“…the action of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)…created a large pool of IDPs (Internally Displaced Politicians) who still have political life in them and must continue in politics. So the IDPs must find a platform to carry on with their politics”. – Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba
Early this week, Ndoma-Egba, former Senate Leader, and certainly one of the more competent voices of recent Nigerian politics, finally decamped from the PDP to the ruling APC. Ndoma-Egba had lost out in the cloak-and-dagger political world of Cross River state, but was not ready for an early retirement. He was rendered an “Internally Displaced Politician (IDP)”, but with the new reality in the country, he jumped the sinking PDP ship. Never mind that it was the platform he found national relevance.
The tune has changed: “Our desire (of IDPs!) is to be able to give the people of the state a choice because politics is about choices and we can no longer continue with this mantra of one party state”. Ndoma-Egba was speaking at the APC state secretariat in Calabar on Monday. It took his time as an Internally Displaced Politician (IDP), to realize that they could “no longer continue with this mantra of one party state”. Pray. Didn’t he get into Senate within that “mantra of one party state”? Would the former Senate Leader have minded if he had returned to Senate with the accesses that offered? Maybe that’s a cruel question in a season of change. Afterall, “the old order changeth…”. Right?
Thanks to the remarkable insight of a brilliant politician, IDPs are no longer only those sheltering from the depredations of Boko Haram and those displaced as a result of sundry acts of violence all over Nigeria today. The vicious rivalry within the political elite has created their own IDPs (Internally Displaced Politicians). Not for them the lean resources and handouts at IDP camps. Internally Displaced Politicians (IDPs) are people of means and of substance; today’s equivalent of the ‘Men of Timbre and Caliber’ of yore! They are IDPs because they lost out in the high stake poker game of politics. But they cannot remain politically displaced for long. From yesterday’s Internally Displaced Politicians (IDPs), they found the light of a new day amongst today’s victors. We must thank Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba for an original contribution to our understanding of recent Nigerian politics.
