OBJ, YAR’ADUA, GEJ AND THE PDP

People Democratic Party (PDP) is a party that used to pride itself as the biggest political party in Africa

that would rule for 60 years. But with its recent loss of power to the opposition party, All Progressive Congress (APC), to still lay claim to such bigness will amount to self –delusion. Can you remember any of the PDP Chairmen who did not leave office in a controversial circumstance? When its inaugural President in person Chief Obasanjo left office in 2007, I wrote an article titled Obasanjo: A Messiah That Never Was wherein I  x-rayed his 8 years rule characterized by constant  disregards to the rule of law particularly his  refusal to comply with the Supreme Court Judgment in the case of Lagos State Vs. AGF on release of fund to the Lagos State Government. It was the same OBJ that increased fuel price on the eve of his exit from power probably to punish Nigerians for their failure to support his Third Term Agenda. 

One of the good things done by his successor in person the late President Yar’adua was that immediately he assumed office ,he complied with the Supreme Court Judgment flouted by OBJ and reversed the fuel increment . Yar’adua died and GEJ completed the Yar’adua’s first term of four years. When the 2011 election was approaching I was one of those who advised GEJ not to run but should allow the North to complete or exhaust their presumed 8 years going by the PDP zoning arrangement .But GEJ was deafened by the likes of Onyeka Nwenu’s music: Jonathan, run !  run !  run ! . Dr. Jonathan actually ran and defeated the North Consensus Candidate in the PDP primary in person of Alhaji Atiku. He also went ahead to defeat CPC candidate in person of General Buhari in the 2011 Presidential election. Having won the election and assumed full control of power after the 2011 election, those who pretended to love GEJ than himself began to drum it to his hearing that he had just commenced his first term in office. 

When some people and lawyers were going to courts asking for the  determination of  whether it would be constitutional for the GEJ to run in 2015 and take oath of office for the third time, my reaction then was that  those people were not only wasting their time and energy but they also wanted to waste the precision time of those courts as I strongly believed that the case would go the way of Ojukwu Vs. Obasanjo  wherein an attempt was made in 2003 to stop OBJ from running for the second term but the Supreme Court held that Obasanjo had the constitutional right to run in 2003. My own contention that GEJ should not have run both in 2011 and 2015 was based not on law but on morality. 

The PDP political theory was to rotate power between the South and the North for 8 years each. The South (OBJ) having exhausted its transferred it to the North (Yar’adua) and the unexpected happened. If Yar’adua had lived GEJ would not have succeeded him when he did but his decision to run again in 2015 contrary to earlier arrangement further split the PDP and the rest is now history. Among those who will not forget the United PDP under GEJ in hurry is Justice Ayo Salami, former President of Court of Appeal who eventually likened himself to the biblical Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers. Sanusi Lamido, Former CBN boss (now Emir of Kano) got himself suspended for blowing whistle under GEJ. Nigerians today still unfortunately continue to pay the price for the past bad leadership. That GEJ left Nigeria and the PDP worse than he met them is not in doubt but he did well by accepting electoral defeat.

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