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It is no longer news that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) suffered massive defeat in the recently concluded general elections. In this piece, Adesuwa Tsan analyses the Senate leader, Sen Victor Ndoma-Egba’s disclosure that PDP governors Contributed To Party’s Defeat.
Last weekend, the leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN), gave an exposè into the role of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the massive electoral defeat in the just-concluded general election. He said the road to the March 28/April 11 electoral loss of the PDP started from the December 2014 primaries when the governors deliberately shut out unwanted candidates and imposed theirs on the party.
It will be recalled that prior to the elections, there were widespread complaints and petitions against PDP governors, especially those of South South and South Eastern states but in all these, the national leadership of the party turned a blind eye and refused to act.
Mass Defection
Himself a victim of alleged high-handedness by his governor, Sen Ndoma-Egba explained that politicians had to flee from the PDP “because their former party squeezed them out, or in the case of the PDP, they did not fit within the governors’ calculations.”
This, he continued, had an unbridled defection on the party’s fortunes as the massive defection did not only overheat the polity, but also upset the entire political configuration and destabilised the polity.
“For as long as ownership of political parties is not with its members but with governors, they will become so overbearing that it is only their wishes that will rule. The party, (at the national level) suborns its constitution, guidelines and even court orders to please the whims and fancies of governors who appropriate the will of members and impose theirs in its stead. This has bred sycophancy, impunity and arrogance and eroded internal party democracy,” he said.
He added that within the parties, especially the PDP, government is no longer of the people and for the people. “It is now government of governors, by governors and for governors. This has resulted in brazen injustice and restricted the political space for many.”
Consequently, after the last primaries, there was a lot of traffic out of the PDP and no corresponding traffic into it. The party simply imploded under the weight of governors’ impunity and arrogance. The PDP carefully choreographed its downfall. It worked very hard at it and got the result it deserved.”
Ndoma-Egba advised that the best antidote against the PDP defeat in future is to stem further defections by ensuring “internal party democracy” as “a party can only give the nation what she has. A party that does not have internal party democracy can only falsely promise the nation democracy.”
Legislature: Crusade Against Four-Year Turnover
The Institute of Legislative Studies (NILS) spends a lot of resources yearly on training and re-training of National Assembly members and staff but the resources are usually wasted when parties fail to provide a level-playing ground for their members to return after four years to make use of the knowledge gained.
About a year ago, when Senator Ndoma-Egba raised the alarm about the consequence of high turnover of legislators due to change of candidates by the party, many thought he was trying to create a way for himself to return in 2015. But his case highlights where the problem lies.
He warned that doing away with lawmakers and electing new ones would not only erode institutional memory, but any progress gained in the skills and capacity of lawmakers would be Nigeria’s loss.
He was first elected into the Senate in 2003 and in 2005, headed the committee on Media and Publicity and in the Sixth Senate, Ndoma-Egba was deputy majority leader before his promotion to the lead role of leader in June 2010.
Drawing from experiences around the world and from bigger and established democracies, the lawmaker from Cross River Central senatorial district, warned the PDP, which commanded the majority in both chambers of the National Assembly, that unless the turnover debacle was quickly resolved by allowing those with cognate experience to return, which would, in itself, engender continuity and retention of resources (material and physical) expended on training and capacity for the lawmakers, Nigeria would ultimately be the loser.
True to his warnings, on March 28, 2015, 79 senators of the Seventh Senate lost their re-election bids. Only 30 returned. This means that all monies spent by Nigeria to train 79 senators is money down the drain as they would go away with the knowledge and training gained within their four-year stint in the Senate. The result in the House of Representatives is no better as more than half of the 360 members did not return to the House.
The Gang-up And PDP Conspiracy
Perhaps, because the Nigerian democracy is still evolving, some power blocs see the legislature, at the federal and state level, as a compensation field for lackeys and retirement homes. Any seeming attempt by any independent-minded lawmaker to ensure continuity in office, without the stamp of authority of the governor or the godfather in the state, was misinterpreted to mean dissent which must be cut down quickly before the virus spread.
Many lawmakers, as in Ndoma-Egba’s case, were confronted with a situation where they were deemed to have ‘over-spent’ time in the Senate and ‘must be cut to size.’ How to do it? First, sell the dummy that they are not popular politicians at home and then, make sure they do not return to the Senate by any means possible.
Credentials play minimal roles in Nigerian politics. A man who has been in politics virtually all his life, even from his student days at the University of Lagos, at a time when some of the present office holders were in secondary school, someone who was Commissioner of Works and Transport (now split into eight ministries) at the age of 27, in January 1984, who was Attorney General and Justice Commissioner, in an acting capacity, who also supervised the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DIFFRI) in the old Cross River State, at a time when there were only seven commissioners in the cabinet to, now, in 2014, suddenly became unpopular was akin to stretching a lie too far.
In addition, Ndoma-Egba holds the unique record of being the first sitting lawmaker and senator in Nigeria to be conferred the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). He was and still is a member of the Body of Benchers. He holds so many firsts but that is not the discourse for today.
A Loss Foretold
The PDP’s crash was foretold. The road to that failure was laid out in 2014. The fight against ranking lawmakers returning to the chamber was a class war- to prepare for the 2019 presidency and leadership of the National Assembly. The state governors were the vehicles used to make sure that the behemoth, PDP, crashed in the 2015 general polls.
Ndoma-Egba shouted quite early that the four-year turnover would invariably affect lawmaking but no one listened. He also told whoever cared to listen that institutional memory would be eroded, because those trained will simply walk away with their training, experience and contacts (within and outside Nigeria) and and public monies spent on them would amount to waste. The powers-that-be didn’t bother to listen. They wanted a change. Some even didn’t bother with the consequence of the change as long they were the ultimate beneficiaries.
In all of these, Ndoma-Egba is just a metaphor for all senators of the Seventh Senate who lost re-election on March 28. Same for members of the House of Representatives. The trend actually started in 2003.
What happened to the Senate leader was replicated in almost all senatorial districts across the federation and the result of that deceit and arrogance is what the PDP is confronted with today; loss of power in just 16 years.
For a party to have predicted that it would last in power for 60 years but lasted for only 16 years, it shows Nigerians can no longer be taken for a ride. There’s a limit to arrogance in power. For once, Nigerians used their thumbs and stood by the results.
For many politicians like Senator Ndoma-Egba, who will bow out of office next month, they have been vindicated by PDP’s loss and can now hold their heads high that they didn’t lead their party and people to perdition.
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