Even a layman in legal matter would easily put some facts together and arrive at a conclusion that the promoters of the new Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) started their fight for a just leadership in the party from a wrong perspective and pursuing such course in the right direction.
As a matter of fact, even the top officers of the new PDP know or should know that they have been threading on shifty sand, irrespective of the reason for the breakaway.
The first thing that a clear headed analyst would query is the fact as to whether the solution to alleged arrogant leadership in the main stream PDP is the formation of another PDP.
Of course, there is nowhere in the history of any country in which a new party was formed out of the existing party for whatever purpose and such new contraption succeeded in pushing out the main body.
In deed, the obviously hurriedly formed PDP did not look like it would gather any momentum to fight the leadership of the party, right from the onset.
The chieftains of the new PDP ought not to be surprised when the law guiding the establishment of a party in Nigeria naturally box the new party into a corner, because, one expects that they should know better.
For instance, the law says that representatives of the nation’s electoral umpire, that is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must be around to witness the election of the members of the National Executive Council of the party at a venue and date set for a period of time before the national convention.
And what happened in the case of the new PDP? It was not confirmed that any officer of INEC was present at a venue hurriedly chosen on that day where a new set of National Executive Council members were picked. The gathering where such new set of officers were picked was not good enough to be called a national convention, besides the fact that there was no prior notice, known to even ordinary members of Nigeria.
Also, the law, when it comes to this level of reducing serious party matter into a child’s play, requires that the court should queue behind INEC on which of the two it should recognize, for one thing that, when the chips are down, it is INEC that would conduct elections for the parties that are recorded properly after due process, in its book of register.
Having said that, the question still needs to be asked again: is the formation of a new party out of the existing one the solution to solving serious challenges of any kind in the party?
Of course, if the main grievances of the aggrieved PDP members that broke away are that the national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur is arrogant and high-handed in the way he handles the party affairs, and that he is not even a bonafide member of the party, the wise thing that should have been done is to rally support within the party to fight the chairman.
As a matter of fact, there are several provisions in the Nigerian constitution and even the PDP constitution through which aggrieved members can seek redress or the removal of the chairman from not only the seat but also the party without subjecting the party to an embarrassing balkernization.
It doesn’t look neat, on the face of it, for the aggrieved members of the PDP to jump out of the main stream PDP and form a new PDP, expecting that through it, they can take possession of the party.
Except if there is more to it than the ordinary watchers like us can decipher, those who floated the new PDP cannot claim not to know that they have been on the wrong side of the divide, fighting what, to them, is the right course.
