EVEN though he spent his eight years in government
repudiating his own private counsel and knowledge
of how democracy works, ex-president Olusegun
Obasanjo used the occasion of the visit of the
factional chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP), Ali Modu Sheriff, to rhapsodise the beauty of
democracy.
Senator Sheriff, a former Borno State governor, had
in early September visited the former president to
draw him into intervening in the fierce dispute
stymieing the progress of the former ruling party. He
would not intervene, the former president said with a
sneer. He then went on to describe the PDP as
soulless and dying, and the ruling All Progressive
Congress (APC) as enervated. Chief Obasanjo’s
democratic credentials may be suspect, but his
characterisation of the PDP and APC appears
unimpeachable.

With a strong hint of condescension, the former
president had said: “I was once the leader, for eight
years. I was the leader of PDP, but the PDP that I was
the leader of is not the PDP of today. The PDP of
today, if you can talk of a party again as PDP, its soul
has been taken out of it, and those who allowed that
to happen are, unfortunately, either in the country or
out of the country unperturbed about the fate of the
party and indeed the fate of the country. For our
democracy to thrive, we need strong political party in
government and strong political party in opposition,
for it to be strong and dynamic.”
He continued: “Today, PDP cannot claim to be a
strong party in opposition, I don’t know if APC can
claim, at the national level, to be a strong party in
government either. Now, that is part of the
misfortune of this country today. It must be the
concern of all Nigerians that the present democratic
dispensation must not be allowed to be derailed and
for it not to be derailed, we must have a strong
political party in government and a strong political
party in opposition.”


The PDP may bristle at being described as a dying
party, and the APC, which has done its best to pander
to Chief Obasanjo’s whims may be shocked by the ex-
president’s betrayal, but the truth is that there is
simply no way to nurture democracy if the opposition
is in disarray and the ruling party is devoid of
conviction and principles. Indeed, at the moment,
there is no settling the precedence between the two
parties in terms of their irrelevance to the country’s
democracy and progress. Chief Obasanjo says the
PDP has lost its soul, almost as if it was a recent
thing. It is not a new thing. The PDP’s soul began to
wither when Chief Obasanjo assumed office and in
characteristic military fashion launched fearsome
attacks on the true founders of the party and
custodians of its values. The war was so brutal and
the outcome so unequivocal that many years later,
after he was through with his numerous self-serving
battles to burnish his depleted image, founding
leaders of the PDP had been completely
emasculated, and budding second tier leaders of the
party in the National Assembly had been defanged.
Chief Obasanjo worsened the party’s woes when he
castrated the party’s electoral organs shortly before
his second term in office ended, and barred them
from producing strong and competent successors.

By the time the inexperienced and irresolute ex-
president Goodluck Jonathan assumed office in 2010,
the PDP had not only become a soulless party
wanting in every virtue possible, it had transformed
into probably the most predatory political machine
ever, a party completely dedicated to feasting
hungrily and angrily on the commonwealth and
promoting vice on a scale that beggars belief. Now,
Chief Obasanjo is snickering at the party that gave
him nurture, when in fact he was the architect of its
misfortune. Had he promoted internal democracy in
the party when he was president, and had he left a
great legacy worthy of emulation in leadership
recruitment, political culture and responsible and
transparent governance, the stranglehold the party
initially had on the polity would be as strong as ever.
Chief Obasanjo dates the party’s woes insinuatingly
to his exit from the party. It is not true. He kick-
started the process, midwifed it, and waited long
enough to see the edifice poised to crash before
hastening indecently, half clad to the door. Rather
than mock them, and knowing what he now preaches
with splendid foresight about the indispensability of a
strong opposition, he should encourage the party to
halt its self-destructive intraparty battles. Chief
Obasanjo has a long and illustrious culture of
profiting from other people’s misfortune, as the civil
war and coups and various tragedies of his enemies
show. He will probably let the PDP stew in its juice
since he sees nothing to profit from its remake. He is
too old to re-enter politics on the scope and
magnitude he is used to; and he is too ideologically
sterile to impart great ideas on the party with the
passion and conviction the moment calls for. He will,
therefore, stay aloof. More, he will rail at them and
get them to grovel before him like Senator Sheriff did
on September 3.


But Chief Obasanjo is right that Nigeria needs a
strong opposition, especially in view of the APC’s
incredible vacuity, a weakness worsened by its
amazing insularity. For the sake of democracy,
Nigeria must encourage the PDP to get it right and
regain its unity, if not its fragile ideas. Senator Sheriff
cannot lead the party, but he needs to be pacified.
His nuisance value is so strong that rather than the
eminent persons in the party’s leadership, the fate of
the party seems annoyingly to rest on him. How to
mollify his rage is the great challenge. If they still
have enough intelligent people in the party, some of
those who have not migrated to the APC for both
succour and sustenance, perhaps they can find the
formula to unlock Senator Sheriff’s adamant heart.
The greater worry, however, is the ruling party which
Chief Obasanjo accurately, but with a smirk,
described as weak. It is an indisputable fact that the
APC has neither seemed nor acted like a party, not to
talk of a ruling party. Its core is brittle and
incoherent; and its exterior full of scaly and hostile
attributes. It has put whatever ideology it claimed to
have during the campaigns in abeyance. And its
functionaries, many of whom are emotionally
disconnected from the virtues and beliefs of the
party, see their loyalty not to the party or the country,
but to the president. Loyalty is a virtue, but if only it is
located within the wider context of the party, its
culture, its ideology, and its broad and engaging
vision.
Worse for the APC, its leaders have fought like
Kilkenny cats, both at the party and National
Assembly levels. The executive has on its own
managed to stunningly disengage from the fray,
hoping it would be untouched by the frenzy, intrigues
and animosities tearing the party apart. It got off on a
wrong foot with its leaders’ incomprehensible and
antiquated ideas of politics, economics and society.
Now, with a recession in hand, and a growing and
alienated populace getting too angry to be placated,
the party is desperately shopping for ideas from
those it has scorned. It is also feebly trying to correct
its leaders’ many misconceptions, and reverse the
woolly thinking and mindset they initially eulogised
and promoted.

It is clear the PDP has realised its folly, but is at a loss
how to correct itself. It is unfortunately not clear the
APC has reached that epiphanic moment when it is
struck by its own shortcomings and mortifying
feeling of littleness. For democracy to survive, the
country’s political and existential software must be
re-engineered to promote healing, inner confidence
and conviction. If both the APC and the PDP do not
cotton on to these ideas and needs, they will end up
floundering, and the country itself endangered.