko is confused.
The story of stabbing Iroko at the back started with the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo. There was an unwritten agreement between North and South to rotate power between North and South for eight years. Obasanjo took the turn of the South for eight years, but unfortunately, after his eight-year tenure, he started scheming for a third term ticket. This inordinate quest for tenure elongation brought a lot of trauma, confusion and distrust among the gladiators of the Iroko, and the Iroko never really recovered from it.
Atiku Abubakar, who was the deputy to Obasanjo, fought against the third term agenda and that sealed his political fate during the 2007 election. Obasanjo preferred to install Umaru Yar’Adua from the North as President, whom he knew was not very healthy, and would most likely not make it for a long time after inauguration. The North was suspicious that Obasanjo had a hidden agenda to make the power return to the South if something happened to Yar’Adua. Something actually happened to Yar’Adua as he passed on to glory before his third year in office, unfortunately returning power prematurely to the South through the installation of Yar’Adua’s deputy, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, in office as President.
In 2011, there was an allegation that the North agreed to support Goodluck Jonathan in exchange for his agreeing to do only one term as President to complete the eight-year joint ticket of the Yar’Adua-Goodluck presidency. In 2015, Jonathan was believed to have reneged from the agreement as publicly declared by Obasanjo. This stabbed the Iroko so badly that there arose a mutiny amongst them that eventually brought down President Jonathan and dethroned the Iroko from being the ruling party.
The PDP has not been the same since then as leaders like Nyesom Wike and Ayo Fayose became frontline leaders of the party being the remaining vocal governors of the party. The first goof those new leaders committed was to foist on the PDP an Ali Modu Sheriff as National Chairman. Sheriff was also an ambitious strong character who upstaged Wike and Ayo Fayose and pocketed PDP. Wike described it as his worst political mistake. It took the intervention of the Supreme Court to deliver PDP from Sheriff. Since then till date, no National Chairman of the PDP ever finished his tenure gloriously. As at today, PDP has no substantive National Chairman, but an Acting National Chairman who cannot successfully organise a National Executive Committee meeting.
The G5 PDP Governors openly declared support for another presidential candidate in 2023 and suffered no repercussions for such anti-party action. Today, discipline has broken down in PDP because serving and former governors of PDP are declaring support for future presidential candidates of other political parties without consequences. With too much backstabbing of the PDP, not even the strongest Iroko tree can survive. Julius Caesar endured and survived all the stabs of his enemies but when his best, beloved friend, Brutus, stabbed him, he wailed “Et tu Brute”, meaning “You too Brutus.” His great heart exploded in betrayal and he died.
The Iroko has been multi-fariously betrayed and stabbed left, right, and centre by the people it made and it is wailing for survival. As days go on, its wounds and cuts get deeper that if it continues like this, 2027 will mark its burial date. PDP doesn’t have any prospective presidential candidate in 2027 and every effort is being made to deny it of one, and those in support of striping it of the power to field a candidate are stronger than those against it. This certainly will end the Iroko, as even Bode George has described the betrayal of the Iroko by its beneficiaries as a “disgusting abomination”. No apologies to Elon Musk.