(COVER) PDP crisis: NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER

Akani Alaka writes on the ongoing battle between different camps in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) over the national chairman of the party, Iyorchia Ayu.

 

Fresh from his party’s National Executive Council meeting where he successfully secured the support of members of his party to continue in office, Iyorchia Ayu last Friday indicated his intention to embark on fresh efforts to woo aggrieved members who have been insisting that he has lost the right to remain in office as the national chairman of the largest opposition party in Nigeria, the PDP.

Ayu had made his intention known when he led members of the PDP National Working Committee on a visit to former Senate president Adolphus Wabara who emerged as the acting chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT), following the resignation of Ambassador Walid Jibrin also at last Thursday’s NEC of the party.

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The PDP chairman disclosed plans to send a team of party leaders to Port Harcourt this week to meet the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, the arrowhead of the crisis bedevilling the party and the campaign that he must leave office.

He appealed to the acting chairman of BoT to lead the peace efforts in Rivers. “I am calling on you to lead the effort in reaching out to all our aggrieved members. You have the full support of myself, the candidate and the whole NWC to reach out to Governor Wike, all the governors and any aggrieved person, and appeal to them, plead with them to come back and let’s work together in the PDP family,” Ayu was quoted to have said in a statement by his Special Adviser, Media and Communications, Simon Imobo-Tswam.

“If we do not win next year’s general election, Nigerians will be very disappointed, the hope of Nigeria is on us,” he added while imploring the new BoT chairman to use his diplomatic experience to bring all aggrieved party members back to the table so that the PDP can present a united front against the ruling All Progressives Congress in the 2023 elections.

He added that the new BoT Chairman also has the full support of Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the party to embark on the peace mission.

 

Why Wabara

Analysts said Ayu wanted Wabara to lead the peace efforts to Rivers not just because as a former Senate president he is likely to command respect and his ‘diplomatic skills’ as was vaunted in the statement by Ayu, Wabara had arguably played a critical role in the survival of Ayu as the national chairman of PDP at the NEC meeting.

For one, as the chairman of BoT, he presided over the NEC meeting and put the question of whether any member was against the motion to pass a vote of confidence on Ayu and the party leadership. The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Ndudi Elumelu had moved the motion which was seconded by Ishola Balogun Fulani from Kwara State.

Ndudi predicated the motion on the leadership quality of Ayu and his team as well as their success in leading PDP to win the Osun State governorship.

An overwhelming majority agreed that a vote of confidence be passed on Ayu and the party leadership when the question was put to vote by Wabara. This, analysts said, sealed the demand of Wike and his allies that the PDP chairman must go.

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But even more importantly, Wabara was at the vanguard of efforts to douse the argument of ‘lopsidedness of party positions in favour of the Northern part of the country’ as advanced by the Wike group in their calls for Ayu’s removal.

The aggrieved group had argued that with Atiku from Adamawa in North-east Nigeria emerging as the presidential candidate of the party,  Ayu from Benue in North-central Nigeria should vacate office in favour of a southerner to ensure equity and give the party a more national outlook.

Wike had led agitations for this after he lost the battle for PDP 2023 presidential ticket to Atiku. The Rivers governor was opposed to giving the presidential ticket of PDP to a northern presidential candidate for the 2023 election, arguing that President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner from Katsina State should not be succeeded by another northerner.

But amid calls for the zoning of the presidential ticket, Ayu had also promised to step down if a candidate emerged as the presidential candidate of the party.

The Rivers State governor had insisted that Ayu should live up to his promise, though there were also indications that they were aggrieved over how the PDP chairman handled the primary that led to the emergence of Atiku.

But just before the vote of confidence passed on him at last Thursday’s NEC, Ayu had enthusiastically announced the stepping down of Jibrin, obviously in response to the demand for the de-northernisation of PDP in substitution for the call for his resignation.

He also announced that Wabara, from Abia in South-east Nigeria, had been appointed to replace him.

 

Tambuwal Backs Off

There were also speculations that Aminu Tambuwal, the governor of Sokoto State has stepped down as chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and will be replaced by Seyi Makinde, an ally of Wike and governor of Oyo State.

However, Tambuwal denied reports that he had resigned later in the day. Sources told this newspaper that the Sokoto governor’s vacation of the chairmanship of the Governors’ Forum for a Wike ally would have still put Ayu on tenterhooks given the powerful roles of the state chief executives over their parties.

A source recalled to The Nigerian Xpress that the PDP’s Governors’ Forum agreed to sack Ayu’s predecessor, Uche Secondus after a similar vote of confidence was passed on him at the NEC of the party.

Wike was the chief protagonist in the episode that led to the exit of Secondus from office, just like he has been the lead player in the ongoing efforts to get Ayu out of office.

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Tambuwal had to back off from quitting the chairmanship of the Governors’ Forum so as not to give the Wike group another foot in the door to sack Ayu using that platform. “It just tells you that the group aligned with Atiku in the party which the Sokoto governor is a prominent and key member of are determined to keep Ayu in office at least, until after the 2023 election,” said an analyst.

 

Ayu, The Only Acceptable Sacrifice

Wike and his loyalists like governors Makinde, Ikpeazu, and Ortom among others were conspicuously absent from the NEC meeting. But they had their ears on the events as they unfolded at the meeting. Wike had few hours after the announcement of the resignation of Jibrin said he would not give up the fight for the removal of Ayu as the chairman of PDP.

