After sounding the death knell for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Oyo State governor Seyi Makinde has abandoned the warfront and has begun seeking solace in former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s African Democratic Congress (ADC). By visiting former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida in Minna in company with Alhaji Atiku, the Oyo governor seemed engaged in more than exploratory talk about where to head in 2027 or which party to associate with. What remains for him is to determine whether to take a faction of the PDP and enter into alliance with the ADC, despite both parties having different vulnerabilities, or to dissolve into the coalition arrangement inspired and funded by the former vice president. The country will know his decision soon, for Mr Makinde has become isolated and desperate after botching the November 16 Ibadan PDP convention and discovering that what he thought was a simple and straightforward permutation has turned into a labyrinth of intrigues, betrayals, and conspiracies.
Former Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose has produced a very colourful account of what transpired between the ADC leaders with Mr Makinde in tow and Gen. Babangida, their host. He insisted that while the coalition leaders were cultivating the support of the former head of state, the Oyo governor was in particular bargaining for the running mate position to Alhaji Atiku should the latter take the presidential ticket as expected. Mr Fayose also volunteered that Mr Makinde had pledged N10bn to fund the consolidation of the ADC, and more billions when the campaigns start. The Oyo governor is too appalled to respond immediately.
But the quick triggers surrounding the ADC leader have described Mr Fayose’s account as fictional and reckless, insisting that at no time was any discussion entered into on the permutations of the ADC presidential ticket. All the ADC leaders did, said the aides, was pay a courtesy call on the general. But if Mr Fayose spoke the truth on the Minna trip, as some analysts insinuated when he alluded to the misapplication of the N30bn disaster relief package Oyo got from the federal government after the January 2024 bomb blast in Ibadan, it is not expected that both the former vice president and Oyo governor would corroborate the colourful account.
What is not in doubt is that Mr Makinde is now looking beyond the PDP, has given up on the make-believe Ibadan convention, and is eager both to protect his legacy and install a successor via a fairly strong political platform other than the All Progressives Congress (APC) against which he is embittered. Though many suits regarding who controls the PDP are still pending in the Court of Appeal, Mr Makinde has seemed to have been outplayed by his chief opponent in the party, former Rivers governor and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, Nyesom Wike. And until the consolidated suits are determined, the FCT minister will continue to have the upper hand. The ADC, now frontloading the country’s political flotsam and jetsam, will be glad to welcome the Oyo governor. But the party leaders’ driving force is their bitterness against the APC, for many of them have been shortchanged on appointments and patronage.
Before the 2023 General Election, Mr Makinde broke ranks with Alhaji Atiku, his party’s presidential candidate. He is now back in his arms, though the former vice president has not changed from his bellicose, insular, and vengeful self. Nevertheless, Mr Makinde’s manoeuverings are not about Alhaji Atiku, but about himself. Everybody knows the former vice president’s unstable political ways, his general inability to relate well with principles, and his lack of fidelity to ideas and leaders, especially when weighed against his ambition. What few people knew about Mr Makinde is his fickleness, his lack of depth, and his preference for pragmatism in place of ideology. He has always had an eye on the main chance, and will dine with the devil with a short spoon if he has no choice.
A few principles undergirded the last presidential election, one of which was power rotation, a factor that led Mr Makinde and four other PDP governors to repudiate Alhaji Atiku in the 2023 election. The Oyo governor now seems poised, if his dealings with the ADC bear fruit, to disavow everything everyone thought he stood for. To dine with Alhaji Atiku, as he appears ready to do, indicates how deeply inured he is to the strategic interest and psychological well-being of the people he claims to represent in a fiercely competitive Nigeria where some groups position themselves as exceptional. In throwing his lot with the former vice president and the ADC, the Oyo governor appears vulnerable to his own emotions, and incapable of weighing the potential damage his present course of action and choices might inflict upon his short-termist politics. He demonstrated that myopia when he steamrolled the PDP into a convention last November against the warnings and reservations of his colleagues in the party, and then followed up by railroading his choices for the PDP national executive into office.
Given the resources at his disposal, Mr Makinde has not been spectacular as Oyo governor, in ideas, in infrastructural development, and in envisioning the future. Now he is compounding his shortcomings by making the worst political choices he always seemed capable of. To cohabit with the ADC as he seems bent on doing if reason does not prevail, with the distinct possibility of making Alhaji Atiku the ADC standard-bearer, and to campaign for the former vice president and that party in a brutally competitive and unequal country, is the height of political immaturity made more toxic by courting the endorsement of Gen. Babangida who annulled the 1993 presidential election. Does Mr Makinde know what he is doing at all, or into what void he is leaping?
Culled from The Nation
