The crises rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not a news to majority of Nigerians who have been following and praying for stability in the party owing to the fear of not having a one party state in Nigeria
There are diverse opinions which have casted darkness to many people and are yet to come to terms with the real explanations of the behind the scene hard facts.
Senator Modu Sheriff and his agents have carefully drafted their propaganda to conceal the facts but as enumerated below, you'll get the clearer picture of what has precipitated the Crises.
The youth you see repeating the Fayose and Wike attacks have consciously or unconsciously bought into Sheriff's cheap propaganda that Fayose and Wike "brought him" to the party or to come and be chairman.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Sheriff lobbied intensely to become chairman of the PDP. He ran from a party he founded - APC - to PDP in 2014 because PDP was in power and he calculated that GEJ would win in 2015 and he would be rewarded for jumping ship.
Sheriff appeared before an interview panel to audition for the role and he put up a colorful and deceitful show of being the "only candidate from the North East who could fund the party", how he has private jets and will make them available to party chieftains to use, and other empty claims.
He kept on hammering on the party's financial state and how he was knight in shining amour who could save the day.
It was agreed clearly with Sheriff - of course, by the party's own constitution, rules, and zoning arrangements - that he would serve for the 3 months left for the North East. He agreed.
I recall PDP faithfuls and supporters who raised this matter of Sheriff's Boko Haram image. I also remember seeing them being shouted down that Sheriff's Boko Haram tag was an APC creation that should not be bought by "gullible" PDP members.
Fani-Kayode, who led the rebellion, against Sheriff's emergence was vilified and told that he needed to be a "team player" and accept the party's decision. Eventually, party elders like the BoT which initially rejected him, accepted Sheriff because they were told "it is just for 3 months and he is gone".
No sooner that Sheriff became chairman of the party, he began his mischief. He began running financial schemes around PDP leaders, as is his known style. Playing PDP chieftains to part with their money to him, while spending the money contributed by party leaders, he was giving the gullible the impression that he is "funding the party".
He began seducing the party leaders with lies and promises that he knows he can't fulfill, even if he were to remain as the chairman of the party for 10 years. He came up with all kinds of schemes to scuttle the party's zoning system and railroad everybody by emerging as the party chairman at the national convention of May.
Of course, the long-standing members of the PDP rose up against Sheriff and prevented him from carrying out his misplaced power grab. Sheriff thought he had succeeded in metamorphosing into the National Chairman for the next 3 years using deceit, lies, wicked schemes, and playing mind games on everybody.
Someone has asked that "the party elders who opposed Sheriff, where were they when the party was "dying" and Sheriff was brought move it forward?
Let me try my best to address that issue.
Where were they? They were doing with respectable and responsible elders do when a new generation of leaders have emerged in a political party. They were in their homes, in retirement, and leaving there show to be run by the Mimikos, Wikes, Akpabios, and Fayoses.
When consulted, they offered counsel as would any self respecting elder. When consulted by the governors, especially, on the matter of giving Sheriff a fresh 3 year term has governor, all of them - without exception - advised strongly against it.
Before the May 21 convention, the governors made several attempts to get Sheriff to drop his ambition to lead the party and focus instead and building networks towards his 2019 ambition .
Then, Sheriff would tell anybody who listened that he had no interest in continuing as chairman but it was the "founding fathers of the PDP - Ciroma, IBB particularly", who were "pressurizing him to stay on.
The governors exposed Sheriff's plan as a bold face lie when they visited Ciroma and the man said he has nothing whatsoever to do with Sheriff and that Sheriff was bad news to the PDP. Right there and then, Ciroma called IBB and IBB echoed the same warning and counsel to the governors - Do everything you can to get him out of that post who he will destroy the party.
That meeting appears to have been the turning point. All governors, even previously, pro-Sheriff ones (Wike, Fayose), and sitting on the fence ones (Udom, Ikpeazu, Ayade, Okowa) withdrew all support for Sheriff.
Yet, the power-grabbing-born-to-rule demon that was pushing Sheriff wouldn't allow him drop his ambition or shelf his plans. Eventually, we all know the story, how his insistence to be elected Chairman by all means even in the face of open rejection, led to his public disgrace at the national convention of the party on May 21.
Then, there is the other level of party elders - the Jerry Ganas - those ones got up to act and save the party from heading into the abyss by Sheriff's evil antics. That is what elders do. Immediately Sheriff was ousted, they went back to being quiet because, frankly, a new generation runs PDP now.
And that is the beauty of the PDP - and why people like me root for the party. PDP is bigger than anyone person, even the founders of the party. That is a fundamental nature of the PDP that Sheriff wanted to change by trying to extend his tenure at the expense of the party's zoning system. It is the major reason those who initially tolerated his 3 months' chairmanship rose up and strongly opposed him.
PDP doesn't have a godfather that calls the shots. PDP doesn't have one strongman, of which, without the person, decisions cannot be made. No, that is not PDP. If IBB couldn't control the PDP, Obasanjo could not control the PDP, then certainly, a Modu Sheriff, a man accused of being a Boko Haram founder (or sponsor, depending on who you talk to) certainly will not be able to control the party for his self-centered ambition.
In all of this, it is important that we do not lose sight of the reason why many people - even the supporters of the PDP - rejected Sheriff's unholy ambition - fairness and justice!
