IN POLITICS TRUTH IS ALWAYS BITTER - AUDU OGBE

The man needs no introduction because of his antecedents as a former chairperson of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). During the time he served as the PDP chair, Ogbeh was known as a forthright man, who spoke the truth regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, his downfall was engineered by his outspokenness, his belief that honour lies with truth-telling rather than with fawning adulation, sycophancy or obsequiousness.

 It was this philosophy that informed his decision to confront President Olusegun Obasanjo with the truth about the rumblings within the PDP with regard to Obasanjo’s refusal to discipline Chris Uba, who confessed to him that he single-handedly rigged the Anambra State governorship election in favour of Chris Ngige.   When Ogbeh penned his letter to Obasanjo, he did not envisage that the contents of his personal letter to the president would be leaked to the media.

 In fact, the publication of that letter triggered a chain of events that ultimately led to Ogbeh’s decision to resign as the PDP chair. It was a nasty misunderstanding between Obasanjo and Ogbeh that not only soured the relationship between the two top men in the party but also led to the development of factions within the PDP. Ogbeh fell from his enviable position as party chairperson because he was too forthright, too honest, too blunt, too decent, too trusting, and less diplomatic.

Unfortunately, these are not the grand qualities for which successful politicians in Nigeria are known for. Against the background of his crushing exit from the PDP, his inability to complete his transformation agenda in the party, his public bout with Obasanjo, and his current position as a leading member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ogbeh spoke extensively in an interview published in the Punch of last Sunday, 28 June, 2015, about his views on how the APC could resolve the undercurrents of tension within the National Assembly, the misunderstanding between the National Assembly leaders and some members of the APC, as well the growing refusal of APC legislators to accept party directives with regard to the nomination of principal officers of the National Assembly.

 It was an insightful discussion in which Ogbeh touched on a range of issues, confronting the party but also revisited the problems in the PDP, making indirect and direct references to Obasanjo’s perfidious ways and his dictatorial personality that did not tolerate alternative viewpoints. Asked to explain why decisions taken by the party during the Second Republic were more binding and respected than the current situation in the National Assembly in which party members have been taking independent decisions that are at odds with or contradicted the party’s position, Ogbeh answered: “… In the Second Republic, there was a structure and the party chairman was a pretty strong person; the president deferred to him.

Today, the president owns the party chairman, dictates to him or tries to, at least, before now. As a result, the culture of party supremacy has waned so badly that respect for the party is quite minimal now.” One could pick in Ogbeh’s response subtle jibes at the way Obasanjo dominated, managed, and indeed hijacked the PDP like his domestic business during the eight years of his reign as president.

According to Ogbeh, although the party system made space for a chairperson elected by the party and a president elected by people across the country, in practice, it is the president who tends to administer the party indirectly and sometimes directly. It is the president who is seen as the real power holder. In the president flows power, authority, influence, and the capacity to allocate resources. Not only does the president govern, he is also seen as the repository of knowledge. The president becomes the man to whom everyone goes to ask for financial or moral support, political appointment, or other form of aid.

When the interviewer asked whether Ogbeh also entertained the worry as other citizens do about the impact that disorganisation or instability within a ruling party might have on governance (a reference to the ongoing intra-party feud within the APC members in the National Assembly), he replied: “There has to be some cohesion, otherwise who is going to adhere to the party’s manifesto? Who is going to listen to the party? Who is going to discipline erring party members, living extravagantly, embarrassing the party and the people?

The party has to be strong enough to call people to order and in the absence of that, of course, there will be a great deal of wobbling and incoherence in policy implementation.” As a former chair of the PDP who fell out with Obasanjo and other leaders of the party, Ogbeh drew on his personal experiences to advise about the need for party harmony, greater understanding among legislators and the value of projecting the central organising policies and ideologies of the party.

It was in this context that Ogbeh drew attention to the tired cliché that advocates that a house divided against itself can never stand. As the PDP experience showed in the past 16 years that the party was torn apart by widespread disagreement among members, the easiest way to contribute to the downfall of a political party is to engage in constant squabbling. In his most dispassionate comment on the prickly problem in the National Assembly engendered by the emergence of Bukola Saraki, as Senate president and Yakubu Dogara, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ogbeh said it was no longer possible to consider expelling Saraki from the party.

Ogbeh said: “It’s too late to do that. I think dialogue is the answer and I wish to God that, that dialogue had taken place much earlier. Two, calling that meeting at 9:00am when voting (for leadership positions) was happening at 10:00am was a strategic error. I didn’t know who engineered it. It was a very tragic error. Three, I think a committee should have been set up long ago to get the process of reconciliation over with.

The committee not involving the party leadership but elders from the party should meet both sides in the divide within the APC and sort the matter out because the longer it lasts, the more embarrassment we get, the more the public confidence in us shakes and the more difficulties we face in governance.” While the current rebellious behaviour by legislators in the National Assembly is chiefly the handiwork of members of the APC, other politicians in the opposition parties have also used that opportunity to create and sustain the atmosphere of instability.

However, in terms of adverse consequences, the APC members will be particularly hit hard because they are seen as members of the ruling party at the federal and state levels. If there is instability in the National Assembly, many people are likely to see it as evidence of the inability of the APC to govern. If APC members in the House of Reps and in the Senate do not resolve their grievances with the National Assembly leaders, they will be hastening the rapid disintegration of their party.  

 When ordinary citizens look at what is happening in the National Assembly and see scuffles, unruly behaviour, and defiance of the leaders in the legislature, they are likely to conclude that the lawmakers are not interested in making laws for the good governance of the country but are driven mostly by self-serving interests. Already, many people believe that, rather than serve the interests of ordinary citizens who elected them, the legislators are looking after their own interests. Right or wrong, that view may influence how the citizens perceive APC politics, and how they view President Muhammadu Buhari and his government.

Overall, these perceptions may influence public opinion and how the people will vote in the next general elections in four years. A self-inflicted injury will not only harm the image of the APC members in the National Assembly, it may also lead to negative perceptions of the APC governments at state and national levels. What Audu Ogbeh has done in his interview is to make the point about the importance of truth-telling. He believes that it is better to tell the truth now and suffer the consequences as he experienced in the PDP rather than keep silent and watch selfish politicians destroy the party, the noble path established by the founding members of the party, and the goodwill and support that Nigerians have given to the Buhari administration in the early days of his government. 

In politics, truth is often bitter. Politicians believe the longer they withhold the truth from the people, the easier it would be to govern and to continue to raid the treasury. In many cases, this view is not always correct. Nigerians are not as easy to fool as politicians assume. The national leadership of the APC must be grateful to Ogbeh for speaking out now rather than later when the damage would have been irreparable.   Apart from matters of principles that Ogbeh highlighted in the interview, he also underscored the need for self-preservation of the APC, the party on whose platform the wrangling politicians got to their present position. Whether or not APC leaders admit this, there are two diametrically opposed forces now seeking to strengthen the party or tear it apart. One group sees itself as the voice of ordinary people within the larger Nigerian society. The other group is pompous and believes that nothing happens within the party without the endorsement of the godfathers. While the former group represents the voice of reason and compromise, the other could easily be categorised as a club of villains representing everything that is disruptive in the party. 

 

Leaders of the first group represent the new generation of politicians who would rather die in the service of the nation and the people than watch a select group of privileged politicians impose their personal agenda on the rest of the country. On the other hand, leaders of the second group constitute impenitent troublemakers who have carved a niche for extraordinary deception, misrepresentation of truth, and shifty attitude to national problems.   The APC leaders will be facing a long period of volatility and uncertainty if the cracks in the party are not sealed sooner.