By Ehichioya Ezomon
Jesus, in Matt 7:1-2, teaches: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
And in Luke 6:41-42 (and Matt 7:3-5), Jesus warns: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
We are having recourse to these biblical injunctions because of the antics of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, which fails to remove the log in its eye, and yet sees the speck in the eye of the ruling All Progressives Congress. Since its loss of power in 2015, the PDP has been prying into the internal workings of the APC – a situation akin to “taking panadol for another man’s headache.”
First, the party criticized the APC for not constituting its National Working Committee (NWC); lampooned it for failure to hold its National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings regularly; and slammed it for its inability to convoke a national convention since assuming the party in government in 2015.
Second, the PDP claimed that the APC was factionalized due to its alleged marginalization of its general members, and the relegation to the background of many of the stalwarts that propelled the party to victory in the 2015 general elections.
Third, it mocked the states controlled by the APC for failing to conduct local government council elections, alleging that the party was afraid of losing out because it had “lost its popularity” and the “goodwill of the people” since 2015.
And now this: The APC, which the PDP said was in turmoil, has set up a reconciliation committee, headed by its National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to resolve the issues at play, and the PDP has ironically predicted that the committee would meet with failure, as aggrieved APC leaders were “irreconcilable.”
The PDP leaders also amused themselves with a supposed marginalization of Chief Tinubu and his members in the legacy movement that formed the APC. They cited an alleged quarrel that Tinubu had with the National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, in regard to the governorship elections in Kogi and Ondo States, where Tinubu’s surrogates lost out to a so-called President Muhammadu Buhari/Odigie-Oyegun bloc of the party.
They attributed this Tinubu “humiliation” to his reported boycott of the APC national secretariat in Abuja, and his non-participation in many of the party activities, querying, “why should the same APC ask Tinubu to reconcile aggrieved members and groups in the party?”
The begging question is: Why should the disparate voices and tendencies in the APC, and efforts at bringing them together, become the concerns of the PDP? Why should the party approbate and reprobate at the same time?
Aren’t polarization, fictionalization, division, and “irreconcilable differences” what the PDP has prayed for and hoped should befall the APC since it (PDP) lost power in 2015, and especially ahead of the 2019 elections it has boasted it would use to stage a comeback to Aso Rock?
It seems to me that the PDP is missing the point. Has it been able to take care of the intra-party schism, which resulted from its manipulated Abuja national convention that threw up hand-picked candidates for all the posts in the contest?
After the “reggae blues” dance by its new hierarchy was over, didn’t the PDP, realizing that the aggrieved national chairmanship aspirants and other contestants it shortchanged could sink its fortunes in 2019, set up the Governor Seriake Dickson’s National Reconciliation Committee to return “sanity” to the party?
The fallout from the PDP convention was a tip of the icebergs; there are more fundamental and intractable divisions in the party’s state chapters, especially the daggers-drawn tussles between and among party heavyweights over elective positions in 2019.
Similar auguries are affecting the APC, which prompted President Buhari to establish the Tinubu “Consultation, Reconciliation and Confidence Building Committee,” whose mandate was relayed by presidential spokesman, Mr. Garba Shehu.
“As part of on-going efforts to improve cohesion within the APC, President Muhammadu Buhari has designated Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to lead the consultation, reconciliation and confidence building efforts,” Shehu said in a statement, adding, “The assignment will involve resolving disagreements among party members, party leadership and political office holders in some states of the federation.”
The committee has taken off. Tinubu has visited President Buhari, whom he promised to do a good job of his assignment; and also led the committee members to the APC national secretariat, to confer with the Chairman, Chief Odigie-Oyegun and members of the NWC.
At that parley, he said: “I came for consultations… and I am all ears to listen to the various challenges that we have. My mission is to seek opinions and advice on the various conflicts we have in some states, or if there is any national one to reconcile, move the party in a cohesive manner, and reposition it .”
So, why should this assignment the president gave to the Tinubu committee be a burden to the opposition PDP if not that, in legal parlance, the party has become a “busybody,” a “meddlesome interloper” or, to use a local lingo, an “amebo”?
* Mr. Ehichioya Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.