•Dr Alex Ekwueme Photo: Sun News Publishing

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A fortnight ago, the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Vincent Ogbulafor set up an 18 man committee to review the report of the National Reconciliation Committee of the party headed by former vice-president Dr Alex Ekwueme. The review is, among others, aimed at restoring the party to the ideals and vision of its founding fathers.

Its target, in the words of the new leadership of the party, is to build a strong and virile party rooted in the principles of justice, unity and progress which are fundamental requirements for consolidating democratic governance in the country.

The high powered committee was, among others, charged with the task of studying the report critically and examining its submissions and recommendations with a view to coming up with aspects of it that can be immediately implemented for the benefit of the party. It is also to work out the modalities for the implementation and recommend feasible implementation time-frame.

The committee which has since been inaugurated has one month to submit its report. While inaugurating the committee last week, Chief Ogbulafor had flayed the former Chairman of the party, Dr Ahmadu Ali for dumping such an important report arguing that the document was too important to be abandoned the way Ali and his last executive did.

Ogbulafor accused Ali of treating the report with disdain and stressed that the review is to reposition the party, achieve peace and harmony.

Also, a key member of the party and former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Prof Jerry Gana equally lambasted Ali, accusing him of dumping the Ekwueme committee report and of insincerity in handling the entire reconciliation process. Gana who was a former Secretary of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the PDP lamented: "We feel disappointed that they were not prepared to implement such a vital and important document which was put together by some illustrious members of the party. They took their time, went down the nation, as old as some of them were and wrote an excellent report and for this report to be put aside and for nothing to have been done, we felt disappointed".

The lamentations of Ogbulafor and Gana mirror very vividly all that is wrong with the last leadership of the party while Obasanjo held sway as the president of this nation. Here was a party that purportedly got the overwhelming mandate of the Nigerian electorate to preside over its affairs. By the circumstance of that victory, the PDP not only formed the government at the center but also controlled an overwhelming majority of the states. The story was the same at both chambers of the National Assembly. And with this dominance, its actions were bound to have serious repercussions on the momentum and direction of the nation’s politics. The party was therefore expected to lead the way in the institutionalization of the culture of democratic governance.

It was supposed to show the direction in encouraging peace, harmony and internal democracy within the party. But this was not to be as the last executive, apparently goaded by Obasanjo invented sundry subterfuge to shunt out genuine members, some of them the founding fathers of the party.
So many founders and key members of the party left and internal democracy was weakened as party congresses were flagrantly replaced with a nebulous and questionable variant dubbed revalidation exercise. For fear of losing control of the party, both Obasanjo and Ali never allowed congresses and convention to be democratically conducted.

In the process, the most elementary opportunity the party members have at least in the rural areas to make input in electing those who are to preside over their affairs was mindlessly subverted. It is not surprising the all the congresses of the party since the new democratic order have been entangled in avoidable controversy and disputations. The last two congresses and conventions of that party ended up producing parallel bodies in many states of the country.

The bitterness and rancor that became the unfortunate outcome of the last two general elections in the country stem in the main, from the inability of the party to allow the people who are the real owners, to have a say in electing those who should be their leaders. And because of the dominance of the PDP in the nation’s affairs, this development was beginning to take its toll on the growth of genuine political culture and political stability in the country. The PDP was becoming an embarrassment, a liability of sort in the task of enthroning participatory democracy.

If such rudimentary issues as the conduct of party congresses could be so flagrantly subverted by the ruling party that could as well, serve as a perfect gauge to measure its commitment to free and fair elections. Such were the apprehensions and the looming danger. Thus, in order to save itself from self destruction with deleterious repercussions for the nation’s democracy, the party inaugurated the Ekwueme committee on July 23, 2007 with a mandate to reconcile aggrieved members. The committee worked tirelessly and came up with a comprehensive report which it submitted in October of the same year.

But despite the far-reaching recommendations and conclusions of the committee and their acceptance by the party as the panacea to intra-party wrangling, nothing was heard of it again until the election of the Ogbulafor-led new executive of the party last month.

