Re: What Atiku Should Know About Zamfara PDP

By Saleh Idris Gusau

To start with, the title of the piece written by one Balkisu Salisu Gusau is misleading because there's nothing the writer can tell Atiku about the PDP either in Zamfara State or in any part of Nigeria which the former vice President and presidential flag bearer of the PDP does not know.

Atiku, a foundation member of the PDP, is well aware of the challenges that faced the PDP right from its formative stages during the military era to when it grew to become the ruling party in Nigeria for 16 good years and now!

As a former vice president for eight years and presidential candidate of the party at various times, Atiku has largely been responsible for the inroad the party made in many northern states capturing states like Gombe and retaining the rest of the states in the North that ab initial were PDP.

So for anyone to claim trying to educate the former vice president and current presidential candidate of the PDP about anything concerning the party in any part of Nigeria is the height of self delusion.

But going to the issues in the write up, one can say without fear of contradiction that the writer is definitely ignorant of what party politics is all about because all the issues he raised as confronting the PDP in Zamfara are not peculiar but are parts and parcels of party democracy.

Issues such as disagreements over fall outs of primaries, litigations, aspirants insisting on having their ways etc have been witnessed by most parties since the return of democracy in Nigeria.

Therefore in calling for the PDP leaders in Zamfara to unite, Atiku did not as the writer puts it underestimate the problems in the Zamfara State chapter of the party.

In fact to the former vice president, the challenges enumerated by the writer are non-issues as he has taken up bigger challenges in the past and resolved them excellently.

For instance in 2003, in Gombe State when former minister of state for power, Murtala Aliyu was having problems with Danjuma Goje and the party was almost torn to shreds, it was Atiku that resolved the issue and made the PDP to take over the leadership of the state from the then incumbent ANPP governor, Habu Hashidu.

Going by the political sagacity of the former vice president, uniting the Zamfara challenges would be like a walk in the park as can be seen from the changes and the spirit of cooperation being witnessed since his intervention visit.

As the writer rightly pointed out, it is barely two months before the commencement of campaigns, but anybody with a fair knowledge of politics knows that two months is more than enough for a party determined to win elections to put its house in order.

It is rather the APC in Zamfara that should be worried about its seemingly internal intractable problems being window-dressed to make it appear as if all is well with it.

If the APC in Zamfara is united or has conducted its primaries well, it would not have witnessed the mass exodus of people from the party to the PDP.

If the writer is a genuine democrat, she should be concerned about what is happening in the Zamfara APC where the governor, a recent decampee to the party, has cornered all the party positions and is allocating tickets to his cronies as if the party is his shop and the tickets are goods to be doled out at whim

Genuine democrats should be concerned about the marriage of convenience being stage managed to make the APC in Zamfara appear united by forcing various factions with different irreconcilable interests and motives to stay together because of little patronages that will soon wear out

The writer should be concerned that the APC which due to intra party crisis lost all its seats in the 2019 elections is still unable to put these difference behind it.

Perhaps it is this fear which implies that the APC is dying in Zamfara that made the writer to pen the piece seeing how the PDP is growing in the state.

The PDP in Zamfara has all the structures required to win in 2023.

The writer forgot that Governor Bello Matawalle himself is a product of the party and even when he moved to the APC he has not been able to take the other persons with him including his deputy.

So the PDP structure in Zamfara is very much intact with elected legislators and others who are now better poised to win the 2023 elections having consolidated on their victory over the years.

PDP stakeholders in Zamfara especially the gubernatorial candidate of the party, Dr. Dauda Lawal Dare are doing much to sell the party to the electorate at the grassroots and it was due to that that they met the presidential candidate of the party in Abuja.

It is pertinent at this juncture to remind the writer that the since the creation of Zamfara State in 1996, no party has fielded a gubernatorial candidate with the qualification, pedigree, moral upbringing, scholarship, integrity, generosity and sense of organisation like
Dr. Dauda Lawal Dare.

It is because of his acts of philanthropism, community projects, intervention in various sectors and welfare policies which he undertakes from his pocket that has generated increasing interest in the PDP in Zamfara leading to the massive defection from the APC to the party.

It is less barely over a week since the PDP presidential candidate received APC bigwigs into the party so the question of what they're doing about winning in 2023 should not arise at this stage for the signs will begin to show soon.

The advice that Atiku and the PDP at the national level need to do more in bringing sanity to the Zamfara chapter is well taken but it is not correct to say the local government chapters’ chairmen are working at variance with the State Executive Committee as is being alleged.

INEC has not yet blown the whistle for campaigns to start officially but when it does, the people of Zamfara will not only see bill boards of the pdp presidential candidate but of all other candidates all over the place with concrete assurances of good governance.

In conclusion, let me echo the words of the PDP presidential candidate that, "there is the need for having a united PDP which will be formidable enough to face any opposition no matter how difficult it may be" and we are going to achieve that in Zamfara in sha Allah.

Idris Gusau, a commentator on national issues contributed this piece from Gusau.