Musings on parties in turmoil, by Azu Ishiekwene

Source: Naija247news

NIGERIA'S three main political parties - the All Progressives Congress, APC, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the Labour Party, LP - are in turmoil. They have been infested by little foxes that threaten to damage and, potentially, destroy them.Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

I know that discipline is not a virtue of political parties in a presidential system. In Nigeria's own version, however, indiscipline governs everything.

Whether the political parties are winning or losing - of course, it is worse when they're losing - politicians never forget that the party is simply a convenient tool, serviceable only when it can help them get to power, but certainly dispensable immediately afterwards.

See what is happening in the PDP, the party which lost its way after 16 years in power. The same forces led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that snatched defeat, not once, from the jaws of victory, are still determined to bury what is left of the sick party alive.

To be fair, Abubakar has paid his dues. He has done so with the generosity of a rolling stone, gathering moss from PDP to the Action Congress of Nigeria, AC, then to n-PDP, and from there to APC, and back again to PDP. At each point, never failing to leave a mark in pursuit of the prophecy of a marabout about 26 years ago that he would one day become Nigeria's president.

Ambition, what price?

Ambition is not a crime. For a man of Abubakar's political accomplishments, however, not knowing when to stop is a bad thing. He not only abandoned the PDP for years, he worked against it openly by running against the party as the AC presidential candidate in 2007. It was bad enough for him to abandon the PDP and return to it to fight for a presidential ticket at a most ill-advised and inauspicious time.

But what is worse was for him to take a front-row seat at the party's National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting in Abuja last week, plotting if not to run again as president, then to decide who runs the party. While this was happening, one of the party's altar boys, Emeka Ihedioha, was resigning with a heavy heart from the PDP, perhaps casting one eye at his grandfather, Abubakar, the remaining dinosaur among the founding fathers present at the Abuja NEC meeting.

It was one meeting Abubakar should not have attended - or if it was inevitable, he should have come at least shedding crocodile tears in remorse for his role in how the party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2023 general elections. But he came, as we say, with his full chest.

Accuser and accused

I looked at the press photos from the event twice to believe he was actually the one sitting there in the front row at the NEC meeting. As if that was not heartbreaking enough, some folks - governors/landlords of the party -lined up behind him, asking not for him to account, but that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, who sustained the party while Abubakar was in exile, should be disciplined for "anti-party activities"