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The PDP Convention that took place in MKO Abiola stadium, Abuja, can pass for a conspiracy not a convention. Don’t take my words for it, take the words of Nyesom Wike for it. Wike publicly decried the method that allowed an aspirant the opportunity to speak twice in one primary election when the other aspirants spoke once and in the second speech of the aspirant he devoted it to campaign for another aspirant from the podium. The aspirant that spoke twice was Tambuwal, the aspirant he campaigned for was Atiku. Wike confessed that were it not that he did not want to destroy the party, he would have worked out from the arena and rejected the result. Atiku won, Wike lost. Wike fell on the premise of conspiracy. Whereas, Wike fought his brother Secondus for Tambuwal against Atiku in 2018, Tambuwal fought against Wike his friend for his brother Atiku in 2022. Tambuwal became the Brutus, best beloved friend of Caesar, that killed him. Caesar fell by conspiracy of his close associates just as Wike fell on the sword of Tambuwal.
Immediately after the death of Caesar, ordinary Romans hailed Brutus as a hero for killing Caesar, because Brutus convinced them that he killed Caesar for the good of Rome, to save Rome from Caesar’s inordinate ambition to become King. It took just hours for Brutus’ submission to be countered by Mark Anthony that they were not heros that killed Caesar but mere conspirators that killed Caesar to further their own ambition because of the jealousy of Caesar. The ordinary Romans believed Anthony and went ahead to kill all the conspirators including Brutus. Whether Tambuwal will be seen in future as a hero, as immediately described by Ayu, or a conspirator for stabbing his former benefactor and killing his presidential ambition in 2023, only time will tell.
The PDP convention was also described by one of the presidential aspirants, Hayatu Deen, as acrimonious, corrupt, self-serving and obscenely monetized, while another presidential aspirant from the South-East, Anyim, simply summarised the convention as primordial and primitive. Each voting delegate at the convention was alleged to have received the sum of $50,000.00 (fifty thousand dollars) about N30,000,000.00 (thirty million naira) to vote in a certain way. One can now realise why Wike went to Anambra and told Anambra voting delegates to disregard the presidential ambition of their son, Peter Obi, and vote for him. He boasted that any vote for Peter Obi will be wasted votes, because according to him, he was sure Peter Obi will not win. He implored them to invest their votes in him who will win. Our guess is that because Wike knows that the convention will be highly monetized and Peter Obi does not share money, he was bound to fail. Peter Obi, kind of agreed with him, because he wrote in his letter of resignation from the PDP that PDP had become an obstruction to his ability to constructively contribute to the development of Nigeria. However, Wike, turned out to be wrong on both premise. Peter Obi won his presidential contest in Labour Party, while all the votes Wike got at the PDP convention became wasted votes because he lost. We did warn the aspirants from the South-South and South-West in our column edition, “Conspiracy against the South-East and option B”, that they may succeed in truncating the ambition of the South-East to emerge the presidential candidate of the PDP, but they may end up destroying theirs too, because the opposite of the North is South, not South-East or South-West or South-South. Wike certainly truncated the presidential aspiration of the South-East, but ended up destroying his. Karma is a bastard.
What happened in the MKO Abiola stadium was an open robbery against South-East. PDP was formed under the leadership of Dr Alex Ekwueme from the South-East in 1998. After consolidating the party and he wanted to be the presidential candidate in 1999, he was denied the opportunity because the mood of the nation was that PDP and indeed all Nigerians must recognise the injustice of the cancellation of June 12 election, won by a man from the South-West of Nigeria, who subsequently was unjustly detained and died in detention and must make amends if we were to move forward. PDP and all the political parties made amends and produced all the presidential candidates from the South-West to compensate the South-West for the injustice. Alex Ekwueme, actively campaigned for Obasanjo to realise the victory for PDP in 1998, irrespective of his being denied the post at the primaries. So PDP prides itself as a party whose foundation was built on justice. They even enshrined the doctrine of rotation, power shift and zoning of political offices in their Constitution. Please see section 7(3)(c) of the PDP constitution.
