By Capt Bish Johnson Us Army Rtd
I have listened keenly to political pundits from all political spectrum and lawyers of all kinds analyze, dissect, quote the Nigerian constitution-the most quoted constitution on earth. They have also proffered Happharzard and over-simplified political and legal solutions to what’s a very complicated problem that has been years in the making outside the borders of Rivers State.
Some political pundits have even suggested names in Rivers of people that when they all come together in one room and talk, then the problem will magically be brought to an end and everyone will hold hands and sing KUMBAYA – what an oversimplification and delusional mindset borne out of naivety?
Like an ailment, when there’s a wrong diagnosis, wrong prognosis follows and the ailment will persist until the individual succumbs to it.
How did we get here in the first place? The answer to this simple question is fundamental to attempting to solve this complicated problem which in my careful and strategic calculations will defy every solution to a peaceful resolution until after the pending 2027 elections.
Yes, there won’t be solution to Rivers State problem until after the 2027 Rivers State elections and the presidential election in Nigeria, don’t mean to be a pessimist but the problem has effectively become a political conundrum and therefore will be protracted. It’s unfortunate that innocent people of Rivers State are taking the heat of a problem they have no hands in creating.
In July, 2017 two years following the People’s Democratic Party’s monumental and colossal defeat in the presidential election of 2015 in which the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Goodluck Jonathan, an incumbent president lost to the candidate of a newly assembled party of conglomerate of different political parties, the All Progressive Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, the People’s Democratic Party faced existential problem.
The party was in loggerhead with a very dogged adversary in the person of Ali Modu Sheriff who the leadership of the party in a very strategic miscalculation had picked, almost unanimously and made the party’s acting national chairman, a man two years earlier was the chairman of the board of trustees of another political party, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Ali Modu Sheriff quickly unraveled and the PDP wanted him out and out for good.
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is now one house divided within itself, as factions within it, seem to be at odds with one another and two parallel national conventions were held in Abuja and Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, and the controversial former Borno State Governor Ali Modu who until then was the acting National Chairman of the party became a NON PERSONA GRATA.
At the convention in PortHarcourt which was backed by majority of the party’s leadership, organs and structures, Sen Ahmed Makarfi was declared the Interim National chairman of a caretaker committee that emerged from that convention, a convention that was to be attended by Ali Modu Sheriff but he bolted out of it at the last minute and announced the cancellation of the delegate convention, forcing the Deputy National Chairman of the PDP then, Prince Uche Secondus, minutes after Sheriff’s declaration, and exit from the Sharks Stadium venue of the meeting, announced the formal commencement of the National Convention.
Following the declaration of Sen Ahmed Makarfi by the party as the national chairman of the party’s caretaker committee, Ali Modu Sheriff went to court and that sparked some hard-fought legal battles that threatened the very survival of an opposition party reeling from a catastrophic loss in a presidential election two years earlier.
The legal battles went all the way to the Supreme Court where a five-man panel of the apex court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria then, Justice Walter Onnoghen with other members: Tanko Muhammad, Bode Rhodes-Vivour, Kayode Ariwoola and Dattijo Muhammad in its judgment removed Ali Modu Sheriff and reinstated Ahmed Makarfi, earlier sacked by the Port Harcourt Division of the Court of Appeal, as the National Caretaker Committee chairman.
Reading the lead judgment which was unanimously agreed to, Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour held that contrary to the majority judgment of the Port Harcourt Division of the Court of Appeal, the suit filed by Makarfi faction before the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt was not an abuse of court.
The apex court also held that the National Convention of the PDP held on May 21, 2016, rightly and constitutionally removed Sheriff. It held that the convention acted rightly and not in breach of any aspect of the PDP’s constitution by setting up the Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee.
*While Ahmed Makarfi was present in court with a large retinue of loyalists of his faction, including Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, Sheriff was absent from court*.
It’s very important to note these three names: Nyesom Wike, then governor of Rivers State; Ayodele Fayose, then governor of Ekiti State and Sen Ahmed Makarfi, then national chairman of PDP caretaker committee.
These were the three arrowheads in the battle against Ali Modu Sheriff and who saved the PDP from eminent eternal oblivion. Nyesom Wike supported by Ayodele Fayose financially funded the legal battles while Ahmed Makarfi was the face of the battle and would face and survive several assassinations attempts to his life.
This is where Nyesom Wike began funding the PDP by paying for legal fees of the party, paying for salaries of staff and officials of the party at the national Secretariat and state secretariats where there were no PDP governors and funding many other activities of the party.
By funding the party almost solely and exclusively, Nyesom Wike became overtly and overwhelmingly influential in the party and would become the arrowhead of the party and responsible for most major decisions in the party. As the saying goes, he who plays the pipe detects the tone.
Rewind to 2015, in the run up to the 2015 general election, former President Olusegun Obasanjo as reported by Premium Times on February 18, 2015 and widely broadcast on several television networks, announced his resignation as a member of the People’s Democratic Party, a party on whose platform he ruled the country between 1999 and 2007, directing the chairman of the ward around his former residence in Ita Eko, his Presidential Hilltop mansion in his Abeokuta home, Mr. Surajudeen Oladunjoye to tear his membership card at a press conference organised during their visit to the former president.
As if the party had not had enough misfortune, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who deputized Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007 defected to the All Progressive Congress in what was one of the most high profile defections to hit the PDP, arguing then that the candidate of the PDP, Goodluck Jonathan had reneged on his promise to not seek reelection in 2015, allowing presidential power to shift to the northern region of the country.
*While former president Olusegun Obasanjo sat out the campaign season, remaining mostly on the sideline, Atiku Abubakar campaigned for, supported financially and otherwise and actively sought for the election of Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress and against Goodluck Jonathan, the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party and an incumbent president, a party that Atiku Abubakar had served the country as vice president for eight years and would later return to and become its candidate for president twice, after the heavy lifting to keep the party afloat and viable had been done by Nyesom Wike and a few others.
The point above again should be noted down as we go through the exposé episode by episode because it is one of the reasons behind this problem.*
To be continued in episode 2 as we trace the origin of the political crisis in Rivers State so as to have a better insight into the problem and how best to salvage the situation until after the 2027 elections.
Bishop C. Johnson, is a retired United States Army Captain, a social commentator, a political analyst, an activist and a public speaker, a national defense and military strategist.
He writes from his rural and agrarian community of Egbema in Imo State where he is currently hunkered down for safety, even as he prayed to God, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from my country, Nigeria: nevertheless, not our will, but thine, be done. Capt Johnson can be contacted at b.chuck.johnson@gmail.com