The zoning tradition of the PDP was that the positions in the party were rotated (and spread out in the 6 zones) between the North and the South. This zoning arrangement was tinkered a little to make room for Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. But with Jonathan out of Aso Rock and the prevailing but faulty narrative that "why PDP lost in 2015 is because it jettisoned it's zoning arrangement for one man", it was necessary, if not sacrosanct, for the party to zone the chairmanship to the South.
Then, there was the issue of the South West bloc of the PDP feeling it was their turn. Given that all other 5 geo-political zones had led the party at one time or more - in the past 16 years.
Pleasing Sheriff, would mean displeasing the entire South, especially the South West that felt the position should naturally come to them.
It wasn't a smart thing to do.
The same shape-shifting Sheriff, came up with a propaganda within the PDP to demonise the South West as the "people who betrayed the South in 2015 and caused the party to lose power at the centre". So, as "traitors" they don't deserve to be chairman. He even went as far as suggested that the party doesn't need the South West to win 2019 but needs the North.
Sheriff came up with the infantile calculations that PDP could win with him and its 2019 flag bearer because he would "bring the North" and add to the "South South and South East" and gain and advantage over Buhari. Hence, "we don't need the South West". Like I said, that a childish calculation, it makes harmful assumptions, and frankly, it just wouldn't work.
But, let's take a look at the evil suggestion that the South West are the villains of the 2015 elections.
First, this is PDP politics in play not general elections politics. There is no indication whatsoever that PDP leaders did not stand by their party and work tirelessly to deliver the vote for Goodluck Jonathan. So much so that the difference between Buhari and Jonathan was just about half-a-million.
There is no report of South West PDP colluding with APC in any way during the 2015 elections. Leaders like Fayose and Mimiko did all they could to deliver their states. The anti-Jonathan sentiments among Yorubas was just too strong and it had been allowed to grow unmitigated for years.
So, why would the PDP punish PDP members for the voting patterns of non-PDP members in a general elections? I asked this question over and over again during Sheriff's dirty campaign for chairmanship. I never got an answer. Everyone I spoke to agreed with me that it was just plain stupidity.
But let us take a minute and do the same analysis with the North East where the chairman during the 2015 elections came from and where Sheriff is said to be a "billionaire industrialist" and a two-term governor.
Reports of sell-out to the Fulani cause, the Islamisation cause, Buhari, and the APC - secret and open - were received and documented. The North East PDP did little or nothing to stand by the party giving over 80% of the vote to Buhari.
Recall the telephone conversation in which a PDP chieftain from the North confessed to a Yoruba friend, Kunle that he backstabbed the PDP to make the presidency come back to the North? That was the prevailing attitude of the PDP's Northern leaders during 2015 elections. They, not the Yorubas are the traitors of the PDP.
Then, let us look at Sheriff himself. Reports say he was given $30 million to mobilize for Jonathan in 2015. How did Jonathan perform in Borno? So, why would this fellow, a man who failed woefully at the poll in his home state, suddenly feel he "has what it takes" to deliver the North to the PDP in 2019?
How do you solve a problem like Sheriff?
Sheriff has not been done away with because PDP leaders tend to be democratic and law abiding. Our legal system takes time to deliver justice and as long as the matters are in court, it amounts to lawlessness to take matters into your own hands by resorting to unorthodox methods to get rid of the pest that Sheriff has turned out to be.
He did not win in the party, he has not won the hearts or the people, he has lost the media war, woefully, and he will not win in the courts.
When the Appeal Court or Supreme Court issue judgement - if it gets to those levels - Sheriff will certainly be disgraced.
In the meantime, those who love the PDP should not lose faith or be distracted by 2 kobo propaganda from Sheriff's depleted followers. He never funded the PDP and if he did, the PDP is capable of repaying him, the offer to repay him LEGITIMATE expenses has been placed on the table. The only hitch? He has failed to make any concrete claims.
Sheriff just gets up in the morning and claims he spent N1 billion on the PDP. When he is asked to name the expense lines, he fumbles and mumbles and wobbles and ends up repeating one syllabus words, essentially saying nothing.
If you spent one billion naira. You are supposed to show what projects you spent one billion on. He can't tell PDP leaders he spent N1 billion on the party, simply because he never did. He can't mention any project to them, because they would say something like this, "Isn't that the project you demanded N20 million from me for? How come you claim you brought the money?"
Which elections did Sheriff fund as party chairman? At least, it is common knowledge that elections are the most expensive item on a party's shopping list. Which elections did he fund? None. Yet, you have a long list of PDP leaders who gave Sheriff various sums of money to after he manufactured non-existent projects and sold them just to swindle them.
Funny PDP Sheriff-loving social media chaps?
Ignore them or challenge them? It is up to you. I would advise you ignore them. Don't add power to their ridiculous 5 naira commentaries. Your time and your energies are worth much more than spending time to engage 'food-is-ready' online activists who fly by night but pretend to be patriots by day.
What I would suggest you spend your time and energy doing is sharpening your skills and developing your talents and generously deploying yourself to working on a cause much bigger than you. Find a mentor or more and seek wise counsel at all times.
Pursue excellence. Constantly be aiming to outdo your best. You might go unrecognized or unappreciated for sometime. But, is you stay consistent, it is inevitable, something will have to give and you rise to the top.
Don't give up on your party and your country. Because that would amount to giving up on yourself.
