I wish I never had to join the fray over the simmering crisis in our party since we ran into troubled waters in the attempt to pick our various candidates for the 2023 elections. I have refrained all the while from making any comments because I believe we should be circumspect as we seek to address the delicate issues about the controversial processes of the primaries that produced our candidates, at least for one crucial reason. We should not inflame passion any further as we seek to resolve our differences.
I believe that those who have engaged in pushing all kinds of opportunistic, self-conceited and vainglorious narratives in the social media about the current crisis in the party, from whichever angle they’re seated, are ignorant of the dangerous consequences of their approach to the issues at hand. Most people do not realise that the internet doesn’t forget, and any information put out there in the public domain cannot be retrieved.
But so much confusing narratives are daily being bandied over the Lagos PDP crisis, especially since after the Ekiti and Osun elections, and there’s need to properly situate our own issues for us to appreciate the chaotic situation we’re in and the imperative for us to quickly get out of the conundrum.
Everyone could observe that the narratives over the Lagos PDP have escalated since our two different experiences from the recent elections in Ekiti and Osun states. Different people have been looking at the Ekiti and Osun elections from different perspectives on how they thought the experiences could impact our preparations for, and performance at the 2023 general elections. Some have posited that the perceived arrogance of a certain leader in Ekiti ruined the party’s chances at the election, some others want the leaders of Lagos PDP to take a cue from the Osun PDP on how they were able to manage their differences to achieve victory at the July 16 governorship election.
The PDP in Ekiti came a distant third in the June 18 election, with our own Bisi Kolawole trailing lazily behind Segun Oni of the SDP who came second and APC’s Oyebanji who emerged as the governor-elect. In Osun, it was sweet music for PDP as our candidate, the ever boisterous and skillful “ipako o gbo suti” dancer, Senator Ademola Adeleke trounced the APC candidate and incumbent Gov. Isiaka Gboyega Oyetola like a flippant child. It must, however, be stated that, valuable as those experiences are, it might be short-ended to pigeonhole the crisis in the Lagos in the mould of Ekiti or Osun. The peculiarities, with all particular references, are not, and can never, be the same.
Perhaps, it would be good to quickly situate the core areas of dispute among our members, as against the festival of deliberate confusion that we’ve been having from persons who are struggling with one another to push all kinds of congenial arguments that serve no helpful purpose in getting us out of the crisis but only push us deeper into the abyss.
I think we in the Lagos PDP today are all agreed that we have a crisis on our hands over disputes arising from controversial processes through which our candidates have emerged. That, no one with a sound mind will dispute.
Now, the issue is, where is the flame of anger in our members flaring from?
I have noticed the thick column of fraudulent narrative changers who are desperately lumping the anger of aggrieved aspirants for the positions of Senate, Reps and the State Assembly and their distraught supporters with contest for the governorship ticket. That is not truthful at all. To mix them all is a deliberate distortion of the issue with fraudulent and confusing narrative.
All of us know that there has been no known issues at all over the emergence of the gubernatorial candidate of the party. It is clear that Dr. Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adediran, popular known as Jandor, will not say that any of the fellow contestants for the party’s ticket, or anyone else within the party, has raised any protest either to the party leadership or filed a case in court since he emerged as the candidate, no matter how disputable were the processes that produced him. Everyone has let go on the governorship and accepted that we already have a candidate. But we will be playing the ostrich if we deafen our ears to the cries on other issues that are causing crisis in the party and pretend that they will blow with the wind in the course of time.
We all know where the crisis are? They are obviously around the disputable management of the processes that produced most candidates on our legislative tickets for both the national and state assemblies.
To avoid being lumped with persons who have been confabulating idly on the crisis over the selection of our flagbearers in the social media, I need to quickly make a distinction here. My perspective is not to spill the beans by dwelling on sensitive information of how rightly, or wrongly, we prosecuted our internal processes, right from the stage of the three ward ad-hoc delegates to the various primaries for picking our candidates.
