Political ribaldry
“Convention pass convention” – to the picturesque street of pidgin we reach to kick-start today’s piece: infusing all of the braying — the dark bawls and the wild howls —
“Convention pass convention” – to the picturesque street of pidgin we reach to kick-start today’s piece: infusing all of the braying -- the dark bawls and the wild howls -- with some piercing street humour!
Folks, it’s that season of ribaldry on the political front, where the normal and the bizarre co-mingle as long-lost comrades!
That ribald is replete with its own parallels. If one is wrong – and ruinously so – the other can’t be right, and no less ruinous, can it? The courts wait, with their rods!
Again, it’s a tale of two parallel conventions – confab pass confab, I swear! – the fierce hustle for power, come 2027.
Back in November 2025, Governor Seyi Makinde and his PDP faction held their convention in Ibadan, Oyo State, court orders be damned! In fairness though, Makinde and co obtained an Oyo High court okay to proceed, after two Federal High Courts clearly said no. As it turned out, the Court of Appeal proved “injunction pass injunction”!
So, the Makinde camp that pushed old man, Bode George, to belt out the “expulsion” of Nyesom Wike and co, are now the ones sneezing and coughing in the political cold!
In contrast, Wike and co, after own convention in Abuja, with the Court of Appeal voiding the Ibadan jamboree, now dictate PDP terms. Why Wike, never one to suffer fools gladly, even told the losers, trying to stray back into the fold under the guise of “reconciliation”: you’re “conquered” folks, with no luxury of choice!
March 2026 – and the ADC is staging a similar drama, but now ignoring an order from the Court of Appeal. Will it land a different result?
Perhaps, the David Mark ADC faction is right by insisting the “status quo ante bellum” should start after it had taken over the party; and not a second before – as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has held?
That single “sin” – unforgivable in their books – has turned the INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, into the Great Satan, that must be scorned, scorched, bludgeoned and crushed!
The Supreme Court will sort out all that – the right interpretation – in due course.
Before then, however, a double derring-do: the Mark faction has barked its stance is superior to INEC’s; and has robed the INEC chair as a daft partisan, not a wise arbiter.
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Then, after the virtual coronation at its daring Abuja convention, of that very same executive the Nafiu Bala Gombe/Leke Abejide “aboriginal” faction now fight in court, the Mark-ADC expelled Bala, Abejide and co in full triumph!
Will Mark and co soar where Makinde and co had crashed? But just to refresh: where are those gung-ho PDP expellers? Eating crow today as “conquered” serfs, too shame-faced beyond the bluster that the PDP is Nigeria’s “political iroko”!
Still, will the ADC expellers – glorious politicians, civil and military – get it right where their PDP cousins got it wrong; and claim the ADC for good?
Or would they be the Nigerian versions of “the bigger they come, the harder they fall” – that Jamaican film soundtrack that, in 1972, launched the great Jimmy Cliff into global fame, he with his genre, reggae?
All that, in good time, as the Supreme Court sorts out the mess!
Still, it’s hardly post-confab glory for the Mark-ADC as its velvet ranks pounced on one another, akin to what the Yoruba call the eedi – a sudden spiritual confusion, for want of a better description – no thanks to reckless posturing at TV interviews.
It all started with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Arise TV. Beaming at his huge mirror of conceit, he serenaded himself as the greatest living vote-catcher from the North!
Who is greater than I, he preened and pranced before his interviewers: Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the Kano local champ, now clawing, scoffing and biting to retain the rump of his Kwankwasiyya masses, after his golden boy Abba Gida-Gida had dumped him? Aminu Tambuwal, the wannabe from Sokoto? Nasir El-Rufai: he whose razor sharp mouth and ultra-loose tongue always throws him under the bus?
Or Peter Obi – that one and his Igbo clannish vote? How many are the South East Igbo, anyway – in comparison to my thundering, teeming masses of the North?
But Atiku forgot one or two things. The candidate of the “North” – self-proclaimed -- not only brought him to grief in 2023, it smashed the PDP southern wing: and the same Obi and his LP were his nemeses. Then, what hold does Atiku have on the “North”, beyond weaponizing current vulnerabilities, which are neither here nor there?
Why, not even Mallam Aminu Kano, the icon of northern Talakawa reverence; or the legendary Mai Gaskiya -- the Honest One -- Muhammadu Buhari, famously taciturn but could gross 15 million votes in successive elections, ever boasted of their hold on the Talakawa! Yet, they had far more organic grip of them than perhaps a thousand Atiku ever would!
That bluster was as hubris-stricken as the Atiku run of 2023, when on grand -- but blind -- personal ambition, he not only crashed his presidential dream for the umpteenth time, he also -- fatally? -- wounded the PDP. His remorse? Acquiring the ADC as 2027 special purpose vehicle (SPV); and asking the PDP he smashed to clamber on board! The ripples of all that are still all over!
Atiku might never realize -- talk less of regret -- his 2023 blunder. But on Kwankwaso, the scale appears to have fallen off his eyes. Newspaper reports claim he has since sought out Kwankwaso to make up. But how can you gore a guy in public but try to kiss and make up in the closet? Well, you never know -- politicians!
Obi had gone to the same Arise TV to spin own tales. His clear political whoredom is because all of his election-time lovers -- APGA, PDP and LP -- weren’t playing by the rules! Should new sweetheart ADC try the same rascality ...
The marines are cheering and clapping at Obi’s peculiar truth -- wow! Just as his Obidients have growled at Atiku: it’s Obi or nothing!
But beyond political jokes and ribaldry, it’s still back to 2023. The noisy opposition is still PDP, now in its glory-less days.
The Wike faction still supports Bola Tinubu, as it did in 2023. The Atiku faction has annexed the ADC -- or has it? The Obi faction -- after using and dumping LP -- now orbits back to the same ADC, the Atiku vomit Obi rejected in 2023, but now lapping up.
The Makinde sub-faction? Those are flotsam and jetsam -- neither in their dying faction of the comatose PDP, nor in the still-birth ADC -- at least until the Supreme Court final verdict on the matter!
Pray, do you tread the same path but arrive at a different destination? You never know! But in that ADC sack, the Obasanjo-we-are-the-best-to-happen-to-Nigeria-since-sliced-bread PDP faction have packed themselves.
If they float, they birth a new life. If they sink, they plumb without trace. What will it be? Checkmate, 2027!