He insisted that Jibrin’s resignation was not a substitute for calls that Ayu should vacate office. The Rivers State governor also revealed that Atiku had told him after he won the party’s presidential ticket that Ayu would vacate the position of PDP chairman.

“When we finished our convention on a Saturday to Sunday, the candidate of the party (Atiku) came to see me in my house in Abuja on Monday around 10:30 am…The candidate told me: ‘I want us to work together’ and then he said, ‘Look, Ayu must go’. “I said why? He said because when a candidate comes from the North, the chairman will come from the South.

“And I am saying, implement what you told me. What offence have I committed? It has nothing to do with Wike; it has to do with integrity. I challenge the presidential candidate to deny this. If he denies this, I will go further to say so many things to Nigerians because enough is enough,” the governor said during the inauguration of the Ahoada Campus of the Rivers State University in the Ahoada East Local Government Area of the state.

He, therefore, said the resignation of Jibrin was not a substitute for the demand for Ayu’s resignation. “This fight we will fight it to the end,” Wike said. He restated his position that having produced the presidential candidate of the party, the North should not also hold on to the chairmanship of the party.

The governor also dismissed claims that he was instigating a crisis in the PDP because he lost the presidential ticket to Atiku as claimed by former governor of Niger State, Alhaji Aliyu Babangida. “Wike is not causing problems; Wike is bringing peace to the country. Wike is advocating for justice, Wike is advocating for equity, and Wike is advocating for fairness,” he said.

The Rivers State governor and his allies upped the ante in their battle against Ayu last Saturday with Wike insisting that he would not back down in his quest to see Ayu out of office.

Speaking while receiving some members of APC into PDP in Port Harcourt, the governor said 20 “votes of confidence” cannot save the embattled PDP chairman.

 

No Retreat, No Surrender

Wike, who was reacting to reports that Secondus danced over the vote of confidence passed on his successor last Thursday said, “I was listening and watching, they said there is one man they call Secondus. They said he was dancing, celebrating that NEC gave their person a vote of confidence. He forgets history. Ask him the same NEC through Aliyu Babangida moved a motion of vote of confidence supported by the same person, Ndudi Elumelu. They gave you (Secondus) a vote of confidence, what happened? You left office.

“We don’t fight and go back. If you like you can have as many as 20 votes of confidence, it’s not my business. My business is to make sure the right thing is done, and the right thing must be done – whether today or tomorrow.”

In the same vein, Governor Makinde who was in Abia to inaugurate two road projects built by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu last Saturday dismissed the plot to appoint him as the chairman of the PDP Governors Forum: “Even if they give it to me, I will not accept it because there must be an order. Ikpeazu is the deputy chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum. If the chairman resigns, the deputy chairman will take over the position. This is how to have an order in the process.”

However, Makinde was also quick to add that the demand of his group is not the chairmanship position of the PDP Governors Forum. “We are saying that if the PDP has promised to restructure Nigeria and we can’t restructure the party, then we are not ready to restructure Nigeria.”

 

No Way

However, the Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Organisation indicated last Saturday that it would be difficult to meet the demand of Wike and his allies on the sack of Ayu.

Charles Aniagwu, one of the spokespersons for the campaign organisation said the call for the removal of Ayu was no longer relevant given the vote of confidence passed on him by the NEC of the party.

He also added that sacking Ayu would create a constitutional crisis for the party. This, he said was what informed the decision to support the continued stay of Ayu in office, rather than attempt to call the bluff of those calling for his removal.

Aniagwu pointed out that by section 45 of the party’s constitution, in the event of removal or resignation of the national chairman, the national deputy chairman from his zone will take over and act until the party can organise another election or do a NEC meeting.

This, he said, means if Ayu decided to step down, he would be succeeded by another northerner. “Even if the party is able to solve that puzzle by bringing both national chairman and deputy to the South, the third person in the hierarchy of the National Working Committee of the party is the national secretary and that is in the South specifically Senator Samuel Anyanwu from Imo State. Now if you decide to bring these two positions to the South, have you also made arrangements to take the national secretary to the North?

“Because of these legal impediments, the party examined it that given the time that we have which is just about six months to the general elections, that it may likely snowball into some form of crisis that could trigger a whole lot of discomfort within the party if we proceed to begin to make these changes that there are the tendencies that the party may be embroiled in a crisis that would be worse than the one we are seeing at the moment”.

 

Difficult Job For Wabara

Aniagwu added that Wike and his allies should appreciate the need for the party to move as a whole into the 2023 general elections.

“The emergence of Wabara in the South to join the vice presidential candidate and national secretary had created some form of balance in the interim. But what is most important is that there is a bigger elephant here which is winning the 2023 general elections because Nigerians are looking up to the PDP to rescue the nation from where we are at the moment”.

It is against this hardened position in both camps that Wabara is being asked to intervene. Thus, if indeed he gets the green light of Wike to come to Rivers next week, he will be going there with both camps ready to hold on and defend their positions.

It was also gathered that in insisting to back Ayu’s continued stay in office, the Atiku camp has weighed its options, especially with the realization that Wike and his allies cannot, but remain in  PDP at least till 2023 for their interest.

Nevertheless, all eyes will be on Wabara in the next few days to see if he can engineer the peace that will ensure that the party stops grabbing the headlines for the wrong reasons.