Interrogating Issues That Abortionists Have Raised About Lagos PDP Congress…

I have read different kinds of narratives on the just concluded Lagos State PDP congress and the ones that have kicked me off mostly are from the crowd of abortionists who have been campaigning with barbarous disposition, either for a tinkering with results of the congress to bring on board persons who evidently lost at the election or a total cancellation of the exercise.

How possible is that?

I know this is one question clear-headed leaders and members of our party will be asking silently in their minds.

The abortionists appear obviously rankled that harmonisation of exco list, which was the fraudulent contraption that could have favoured them, hit the rocks. They have been everywhere on various PDP social media platforms throwing up incredible arguments to back up their lousy stance against the congress.

But one thing that is clear about the whole of their loose narratives is that the campaigners against the congress results want something akin to murdering the Lagos PDP.

That a congress authorised by the NWC, and where votes were validly cast and winners announced by a sitting governor should be jettisoned? Come off it, that is nothing different from a wild dream (alakala) of wanting to abort a pregnancy that’s already delivered. Someone should please tell the crowd of abortionists to get out of trance. What you have in your head is a wicked spirit of premeditated murder and having the repositioning of the Lagos PDP done your callously selfish way will in the end be neither of help to you nor the generality of our members.

Let’s together interrogate the meaningless issues that the abortionists have raked up to discredit the outcome of the congress.

I will limit myself to just a few critical issues around which they’ve been dancing in their protest against the conduct of the congress. Any discerning minds, and for those that are truthful to themselves, will not only find the furore being instigated by the abortionists as misleading but a lame effort at bamboozling loyal members to swallow once again the poisonous arrangement of balkanising the party that has held us down since exco-sharing was smuggled into our internal systems with the infamous Alasoadura saga some 20 years ago or thereabouts. All the lies they’re bandying are a calculated mischief, shamelessly desperate and wholesomely fallacious, all aimed at distorting naked truths.

Here they go with some of their atrociously factious arguments.

(1) They contend that top leaders in the state had agreed that the congress should go by CONSENSUS (not elective) and so, the Congress Committee chaired by Bayelsa State Gov. Duoye Diri should have stuck to that. I have also heard the smart alecs fancifully describe the consensus arrangement as HARMONISATION, which in reality was nothing but an IMPOSITION agenda by privileged leaders to foist on the party their favoured lackeys, most of whom on personal merit would not have been able to bargain for what they were being positioned to handle in the State Exco.

The question here, therefore is, was there actually a consensus acceptable to majority of the recognised leaders in the state?

We can attempt an answer to that nagging question even if we won’t consider the very loud and salient but silent concerns of the mass majority of the ordinary members, including aspirants whose heads were being shaved in their absence.

That the process eventually dragged into an election in which delegates voted answers it all.

Whatever happened among the leaders who were to midwife the consensus, and I admit with all sense of humility that ordinary folks like me in the party could not be privy to the intricacies of the issues between them, the fact therefrom showed that the consensus failed. It is not my place or that of any ordinary members to offer arguments either for or against how the consensus failed.

I have heard so many stories of how and why the leaders could not agree, I consider all as market gists knowing that in political horse-trading you can’t really feel the heat when you’re outside the kitchen. What is clear, however, is that the consensus could not be successfully accomplished and so, an election took place.
Even more interesting is that some of the leaders who have been heard crying blue murder in Lagos and at Wadata House after the congress were on ground to witness the process of the election; some also voted.

They have even taken their protestations before the congress appeal panel at Abuja. Pray the panel’s verdict will make everyone happy and benefit the party.

(2) There is also the convoluted argument the abortionists are flying around that a huge number of delegates who could have voted for their choice candidates in the congress were misled into leaving the venue because the congress chairman, Gov Diri, in his address to them had allegedly alluded to the possibility of adopting a harmonised list from our top leaders.

Are you for real? That’s so hilarious!

That your delegates left a congress venue in the middle of the exercise; who does that in an election? Are those human beings you made your delegates really schooled in the rudiments of politics and elections?

I ask, because I know that no politicians will turn their back, even for a fleeting moment, when an election process is still ongoing. So, do I need to prove any further that you’re a cheap liar?

And you’re even so sure that the bunch of your so-called delegates-at-large were there to deliver bulk votes for your candidates. That’s rather simplistic, whimsical, prurient and lascivious.

If this was to establish that your delegates were disenfranchised, then we might ask ourselves if the delegates that voted for the two leading chairmanship candidates were ghosts and how come it was such a close call between them. Remember that Phillips Aivoji got less than 20 votes more than Amos Fawole to emerge winner…even as they individually grossed over 800 votes.

Experienced election managers know that delegates and other general electors are human beings and the human mind during an electoral venture is never primed to precision like a machine. Even automated machines do fail and so, the delegates could fail you too when you least expected.

(3) And then, some also contend that the congress didn’t fulfill the constitutional requisite of the two-third majority across two of the three senatorial districts to form the forum. I do not know in which congress in the life of party politics in Nigeria that this particular rule had been observed to the letter. What I do know is that winners had always been determined by the highest number of votes cast at the congress or national convention.
But if it serves our fancy to do some simple arithmetical conjectures, we will easily see that this line of argument is defeated when you add the votes casts for all the candidates together with the voided ballots and deduct the total from the expected number of delegates at the congress. That’s an assignment for you, and I’m sure what you get will help clear your head.

For me, all the candidates in the last congress have run a good race, they’ve individually and collectively done us proud as a better, democratic party in Lagos and they all deserve to be celebrated by us.

Yes, consensus where fairly and sincerely managed, was supposed to be a good option, one that is less strenuous, more embracing and bridge-building but now that we’ve had, for the first time in the life of the Lagos PDP an elective congress, it’s time we came together to make the best of this wonderful experience. We are not enemies to each other. We do not have enemies among among fellow compatriots in the Lagos PDP family. Even when we differ in our approach, what separates us should be seen as smaller than our bigger and collective interest to have a party that can, and win, election in the days ahead.

We are all winners, nobody is a loser and so, I congratulate you all our candidates. The hope for a greater Lagos PDP is to your credit.

Thank you all.

MUKA POPOOLA Senior member, Agege PDP