It’s the nature of even the weakest humans and animals to battle hard against death, even when it appears inevitable. The dying man does not understand the full import of a losing battle. The futility of it seems to even spur all levels of adrenaline surge. This is why the cow whose head is already off its neck keeps battling. It’s not voluntary, it’s instinctive; it’s what the brain has been wired to do in such situations.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Zamfara state appears to fit this analogy. After every round of internal party anyhowness, the PDP in Zamfara is cutdown by a well pointed court judgement. But instead of taking heed, its heartbeat seems to increase the rush of blood to the head, blinding the party into returning to the same haughty and underhanded practices that have been their undoing.
It was Albert Einstein who declared that doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result is insanity. Under PPD’s current circumstances in Zamfara state, I reckon we will be well within our rights to conclude that the party in Zamfara state is insane. Plain and simple.
Why? When Justice Aliyu of the High Court in Gusau, the Zamfara state capital, nullified PDP’s first primary election on 16th September, 2022, he averred that the party failed to adhere to its own 2017 constitution as well as election guidelines. Having ordered injunctions restraining the 1st defendant (PDP) from submitting the name of the 4th defendant (Dauda Lawal-Dare), the erudite justice also “ordered the 1st defendant to conduct a valid Primary Election for Governorship Position in Zamfara state under full supervision of the 5th Defendant (INEC) and present the winner to the 5th Defendant for enlistment as the Party’s candidate for the 2023 General Elections in Nigeria”.
You will think the order by Justice Aliyu for a valid Primary Election was as clear as daylight. Unfortunately, PDP being PDP decided that courts do not have the right to dictate to it how to field candidates for election. Therefore, in a rehash of its earlier conduct, and I dare say petulance, the PDP simply dumped the old papers and retyped the name of the erstwhile winner in Dauda Lawal-Dare in much the same fashion as the first time.
The courts have had enough of the PDP, it will seem, and it was for this unrepentant arbitrariness that, I believe, Justice Aminu Bappa Aliyu, who must have been sick of the sight of the same perpetrators, nullified PDP’s repackaged sham elections, insisting that it stood in contravention of the Electoral Act 2022, as amended.
Specifically, Justice Aliyu held that “the PDP and other Defendants having failed to comply with section 82 sub section 1 and 5 of the Electoral Act 2022, as amended, the PDP was no longer qualified to field a governorship candidate in the 2023 general elections in the state.
You may be tempted to ask: what’s hard in following the laid down rules? Surely, PDP and its legion of lawyers can’t be oblivious of provisions of the Electoral Act 2022, as amended, can they? Certainly not. To even reason like that will be pushing the boundaries of outrageous, but when dealing with PDP, it is safest to steer clear of any rational assumptions.
In truth, not many people believe that the PDP in Zamfara state was capable of doing any better. Not me anyway. Methinks Justice Bappa Aliyu may have spared PDP’s blushes big time. In my mind, I believe it is better for the entire elections to be chalked off than for someone with such mammoth questions hanging over his head to be the party’s standard bearer in 2023.
I think the most dignified thing for the PDP to do now, will be to apologise to whatever is left of its supporters, chin up and face the bleak future that awaits it in Zamfara state. It gets worst because, as I type this, the PDP ward chairman in Dauda Lawal-Dare’s ward has reportedly decamped to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in Zamfara state along with hundreds of members. It won’t be surprising to see a flurry of such defections in the coming days, and who will blame them? No need to go down with an irresponsible captain now, is there?
For Zamfara state, the 2023 elections have become but a formality or some form of affirmation for APC and Governor Bello Matawalle. How time changes everything. At the beginning of 2021, it looked as though the infighting by APC’s big guns in Zamfara state was going to cost it as it did in 2019.
Doomsday prophets had a field day dismissing APC and its big players as cankerworms that specialise on eating their host from within. Nobody expected that Matawalle could pull off such an audacious move that united the APC, transforming it into a formidable front. PDP’s failings may not be unconnected with their gloom predictions for APC, the transformation of which completely unsettled them.
Now that the tables have turned, Governor Matawalle and APC are having a hard laugh that will surely reverberate deep into 2023 and beyond. This is a lesson in restraints.
Shehu writes from Gusau