In 2003, Alex Ekwueme revealed to Nigerians that there was an agreement that each Geo-Political Zone should do only one term of four years so that within 24 years, the post of the President would have rotated around all the six Geo-Political Zones in Nigeria which will give every Zone a sense of belonging and end mutual suspicion among the Geo-Political Zones. His advice was unheeded, yet the South-East still gave PDP more than 90 percent of their vote, in the presidential election of 2003. In 2007, Obasanjo chose Goodluck Jonathan to be the running mate of President Umaru Yar Adua, thereby denying the South-East, the opportunity to either be the President or the Vice President, yet the South-East gave more than 90 percent support to the PDP. In 2011, Goodluck Jonathan from the South-South contested with Namadi Sambo as Vice, against President Buhari and was 100% supported by the South-East. In 2015, when every other Geo-Political Zone and prominent politicians from the North, including Atiku Abubakar, deserted the PDP for the APC against Goodluck Jonathan, South-East still voted PDP with more than 90% support. PDP lost the Presidency and the incumbent APC openly promised the South-East 5% of patronage in its administration to reflect the 5% support it got from the South-East. Surprisingly, the same politicians that deserted PDP in 2015 for APC came back to PDP in 2019, when PDP was now in opposition, and hijacked or can we say bought back PDP with money and won the presidential ticket in 2019 and surprisingly, South-East still gave PDP more than 90% of its votes on the premise that in 2023, it will be incontrovertible that the position of the President will rotate back to South-East to compensate for the unalloyed support, love and loyalty that South-East had shown to PDP.
Unfortunately and heartlessly, PDP subjected the South-East to the greatest political humiliation any Geo-Political Zone has ever suffered in the political history of Nigeria. Before going into the preparation for the presidential primary of the PDP, it first organised the party convention to elect its party executives. In the interest of rotation and zoning, every post in the South went North and every post in the North went South. Nobody argued it should be thrown open. The only reason for the adoption of the zoning formula for party offices is the understanding that the presidential ticket of the party, which was zoned to the North in 2019, will rotate back to the South in 2023, in the interest of justice, since an incumbent President from the North is about to complete a second term of eight years. It was unheard of that the National Chairman of a major political party in Nigeria will come from the same section of Nigeria as the presidential candidate of the party going into an election. The Southern Governors had vowed unanimously that the post should be zoned to the South. Ohaneze, Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum, South-South socio-cultural group, PANDEF, supported the aspiration of the South-East to produce the next President of Nigeria. With the benefit of this hindsight, it was a done deal that the presidential ticket was going to be zoned to the South-East by the PDP to respect Section 14 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Section 7(3)(c) of its Constitution and eventually reward the South-East for its loyalty and support since 1999, come rain come shine. Many aspirants from the South-East collected the presidential nomination forms and were the most, per Geo-Political Zone, in the contest. South-East paraded the best and the brightest in the contest with Peter Obi and Anyim leading the way.
Dangerous signs started emerging that PDP will backslide in its earlier postulations when some powerful power grabbers started insinuating that the contest for the presidential ticket should be thrown open. They gave no reason for this argument except the utter hatred, disdain and neglect they have for South-East and their belief that it is only the South-East that you can openly rob in this brazen manner and they will do nothing, coupled with their unbridled and unquenchable appetite for power and money. Initially, the aspirants from the South-East thought it was a joke. They were certain that PDP will not risk the support of their most trusted ally, the South-East, to rob and deny them their turn to become President in the party they formed, built and supported over the years. They were wrong. In the eyes of PDP, they have become hewers of wood and fetchers of water, that are not qualified to contest for the President, talk more of winning. They should accept their destiny in PDP as second class citizens forever. They were the first when PDP was formed, but today, they have become the last.
PDP has been the albatross of the political ambition of the South-East which culminated in the undeserved humiliation of the South-East in the presidential primary election held on the 28th of May, 2022 at the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja. Of the 767 delegates for the primary election, the entire Presidential aspirants from the South-East scored a total of about 15 votes. I warned South-East in 2019 about PDP and their unbridled loyalty to a party that hates and disdains them and the eventual shame that will befall them in PDP if they don’t change course. I predicted that if they insist on following the PDP, they will wander in political wilderness for 8 years and that whoever did not change course then should examine his head. Today, the prediction, as I do not lay claim to be a Prophet, for only God knows His genuine Prophets, have come to pass. Except God delivers the South-East, through another political platform, as I pray He should do, PDP’s intention is to sentence the South-East to political wilderness for ever. If you are from the South-East and you do not change course today from the PDP, especially as Ohaneze has come out openly to say so, you should agree with me that you should get your head examined.
