Monday
October 19, 2009 |
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If the Peoples Democratic Party is
Africa’s largest political party, then it is also – by the evidence of
its conduct – the largest concentration of anti-democrats on the
continent. At each opportunity, the party displays a fundamental
hostility to the most basic tenets of democracy.
The latest such demonstration came in the sneaky way the party
handpicked Charles Chukwuma Soludo as its candidate in next February’s
governorship election in Anambra.
In the beginning, the party invited aspirants to purchase governorship
forms for the scandalous sum of N5 million each. It was the party’s
clear statement that, should its candidate “capture” Anambra, the victor
and his cohorts could proceed to treat the state as a personal fiefdom.
Far from dissuading aspirants, the high entry fee yielded a bazaar of
forty-seven bidders. Each candidate knew what was at stake, the size of
the loot to be carted away by the eventual winner. Nigeria is, after
all, a place where governors can pocket hundreds of millions of naira of
public funds each month in the name of “security vote.” Sometime ago, an
American student asked me at a lecture to explain the meaning of
security vote. I answered that it’s a peculiarly Nigerian invention that
empowers public officials to – the oxymoron is apt – “steal legally.”
A party committed to the ideals of democracy would have seen the large
field of competitors as offering an excellent opportunity to choose the
most acceptable candidate through an open, transparent process. That’s
not the PDP’s mode of operation. No sooner did the party’s would-be
governors file their forms – accompanied by huge fees – than party
chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, began to sell them the idea of adopting one
of their number as the “consensus” candidate. Consensus, a staple of the
PDP, is an asinine and narrow concept that enables a tiny few of the
party’s ample supply of “thieftains” to impose their choice.
It was no surprise that the vast majority of the candidates disdained
Mr. Ogbulafor’s prescription. How do you justify collecting N5 million
from seekers of an office, and then talking them into relinquishing
their dream in the name of a nebulous idea called consensus?
Once it became clear that “consensus” was doomed, top officials of the
PDP made the obligatory (seemingly earnest) pledges that the ward
congresses to determine their governorship flag bearer would be a model
of democratic credibility. The party even composed high-powered
committees led by, among others, Speaker Bankole Dimeji and Governors
Emmanuel Uduaghan and Gabriel Suswam, to oversee the process. These
custodians in turn promised to be unimpeachable shepherds of the party’s
internal process for determining a governorship candidate.
All of that high-minded talk was soon silenced by the staccato bursts of
gunshots and the dreadful chants of war songs by heavily armed gangs
retained by different camps. The people of Anambra had front row seats
from which to gaze in bewilderment as the PDP once again remade
democracy into a do-or-die affair, a fists-knuckles-and-guns
monstrosity.
The signs were there from the outset. Not one of the party’s candidates
–not even the supposedly cerebral Soludo – ever bothered to articulate a
vision of governance, or to define a program of action to uplift the
state if elected. Instead, the candidates went from dropping off their
forms straight to recruiting gangsters to establish themselves as
“serious stakeholders.”
That this depraved process should ultimately throw up Mr. Soludo as the
party’s “default” candidate raises several deeply disturbing questions.
With the PDP so inflexibly resistant to democracy within its own ranks,
what then would inspire hope in Anambra that the party would come ready
to play by the rules in the governorship election on February 6, 2010?
Or is Anambra fated for the Ekiti treatment, the treasonous misuse of
military and police personnel and arsenal to ensure victory for the
PDP’s candidate?
Governors Uduaghan and Suswam as well as Speaker Dimeji flunked the
simple task of conducting successful ward elections in Anambra. How then
are Nigerians to be confident that these incompetents can ever remedy
the nation’s infrastructural and myriad crises?
Mr. Soludo’s tenure as governor of the Central Bank is undergoing an
unofficial review, and his grade is not looking particularly stellar.
Still, some say he’s a fine economist. One wonders, though, if he has a
sense of history. For he ought to remember that many Nigerians lost
their lives in the struggle to achieve democratic governance.
By all accounts, Mr. Soludo was catapulted by a cabal, including Tony
Anenih, whose tenure as Minister of Works was a disaster for Nigerians
(even if good for Mr. Anenih), and Dahiru Mangal, a rather shadowy
friend of Umaru Yar’Adua’s. Mr. Soludo risks becoming one of the poster
boys for the anti-democratic bastion that will be swept away sooner or
(rather than?) later when Nigerians awake to reassert their democratic
will.