Did we have a party primary that can sustain all our candidates, and I say all our candidates in the Lagos PDP, in the face of the law? I do not wish to duel over that either with anyone on an open platform like this.
What I believe we need to do quickly is find a way to resolve the crisis and return ourselves to the path of peace so we all can come together as one family and prepare strongly to confront the evil APC in Lagos going to the 2023 elections. That, I also believe no reasonable member will dispute. But it must be clearly understood that we can easily get out of the crisis, not by engaging in congenial arguments that serve just a selfish mindset, but by bringing ourselves to the round table where we humbly and frankly do a truthful prognosis of the underlying issues that have led us to the crisis at hand. From there, we should be able to proffer necessary reassuring appeasements to calm persons who feel genuinely aggrieved about the way they’ve been shortchanged in the pursuit of their legitimate aspirations to contest for one office or the other.
What most people have done in their political naivety with the kind of confusing narratives, and the weighty information being put out daily on the various PDP platforms, most times faulty and provocative if they didn’t know, was to provide our enemies in the opposition APC with the dangerous legal weapons to fight us, maybe after we would have thought that our own fights within us were already resolved and over.
Therefore, Dr. Olajide-Adediran as the party’s premium candidate in the state has to come to terms with reality that there’s a reason the deafening cries of persons who are aggrieved have yet to subside in spite of whatever reconciliatory efforts are being made.
Those who lost out through the badly managed primary processes have continued to accuse him of being the sole architect of their misfortunes because of his neck-deep involvement in the emergence of ad-hoc delegates who are mostly alien to the party, and I believe he should give everyone a listening ear. They reinforce their misgivings against him with the fact that no Lagos PDP governorship candidate in history, except Jandor, had had their hands so caught in the till trying to take the party’s tickets for their preferred aspirants or use their influence to support any leaders to steal the tickets for their cronies.
Let’s ignore 1999 when Chief Dapo Sarumi was our gubernatorial candidate and people for most of the other legislative positions were virtually gifted the tickets without much contention, the late Funso Williams in 2003 did not do it. Musiliu Obanikoro did not in 2007. Dr. Ade Dosunmu in 2011 did not; neither was Jimi Agbaje so suspected, or flagrantly accused, in his two attempts in 2015/2019.
So, consistently denying that allegation by Jandor or anyone else, rather than face things up and calm frayed nerves will not wish away the agonies in the minds of those who have been affected. Neither will the aggrieved persons be assuaged with the arrogant narrative that after all, only a tiny number of the candidates belong to his Lagos4Lagos group, even though he had the opportunity of taking everything in most of the constituencies since majority of the ad-hoc delegates belonged to him.
Some people have said that Jandor, with the coming on board of popular comic thespian, Funke Akindele aka Jenifa, was a gift from God to pull us in the Lagos PDP out of the wilderness. I concede that to them and do pray we win the 2023 election on the joint ticket of the lovely duo. The only addendum to my prayer, however, is for us to get serious at settling our differences, especially the issues concerning the House of Assembly slots. I guess we know that to have good governorship and deputy governorship candidates campaigning while most of the assembly candidates are still embroiled in crisis in their various constituencies is like asking our birds to fly with one wing. That’s a difficult feat, shy of saying it’s totally impossible.
Having said that, I will urge all leaders and members to give the Lagos PDP a chance. Jandor should humbly seek help wherever and everywhere; and work with other critical stakeholders to arrest the crisis in the party from smouldering any further.
To look the other way while our members are running to the courts in anger can be very, very dangerous in the situation that we’ve found ourselves. What will be the consequences should any of the vehemently angry aspirants choose to attack the very foundation for picking the candidates we currently parade with the facts that we all know? At that point I will say no more, but remind us that a stitch in time will not just save nine, it will save thousands more of the overburdened members of the Lagos PDP.
MUKA POPOOLA
Senior member, Agege PDP/ Head, DD Media Office
