Tukur And The Making Of PDP’s Funeral The chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, 80-something-year-old Bamanga Tukur, has vowed that he will not relinquish his chair, even at gunpoint. Why should he leave when he has spent only one of his four years in office? Tukur believes that there are people in the party who, from the get-go, were not ready to give him a fair chance to do his job. It’s not about capacity or competence. It’s vendetta. His foes will fight to the finish. They are not prepared to bury the hatchet from the deeply rancorous primaries that unexpectedly produced him last year. Confidence vote or not his enemies would be happier to see the party dead and buried than accept the leadership of its seventh chairman in 15 years. Treachery and politics go hand in hand. In the politics of PDP chairmanship, however, treachery is everything. Since former president Olusegun Obasanjo shafted the party’s first chairman, Solomon Lar, in a power struggle, every successive occupant of the position has reigned at the pleasure of at least one of the two most influential power blocs - the presidency or the governors. Surprisingly, Tukur, who himself was a former governor of the old Gongola State (now Taraba and Adamawa states), has been carrying on as if his political survival depends more on the fact of his grey hair than on his capacity to find a common ground between the blocs. I laugh each time I read his angry threat that he would never resign. Such tantrums may frighten pupils in his village school in Jada, but an administrator of Tukur’s standing ought to know that he can only continue to maintain a hard line at his own peril. A politician who is truly in charge does not need life support from confidence votes. In a presidency as weak and confused as President Goodluck Jonathan’s, Tukur needs more than the support of Aso Rock and useless confidence votes to be useful to himself and serviceable to his party.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 05:32:06 +0000
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