Supreme Court: ADC,PDP on tenterhooks
Factional leaders of both the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are incurable optimists. Before the Supreme Court gave judgement in their suits, they railed and
Factional leaders of both the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are incurable optimists. Before the Supreme Court gave judgement in their suits, they railed and swore at the Court, and suggested that it had either been bought or intimidated. It must treat their cases expeditiously, they warned, if it was not to be seen as a poodle leashed to the meddlesome ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). They added that the Court must also judge in favour of the opposition if democracy was to be saved. Indeed, a day or two before Thursday's judgement, the opposition coalition, particularly the assemblage inspired by ADC leaders, had assumed that the Court's decision would bring some finality to the long-drawn battle for the control of the party, give succour to the opposition in general, assuage the anxiety some party leaders were beginning to entertain, and halt any membership haemorrhage. The assumptions were misplaced.
Moments after the Court delivered its judgement, when it became clear to both lawyers and laymen that justice had not been miscarried, it began dawning on party leaders and members that ADC's dilemma had worsened, that their intimidatory tactics had failed to subjugate the justices, and that the suit from which party leaders expected clarity and favourable outcome had instead dashed their hopes. The Federal High Court Abuja last Wednesday compounded the ADC leaders' woes by barring INEC from recognising the party's April 9 state congresses. That setback came at the prompting of ADC state chairmen, a day before the Supreme Court delivered what seemed like a coup de grace on the David Mark party leadership through last Thursday's judgement ordering the leadership tussle case enfeebling the party to be returned to the Federal High Court for trial. Politicians immediately knew instinctively that in the end, after all litigations are concluded, no different or favourable judicial outcome is likely. Consequently, men and women from North to South have begun fleeing the party in droves. The ordered retrial might take much longer than party leaders expect, especially if it had to run the whole gamut of legal processes and appeals, while securing alternative platforms to contest the next elections would be much harder. This may explain why Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed initially heading for the ADC had to change course by joining the fringe Allied Peoples Movement (APM) formed in 2018 and led by Yusuf Dantalle.
Though some analysts and political observers still prefer to engage in blame games, even suggesting that both President Bola Tinubu and the APC were behind the legal and political stalemate stifling the opposition, the Supreme Court decision has convinced a significant number of Nigerians that the case of the ADC leaders was incurable from the beginning and unnamenable to any ad hoc measures designed to palliate its wobbly structure and restore its leadership balance. When the ADC leaders seized control of the party in collusion with the previous leadership, they limited their putsch to the national leadership and assumed that all the other dominoes would fall in place and in the right direction. But once they got the foundation of their takeover wrong, they got every other thing wrong, including mistreating or ignoring a few key national and state officials of the party. The scorned officials, not the presidency which is nonetheless thrilled, have started to ask for their pound of flesh. There was a small window of opportunity for the new ADC leaders to rectify the damage; instead they called the bluff of the angry and scorned, and in misplaced anger blamed the APC for their woes.
The Supreme Court has, unfortunately for Mr Mark and his co-travellers in the party Exco, declined to give lasting relief to the ADC leaders. They were given only a respite to go back to the trial court to reargue their case. The chances of winning at that lower judicial level are unfortunately next to nothing. This was why in the first instance they engaged in judicial filibustering, to the point of appealing the mere order of putting the other party on notice, up to the Supreme Court. The obstacles they had tried to disingenuously leap over have become unavoidable and even bigger. If they lost in the suit filed against them by ADC state chairmen, it is inconceivable they could win the case brought against them by Nafiu Bala Gombe, the man ridiculed for speaking bad English, but who insists he should be the rightful chairman of the party in the face of the resignation of former chairman Ralph Nwosu. In the minutes after the Supreme Court quashed the order to maintain status quo ante bellum, and as it became clear that the Mr Mark-led party leadership would be relisted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a few party leaders were euphoric. The wilier former vice president Atiku Abubakar was, however, less sanguine. His instincts told him that all things considered about the party's many legal entanglements, their goose was cooked and that he and other presidential hopefuls had been erecting their ambitions on quicksand.
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Former presidential hopefuls in the 2023 election, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP), also possessed with sharp instincts have become disillusioned. To avoid the double jeopardy of staying in a fractious and dying party and losing everything before the race even starts, and also losing out in the presidential race to the more powerful duo of Alhaji Atiku and whoever his potential running mate is, Messrs Obi and Kwankwaso have been rumoured to be on their way out to either the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) or the National Democratic Congress (NDC). But whether in regards to the Atiku duo or the Obi tag team, or any other straggler seeking refuge in the party, the ADC has become an ill-fated vehicle. Surviving two Federal High Court cases filed by Mr Gombe on the one hand and ADC state chairmen on the other hand is a bridge too far for the Atiku and Obi crowds. Even if they survive the cases, it is hard to see them and the party surviving the consequent deathly nomination struggle between the presidential hopefuls. It is, therefore, escapism to see their struggle in terms of the APC.
Last year's transaction between the old ADC chairman Mr Nwosu and the new ADC leaders led by Alhaji Atiku was carelessness par excellence. The former vice president bought a pig in a poke, and some of his nervous comrades are astounded that he signed off on that deal. But the PDP legal crisis is less convoluted than the ADC's. Despite the fancy footwork of former factional chairman, Tanimu Turaki, emplaced by the 2025 Ibadan convention or the continuing defiance of the Board of Trustees (BoT) chairman Adolphus Wabara, the Nyesom Wike faction has for the purpose of INEC timetable and the 2027 polls become the authentic PDP to bargain with. Mr Wike now fancies himself a national leader, and has shown deft footwork to straddle many divides in Abuja, Rivers, and increasingly many other states. His stature and idiosyncrasies have left much to be desired, but in the eyes of the law, he calls the shot. Political aspirants will have to deal with him or forfeit their ambition. However, if it wants to field a presidential hopeful, the PDP as it is constituted today cannot do it with any conviction. Its debilitating fight for control has left it so weak that it can only hope for post-2027 life.
All eyes are, therefore, on Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi. Both men are passionate about 2027 and will do everything in their power in the weeks ahead to cobble up interim arrangements to drive their presidential ambitions. Since Mr Obi is the more flighty, his defection will not be encumbered by values, principles or ideologies, nor even past records of which there is hardly anything recognisable or inspiring. He has moved to and fro many parties without wincing, and has blamed others for his lack of resolve and judgement. Held captive by his fanatical supporters, he is determined to run as a presidential candidate on any platform regardless of how purists sneer at his methods. Alhaji Atiku on the other hand is the more stolid. Sometimes his impassivity finds merit in the public estimation of who he really is. But having traversed nearly all the known political parties of some significance in Nigeria, it has become obvious that his judgement is nearly always flawed where that of Mr Obi is inescapably rudimentary and undecipherable.
The former vice president may also migrate – if he is not already about to do so – if it becomes difficult to predict the fate of the ADC or extricate the party from its legal thicket. But overall, the legal quandary the leading opposition politicians have found themselves will not make them more reflective or inventive; instead, the humiliation they face in their search for a party to actualise their ambition might compel them to become much nastier than they had ever been. What the Tinubu administration needs to be wary about is not the imaginativeness or lack of it of the leading coalition politicians; what is fearsome about the coalition leaders is their capacity to muckrake. They will not flinch in the coming months to go to the pit of hell to dredge up so much muck with which to bespatter the APC and its presidential hopeful. For them, if they can't have the presidency, no one else should have her.
