By Omoniyi Salaudeen
The inauguration of the new National Working Committee (NWC) of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Friday, December 10, in Abuja, marked the final round out of the leadership succession crisis that had been rocking the party since the ouster of Prince Uche Secondus-led executive. 
To be sure, the case filed by the embattled former national chairman to stop the national convention that produced Dr Iyorchia Ayu and members of his team is still subsisting at the Supreme Court.
But Ayu, who took over the mantle of leadership, didn’t entertain any fear about the possibility of a distraction when he told his enthusiastic audience during the inauguration that he would lead the party to victory in 2023 and then fix Nigeria.
As an old warhorse, the former president of the Senate had passed through the thick and thin of Nigerian politics. So, he knew what Nigerians wanted to hear and capitalized on the auspicious moment to unveil what one could rightly describe as the roadmap to a new Nigeria.
His words: “Our task at this auspicious moment is to return the party to the people. But to do that, the party needs to be reinvigorated, reinvented, and repositioned. We are not unmindful of our missteps and actions in the past, but we have learnt our lessons, both in government and in opposition.
“To the APC, we, once again, renew our quit notice on you. Begin to prepare your handover notes.
“From the biggest economy in 2015, the APC has given the country two recessions and turned Nigeria into the poverty capital of the world. Today, close to 40 million Nigerians have no jobs.
“In the last six years, the APC-led government has mismanaged our diversity; divided the country along regional and religious lines. It has exacerbated religious tensions in the country. And through its marriage to nepotism, the incompetent APC Federal Government is fueling secessionist agitations in the East and West of Nigeria.
“Our dear Nigeria is drifting dangerously towards a failed state. Terrorists are now sharing sovereignty with Nigeria. Nigeria is simply ungoverned. Nigeria is collapsing under the leadership of a retired general!”
He, therefore, assured that the PDP would rescue Nigeria and return her to the Eldorado.
That was the same thing Secondus did in the run-up to the last general elections when he assumed the leadership of the party and apologised to Nigerians for the past mistakes.
At a public national discourse on ‘Contemporary Governance in Nigeria,’ he had said: “I hereby, as the national chairman, do admit that the PDP made a lot of mistakes; we are humans, not spirits and the ability to admit is key in moving forward.
“We apologise to Nigerians that we have made mistakes, we have learnt our lessons and we are ready to begin on a new agenda; experience is the best teacher, no other party has it.”
However, the plea fell on deaf ears as the electorate kept an abiding faith in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and re-elected President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term. As they say, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. Whether or not Nigerians are better for it, the answer is in the wind.
But beyond rhetoric, now that another opportunity for a democratic change of government is around the corner, the debate is: which party holds a higher prospect of offering good governance to Nigeria?
A former Chairman of the PDP in Lagos State, Mr Tunji Shelle, speaking with Sunday Sun, said that the PDP had learnt its lesson and would perform better than the present government.
He argued: “Experience is a good teacher. You can’t do anything without falling back on your past experience. PDP has learnt its lesson. PDP spent full 16 years in office and the government would have done more if not for the damaging propaganda that was introduced and the election that was rigged. You knew what happened at Ojota during the protest against subsidy removal; you knew how Boko Haram attack was escalated just to embarrass the PDP and embarrass former President Goodluck Jonathan.
“Now, we have new leadership in the person of Dr Iyorchia Ayu, who has the experience, the capacity, and intellectual prowess to lead the party. We would do things differently because we know where the shoe pinches now. The incoming PDP government will not allow leakages. This present government is allowing a lot of leakages. It is a fraudulent syndicate, but they are hiding because the leadership doesn’t even know that all these things are there. But we know better. We are ready to transform the economy. Before now, the exchange rate was just below N200 per dollar. Now, it is more than N500 per dollar. This is unacceptable.
“The debt portfolio is very high. When the PDP government came in and saw that there were some problems running the economy, they asked for debt forgiveness and it was given because they were credible. These people are not credible. They cannot manage the Central Bank policy; we are just wasting money without any result.
“On the issue of insecurity, they are part and parcel of insecurity. PDP will get new people to do it from among the military, competent people in the police, immigration and Nigerian Civil Defence Corps. There will be no lopsidedness in the appointments because these are parts of the problem.
“You can’t have the Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, IG of Police, National Security Adviser and the Minister of Defence from a particular side of the country and expect a good result in the military operation because they will all be thinking the same way. They cannot plan their operation to be able to conquer the enemies. If the appointment is not lopsided, definitely, they will debate and challenge each other and correct where necessary. APC is just making unnecessary excuses for itself. More places are being captured by the Boko Haram, other forms of banditry and kidnappings have even been added. PDP will correct all these anomalies.”
A former governor of Ekiti State, Segun Oni, also enthused: “We (PDP) would reverse the downhill journey APC has taken us through.
“We want to assure everybody that we would reverse the downhill journey the APC has taken us through. Our currency has been devalued, security has been so bad; in fact, it has never been this bad, the level of public discontent has never been this bad.
“Now, we have a team that is approaching these issues with all seriousness they deserve. Nigerians should expect that with the PDP government, life will definitely be better for Nigerians. We will stablise our currency. If there was no round-tripping at the Central Bank level, the currency could not have been this bad. The people are doing all kinds of businesses with our currency. We would put a stop to this continuous sliding of the naira.”
But Senator Anthony Adeniyi in his reaction to the PDP’s brickbats insisted that the APC administration had done enough to deserve another chance.
“I will say we have done enough to deserve another chance. We are building infrastructure. There was nothing like infrastructure during the time of the PDP. The economic situation dictated what we have been able to do. It is all about how the available resources have been managed,” he posited.
Similarly, a chieftain of the APC in Ogun State, Senator Gbenga Obadara, said: “In an election situation, you will hear many would-do promises from the opposition without doing proper research. PDP had ruled for 16 years, while the APC administration has just spent roughly six and a half years. By simple arithmetic, you should know that the mess the PDP caused in 16 years is not something that can go in one year. It will take years.
“Talking about the economy, globally, the COVID-19 is not helping any government all over the world. No economy will witness COVID-19 and still remain the same. We need to take bold decisions, we need to be strategic. Diversification of our monolithic economy is what any reasonable government will do and it is what we are doing.”
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Muhammed, was more caustic in his own reaction, dismissing the scathing criticism by the new NWC of the PDP as unnecessary and unfounded.
In a release issued in Abuja, he reminded the new leadership to desist from running riot and allow the administration to concentrate on good governance.
“PDP, press the reset button. Stop sabotaging the work of this administration, which is packing the mess you left behind, through your reckless statements and unfounded allegations.
“Play responsible opposition politics. Put Nigeria’s interest over and above partisan interest.
“Temper your desperation to return to power. Spend quality time in the purgatory and you will be forgiven,” he declared.
But Oni firing back the salvo, described Muhammed as a bad workman.
“He is a bad workman who will continue to blame his tools for bad work he did even when the choice of his tool was made by him. I was part of the team that augured in this government; we didn’t say that Nigeria’s situation was not redeemable. If we saw it was not redeemable, we would not have come into it. If six years after, a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is saying that the situation is irredeemable, why did they go into it? It is very ridiculous. Alhaji Lai Muhammed must stop all this rubbish.
“Recently, there is a survey that listed Nigeria as one of the countries difficult to live in. It is not only about insecurity, Nigeria is an unpredictable environment. In an unpredictable economy, investors cannot come in. They must face the job,” Oni insisted.
With political activities gradually picking up, there are strong indications of mudslinging as the two leading political parties intensify their membership drive ahead of the next general election.