The committee had among others recommended that, "The 2006 membership revalidation exercise should be revisited to allow for unfettered and unconditional return of all members of the party and access to new members. Party members standing for elections into party offices should not be endorsed or anointed. Rather they should be screened and allowed to vie for offices at congresses and conventions to enable members to decide those who could be entrusted with the affairs of the party".

The committee went further to recommend to the party that it must as a matter of deliberate principle, desist from the imposition of candidates under whatever guise in all intra party elections and primaries.
Other recommendations of the committee included that the amendment of the party’s constitution which made the chairmanship of the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT) the exclusive preserve of a former president or a former chairman of the party should be revisited. Also to be revisited are all amendments to the party constitution that did not follow due process.

The committee also recommended that the last recomposition of the BOT of the party should be revisited while efforts should be made to encourage credible, experienced and tested individuals to take up leadership positions in the party. It also stressed the need for internal democracy within the party.
But despite the high-minded, patriotic and visionary recommendations of the committee, the last executive for reasons that will shortly become obvious threw the entire recommendations to the dust bin as if all was well with the party. It is not difficult to find reasons why the last administration could not allow the panel report to see the light of the day. This is because most of its recommendations, as genuine and patriotic as they were, meant curtailing the awesome powers and influence which Obasanjo and Ali wielded in the party.

As a matter of fact, it was not for nothing that Obasanjo engineered the hurried amendment of the constitution to create a position for himself when it dawned on him that the third term agenda had become a still born project. Before then, it was in his interest to mess up the party as part of the strategy to succeed himself, using sundry subterfuge to advantage.

Under such a situation it would be patently naïve to expect him to allow internal democracy to flourish within the party. It would be difficult to expect Obasanjo to allow aspects of the report that will reduce his relevance in the party. It was difficult if not impossible to see him support the implementation of that aspect of the panel recommendation that seeks to abrogate his guided amendment to the constitution of the party reserving the position of the BOT chairmanship for himself. It is not difficult to understand why he has since after leaving office, taken up that position and will fight not to allow that aspect of the panel report to see the light of the day. It was not difficult to decipher why internal democracy within the party would have made the self-succession ambition of Obasanjo a pipe dream.

That is why instead of a congress and convention, he preferred what he dubbed the revalidation exercise which ended up shunting out and disenfranchising the real members of the party. That is why the imposition of candidates became the order of the day and the party gravitated towards disintegration.
It is still a miracle that despite this internal wrangling, the party defied the prediction of political pundits that it was going to implode.

And that it was going to affect its fortunes in the last general elections. Perhaps, it was not for nothing that that election was rated as the worst by both local and international observers in the annals of the nation’s electoral process. The glaring flaws which were self evident in that election may have stemmed from the desperate desire of the ruling party to win the election by all means in the face of glaring disunity of its members. Having won that election by whatever means, it would be too risky for the PDP to pretend that it can afford to carry its luck too far.

It is against this background that the assignment of the review committee has to be appreciated. The recommendations of the Ekwueme report are not only crucial for the survival of the PDP as a political party but for the future and success of democracy in this country for the reasons that have been earlier stated. Democracy requires an attendant political culture to grow and flourish. It presupposes the inalienable rights of the electorate to elect their leaders. It requires fairness, equity and abhors undue manipulations and the imposition of candidates.

And conscious efforts must be made by the political class to play according to the rules of the game. It is not enough to always hide under the excuse that we need time to learn when in actual fact, we are not prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to allow democracy to take firm root. The way to learn is to start by obeying the rules of free and fair democratic conduct.

The way to learn starts by democratizing all political institutions and processes. It cannot be approximated through the brazen manipulation of the collective will of genuine party members as was the case when Obasanjo and Ali held sway. The Ogbulafor led executive must use the singular opportunity of the review, to re-enact the sovereignty of the people in the choice of who represents them. This is the task before the review panel. Their job has already been made easy given the thorough and detailed job done by the Ekwueme committee. Perhaps, what is required most is the political will to have them faithfully implemented.