Nigeria's
political landscape took a new dimension on the 6th of February, 2013
when four major opposition parties namely Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party
(ANPP) and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) announced the
result of their merger that birthed the All Progressives' Congress
(APC). It was a remarkable and unprecedented achievement not just to the
people of the opposition, but a large percentage of Nigerians who
believed that a true opposition is needed to challenge the ruling
Peoples' Democratic Party.
During the build up to the 2011 general
elections, a similar attempt by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and
the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to jointly present a
candidate for the presidential election, failed due largely to what many
described as the personal interest of individuals of the two parties
which prevented them from forming a common ground. The result of that
failure is the election of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose government
is now renowned for crass corruption, ineptitude and retrogressive
leadership.Reeling from the sad experience of that failure, the move
by the CPC, ACN, APGA and ANPP to form a mega party was quickly
dismissed by the PDP as an exercise that will never work. Calling the
merger moves all sorts of names; the PDP said it will fail like similar
moves failed since the advent of democracy in 1999.
It remained
unclear why the PDP believes that any attempt for merger and alliance by
political parties will fail, because it has always happened in the
past, but events that trailed the announcement of the formation of the
All Progressive Party on the 6th of February, proved that the PDP has no
basis for such conclusion. As a matter of fact, it showed that the
party merely just engaged in rhetoric. The truth of the matter was that
the party is scared to its bone marrow that it began to engage in
sinister moves to either cause confusion in the camp of the opposition
or frustrate its plan to conclude a formidable merger.
Aside the
psychological war fare that the PDP engaged in, one critical move it
made that shows it is rattled with the merger of the four parties is the
sponsor of a group known as the African Peoples' Congress which shares
the same APC acronym to apply to be registered as a political party with
INEC, thereby denying the All Progressive Congress who had earlier
adopted the APC acronym, the chance of registering with the same name.
Except for the fact that people know the PDP for what they are, nobody
would have pointed accusing fingers at the party, but revelations that
were to follow shortly after the phantom APC unveiled its logo, flag and
party secretariat in Abuja confirm what people had known all along.
First
was a bombshell from Mr. Nwokorie Samuel Chinedu, the legal
representative whom the PDP through its hatchet man, Ugochinyere Ikenga
had engaged to register the party. Mr. Nwokorie said kenga paid him
N30,000 before he filed the papers. The "client" paid him N50,000 later
and gave him a Samsung Galaxy phone after the job had been done.
Mr.
Ikenga himself, a youth activist in the Peoples' Democratic Party is
known to have done dirty jobs for the party hierarchy, either against
perceived enemies within and outside the party. Two examples among the
dirty Jobs Ikenga has done are his roles in the expulsion of Atiku
Abubakar from the PDP in 2006 and the persecution of former Senate
President, Ken Nnamani who agitated for a review of the provision in the
party's constitution which made the office of the Board of Trustees the
exclusive preserve of former presidents and national chairmen of the
party.
Nigerians had barely digested the revelations from the
lawyer when strong evidences that the PDP is behind the phantom party
surfaced. This time around, it was an email sent by leaders of the
phantom party using PDP leaders email addresses. The phantom party
obviously on the instruction of the PDP, in an attempt to pull a
propaganda string, cooked an assassination alarm and mailed it to media
houses alleging that it has uncovered plan by the opposition to
assassinate some of its members. The mistake it however made was to copy
the mail to top PDP leaders like Olisa Metuh, Baraje Kawu and John
Odey.
While this was going on, some members of the Save Nigeria
Group (SNG) said they've uncovered plots by a Director in INEC in
connivance with the presidency of being the brain behind the
registration of the phantom APC. The group alleged that it found fake
documents which the phantom party had submitted for its registration in a
hurried attempt to block the registration of the All Progressive
Congress (APC).
Looking at this plethora of moves by the PDP to
frustrate the efforts of the merging opposition, one can conclude that
this are well thought out plans to throw spanner(s) in the wheels of the
opposition All Progressives' Congress. What was poorly done however was
the execution of those plans that eventually boomeranged and exposed
what would have scored them some points. Be that as it may, I believe
the evil plots of the PDP may not have been exposed if not for divine
intervention. All these revelations we have seen are not borne out of
the brilliance or vigilance of those who exposed them, it is because God
too is tired of the PDP. He knows how much Nigerians have suffered
since 1999. He knows how much of our common wealth has been stolen and
laundered out of the country. He knows how the common man has been
deprived of basic necessities of life. He knows that the Peoples'
Democratic Party is a failed political party, which had not only
deepened poverty in the country but had continued to marginalise the
common man and that is why he exposed their efforts to scuttle the plan
of the opposition which has promised to assuage the sufferings of the
people.
One thing the opposition must learn from this however is
that it must really step up its game. I believe the PDP will go down,
but it won't go down without a fight and that fight is going to be very
dirty, so the opposition needs to really be at alert and ensure that
whatever move it is making, that move is already two steps ahead of what
PDP would do.
The political devils under the umbrella of the PDP
have perpetrated the worst political evils as witnessed in the political
history of Nigeria since the Second Republic. And if we do not destroy
these evils, they will destroy us.
TheParadigm
