The long-drawn battle for the soul of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is turning into a drag-out fight. More than two years into the battle of wills, the party has become clearly atomized. The effort to recover it from the ruins of internal sabotage has not yielded any appreciable result. If anything, it has thrown up objects of pity and derision.
One of the distraught products of this unenviable state is a fellow called Sunday Ude-Okoye. This man is laying claim to the office of the national secretary of the PDP. Here, he is at daggers drawn with Samuel Anyanwu, the man who occupied the office until he became a candidate in the Imo State governorship election of November 2023.
Last Wednesday, Ude-Okoye dared to attend a meeting convened by the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) at its national headquarters in Abuja. When he was confronted by opposite forces, Ude-Okoye melted instantly. The sight of this man running out of Wadata Plaza on that fateful day was most pitiable. He was a loner. He had no one to protect him.The manner in which he sprinted towards the exit gate diminished the high office he was struggling to occupy. He ran like an ordinary man, like an unprotected gate crasher.
Ude-Okoye had attended the meeting in the hope that he would find accommodation in the midst of the party’s bigwigs. But it was not as straightforward as he imagined. The situation he confronted was whether Anyanwu, by virtue of his gubernatorial run in Imo State, vacated the office of the national secretary of the PDP or not. A segment of the party assumed he did and they brought forward Ude-Okoye to take over from him. But Anyanwu’s gubernatorial quest was not successful, and so he held tight to the office of national secretary.
From the back-and-forth movement that has been going on, it would appear that the top players at the PDP secretariat do not know what the party’s constitution says on matters of this nature. Consequently, the concerned parties have approached the courts to seek interpretation of the provisions of the party’s constitution. So far, Ude-Okoye has carried the day. Both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal have affirmed him as the authentic national secretary of the PDP. But that is as far as it goes. He has not been able to unseat Anyanwu in real terms. As a matter of fact, Anyanwu has approached the court of last resort for final determination of the dispute. He would, therefore, not give Ude-Okoye any space until the Supreme Court gives its verdict on the matter. But Ude-Okoye is insisting that Anyanwu must vacate the office for him. That is the bone of contention.
Given this state of affairs, you would expect an Ude-Okoye who is aspiring to unseat an incumbent to be bold and courageous. But he is not. Rather, he is lily-livered. How could someone who means to take over from a seating officer run out speedily from the same office he seeks to occupy the way he did? If this man were man enough, he should have stood his ground. But he allowed himself to be harassed out of the premises cheaply and easily. If Ude-Okoye was a serious contender to the office of national secretary of the PDP, he would have put up a fight. He should have resisted and rebuffed the harassment and bullying that he got. The big names of the party present at the BoT meeting were enough buffer for him. Could he have been killed in their presence, just like that? That is not likely. Perhaps, what they expected was for Ude-Okoye to show courage. But he failed woefully in this regard. He did not even wait for the push to become a shove before he ran like a frightened antelope. Anyone aspiring to a high office should not be this frightened. By his action, Ude-Okoye disappointed those who have been making a case for him.
After the man’s pitiable outing, PDP Governors Forum has risen to the challenge. It wants the relevant organs of the party to take steps towards ensuring that the judgment of the Court of Appeal on the contentious issue is implemented. Even without making this pronouncement, watchers of developments in the party know that the forum, led by Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, is the only living wing of the party. The National Working Committee is factionalized. The BoT is playing hide and seek. It is not bold enough to take a stand on the Anyanwu-Ude-Okoye feud. That was why it could not express outrage over what transpired at its meeting of last Wednesday. Ude-Okoye was orphaned even in the presence of the parent leadership of the party. From this development, it is easy to see that the real problem of the PDP stems from lack of courage and principle on the part of its leadership. The party is at its lowest ebb today because those who should speak up and take a firm and principled stand on issues have gone into hiding. They are hiding because they do not want to be counted or identified as having said something that will displease someone. But how will an organization make progress if its leadership is not courageous enough to take a stand on burning issues?
Again, treachery is a major cankerworm that has eaten deeply into the fabric of the party. Some of those who represent the party at very high levels are its worst enemies. At the meeting of the BoT last week, you could sight one or two ex-governors of northern extraction who either left the party in 2014 or undermined President Goodluck Jonathan’s second-term bid in their promotion of a regional agenda. Today, they are back not to redeem the party, but to ensure the perpetuation of its fallen state. They are still playing roles that will destroy the party the more. This is why the party is squirming for breath. Enemies within will not allow it to breath. In fact, it will not be out of place to say that they are feeding fat from the crisis rocking the party. They are agents of external forces who do not want the PDP to rise again.
Umaru Damagun, the Acting National Chairman of the party, was, therefore, right when he told members of the BoT that some elders of the party were to blame for the lingering crisis rocking the party.
As an insider, Damagun understands the intrigues. He knows what is going on. The PDP, in all seriousness, has become a negotiating tool. Those who have ulterior motives have converted it to an article of trade.