PDP: Bloodied dog, bloodied monkey

“For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.”

2 Corinthians 11:19

By the end of this week, the nation would be regaled with another twist in the PDP leadership saga. As I write, the nPDP faction is strategising for the next battle, while the President Jonathan faction is digging in for a final battle. This bruising, all-consuming fight is unlikely to end without massive losses on all sides. It seems a perfect description of the ill-fated phrase used by leader of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari in 2011 when he warned of the consequences of a rigged 2011 election. He was vilified by an opposition which felt that any mention of blood, even in a phrase, amounted to a call for a violent uprising.

The crisis in the PDP has many ominous implications, yet the major players appear to think the nation can live with it and survive it, provided it causes no damage to their personal ambitions and political calculations. For all parties in this conflict, there are no easy options. Making any concessions will amount to capitulation. Standing your ground is unrealistic, impractical and dangerous. Stakes have been raised so high that it is now an all-or-nothing affair. Still, they will go through the motion, because everyone wants to be seen to be interested in reconciliation.

No matter how it is resolved, this saga will end up consuming many powerful interests. Elders of the nation have all been roped in. Defiance by the parties (defined as insistence by nPDP that they will not pitch camps outside Jonathan’s PDP), or refusal of the latter to make enough concessions to assuage their grievances will send signals that these elders have no place in the political process. If they cannot prevail on governors who jetted around the country briefing them (read: making a pitch for their support) to submit to their intervention and make concessions, they will throw their hands up in abject resignation. If President Jonathan’s PDP insists that elders’ role is to uphold discipline and whip the governors into line, they would also have wasted more of their rapidly dwindling clout to influence the President.

The entire political asset of the 14 years of governance which the PDP is supposed to have accumulated is now at stake. The array of has-beens and relics being assembled as Jonathan’s re-election vanguard looks like the type of group that on its own could intervene in this damaging fight. Unfortunately, its very existence is evidence that Jonathan’s PDP does not see a reconciliation involving his candidature in 2015 on the cards. Chairman Bamanga Tukur is in no mood for anything other than unconditional submission. Old man Clark thinks the nPDP governors are the real enemy to be subdued and conquered. Not an inch to the enemy, he insists.

The PDP Governors are behaving as if they will do everything but submit to unconditional surrender.  They have made much capital of the blundering show of force, epitomized by the embarrassing spectacle of a junior police officer attempting to break up their meeting. They have successfully cultivated public opinion to portray them as victims of serial high–handedness, arrogance and impunity by the Jonathan administration. They have rolled out the red carpet to fraternize openly with the opposition APC, an act which in political terms will be treated as high treason. They have packed their luggage, rallied their supporters around, and have sent every signal that they are on their way out.

With distances growing between the two camps, what will an improbable reconciliation involve? Governor Babangida’s famed documented one-term-only commitment from Jonathan will have to go missing for ever, never to be discussed. He will have to eat his humble pie and make a dramatic turn around, specifically supporting the idea that another four years of Jonathan presidency will be the best thing for the North and Nigeria. He may then get respite from the intense pressure under which he lives.

Governors Kwankwaso and Lamido will have to find new language to tell their people that they have been wrong all this time: PDP’s massive internal democratic deficits can be cured after all, and the North will be better off with substantial dominance of the PDP and another Jonathan Presidency. They may then take their places meekly in a PDP thereafter that will look at them with permanent suspicion. But they may get relief from constant worries over what life in the opposition they trampled upon will look like. Governor Wammako will have to find new ways to reassert the place of the PDP in a state where he is the root, the trunk and the branches. He will have to demobilize the entire party which has packed up to follow him out. He may then get some relief from the worrying spectre that new leaders of the PDP in Sokoto State are being groomed from Abuja to make life intolerable for him and his supporters. Governor Abdulfatah is at the mercy of the fight between Senator Saraki and the Presidency. He will follow his godfather, to hell if necessary. If they find accommodation in the PDP now, he may be guaranteed a second term. If they do not, he may have to fight for another term on the strength of Saraki’s position in their new home.

Governor Nyako will find life entirely intolerable with Bamanga in place and an entire platoon of enemies in Adamawa and Abuja groomed to attack him. He will be the governor with the most to lose in the event of a reconciliation in any form. Governor Amechi does not have the options of a prodigal son. His sins dwarf the others’ principally because Jonathan’s people see him as fraternizing with the enemy, which is what northern PDP have become. He will need to cover the widest ground in demonstrating abject submission, remorse and regret. By the time he is drained of every ounce of dignity, he will be better off living in Ghana for the rest of his life. If he does submit, he may finish his term a finished politician, and the rest of his days fighting off one state agency or another.

There are of course many more people and interests in the nPDP. In fact, they say they are preparing to welcome a few more nGovernors. The court has returned Oyinlola, which is a small token of victory in the context of setbacks by the nPDP in a judiciary they must think has a registered hostility towards them. Political careers and ambitions of thousands are riding on the manner this crisis resolved. Ambitious PDP politicians cannot wait to take up the position which will be abdicated by the nPDP people. Politicians in APC are worried over what a deluge of nPDP heavyweights into their party will mean for their plans and ambitions.

What form would a resolution for President Jonathan take? Could he conceivably abandon his ambition to run in 2015 to save the PDP? Can he live in the PDP with nPDP people and seek a win-win solution? What will that be? Can people who demonstrated such damaging levels of distrust and disrespect find genuine reconciliation and agreement to work for victory in 2015?

A reconciliation between nPDP and Jonathan’s PDP has a statistical chance of success. If it could happen, it will be unlikely to subsist. If Jonathan’s PDP succeeds in making nPDP or a faction of it abandon its fight, he will only transfer their hostility to voters in many parts of the North and South-South who will resent a bully. The most realistic projection of this conflict is that it may damage the PDP and many political careers and ambition’s irretrievably. There will be many people on both sides who will wish that nPDP and Jonathan’s PDP will go their ways now, so that the party can assess its damage and move on.