By Kassim Afegbua.
Some aspirants of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, suddenly appeared from the blues and invoked the sentiments of building a consensus political station, where, like a train terminus, they would all terminate their rides, in preference for one. Governors Tambuwal, Bala, and former Senate President Bukola Saraki and former Banker, Hayatudeen Mohammed, all became ostentatious drivers in the political landscape, in their shared determination to navigate the route to the Aso Villa in 2023. In their many junketting across the country, they tried to create the impression that all four were joined together by same political umbilical chord as the politics of 2023 gathers momentum. By a show of political naivety, they chose themselves and excluded others. They took the message to their Southern counterparts, asking for a consensus that clearly excluded the Southern aspirants, as if to rub insult on the injury. Four musketeers who are clearly running against the run of play felt a greater need to exclude those who should ask for the PDP ticket in show of justice, equity and fairness. After an all-northern contest in 2019, political pundits are dismayed at the quest of Northern aspirants wanting to ambush their Southern counterparts in the struggle for the PDP ticket.
Truth be told, when the four musketeers visited Rivers state, Governor Wike, their host, reportedly told them to be wary of their dangerous game. Wike insisted that instead of championing a self-serving consensus arrangement that seemed to exclude the real aspirants, they should rather preach unity of the country as a better discourse to calm frayed nerves. “How do you talk of consensus and exclude the aspirants from the South”, Governor Wike reportedly queried. Rather than work in a manner that suggests conspiracy against the Southern quest for 2023 presidency after a Buhari-led 8 years presidency, the four musketeers ought to be holistic, by encouraging a more robust, inclusive and participatory process that would engender a feeling of oneness among the aspirants. According to Governor Wike, it will make more political sense for the aspirants to engage and interact, more on how to salvage the country, promote unity of purpose, and reinvent the will than be detained by selfish interest of a select few from a particular part of the country, working more on conspiracies than actual consensus. It will make more meaning to encourage everyone to be involved than selectively encouraging a romance amongst the four persons. Not long, the said romance, has suddenly crashed. There are discordant tunes everywhere, which validate Governor Wike’s initial curiosity about the essence of an arrangement that was programmed to fail.
The four northern aspirants went round the country talking to PDP stakeholders and aspirants instead of delegates, without extracting any commitment. While Governor Wike was busy criss-crossing the entire country, selling his aspiration to party leaders and delegates, those four aspirants were moving round to enjoy the media razzmatazz. Beyond that, nothing concrete was evident. The South-East aspirants also held solidarity meeting, saying they too would come up with a consensus aspirant to strengthen their push for the candidature of a south-east aspirant. It is not in doubt that aspirants under the PDP seem to be working in different directions, to woo the delegates and strengthen their respective grip on their support base. From the reality on ground, Governor Wike appears more visible in taking the message to the delegates in places and states that he had visited. He has not hidden his capacity to uproot the APC from power if the ticket is given to him. He’s of the view that as a loyal party man, who has never defected from the party, the odds should favour him more than those who helped to crucify the PDP in 2015, and later returned to enjoy PDP’s magnanimity, thereafter. If the party must
