A little known History :
Between 1998 - 1999 the former President Olusegun Obasanjo was removed from the prison, presidentially pardoned and was made the first President of the newly formed political party of the fourth republic the People Democratic Party - PDP, and that was the beginning of the current democratic journey of our country. The former President made so many mistakes in his first term of 4 years in office, but he was generally forgiven as part of a learning process of democracy. That was how he spent the first 4 years in office for PDP.
I must say there was so much impunity and open corruption, ranging from bribing the members of the National Assembly for any presidential bill or nominations of ministers and other pressing demands of the then presidency. Then the former President Obasanjo gave so much power to his then Vice President Alh Atiku Abubakar, who became the defactor of a sort. When President Obasanjo came back for his second tenure in office, he realized his political mistakes of his first tenure and tried to close in and he did. He made his VP as irrelevant as he could then, and he made sure that his VP did not succeeded him. During that tenure there was so much politicking and highest form of corruption in almost every sector of our nation. Our institutions were bastardized and destroyed. Individuals became institutions, there was so much confusion in our system. At a point it seemed as if we don't have system in place or it collapsed completely. That was between 2003 - 2007.
Let's we forget, sometimes in 2002, the current President Muhammadu Buhari declared his intentions to join partisan politics and that was the beginning of another chapter in our national history. PMB's entering into partisanship politics changed so many permutations of the PDP then because since then they saw a real threat to their government of impunity. GMB then registered with the opposition party, the ANPP. Since then PDP knew that their only strong opposition was and still is The Person of Muhammadu Buhari.
GMB was nominated as the flag bearer of the then ANPP as their presidential candidate for 2003 elections, unfortunately we all knew what happened. Actually 2003 was the beginning of what I can call the real rigging. PDP headed by the former President and his strong VP Atiku Abubakar then visibly rigged the elections in their favor and the their party with impunity. And even the court processes were compromised and GMB spent 23 months following a court process that was highly compromised.
Opposition of personality attack:
Like I said earlier GMB joined partisan politics in 2002 and joined the then opposition party . and like I said since his declaration he became the greatest threat to the ruling party, as such instead of the ruling party to concentrate on doing goodies for the country, they channelled their energies and resources to attacking the person and personality of General Muhammadu Buhari. They spent so much time and money in probing the immediate past records of GMB, especially his days in the petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). Unfortunately they couldn't find anything incrementing against him, in fact they were even making GMB stronger and more popular than he was.
Between 2002 - 2007 Obasanjo and Atiku spent time doing a personal attack on the person of GMB, and at the tail end of their tenure political interest set them against each other. We all saw what happened as such there is no need to repeat it here. At a point the PDP even penetrated into the fabric of the the then opposition party the ANPP and created confusion within the ranks of the party bigwigs all in order to prostrate the candidacy of GMB and to some extent they succeeded. The dirty game was played, and whether it was won or lost depends on which divides one is.
In 2007, PMB got nominated again by his party the ANPP as their presidential flag bearer for the second time, and PDP produced late President Umaru Musa Yar'aduwa as their flag bearer to which the former Vice president had to form another political party with some of his associates then the ACN and contested against GMB and late Yar'aduwa. As expected the PDP rigged late President Umaru Yar'aduwa into office and GMB then went to court and spent about 20 months in court without getting justice. The rest is now part of Nigeria's democratic history.
After the court processes of the 2007 that was 2009, GMB formed a new political party called Congress for Progressive Changed - CPC, and naturally became it's flag bearer of the 2011 elections. The PDP then in order to reduce the chances of GMB and increase their chances of rigging the elections, they took control of the other two political parties and planted their two presidential candidates from the same region that the Buhari came. It was clear that those two candidates were planted but to their dismay, those candidates performed woefully. One got about 2 millions votes and the other had less than 1 million but GMB got more than 12 millions votes upon all the suppressing of votes in all his stronghold states. At the end the former President Jonathan was declared the winner of that shams elections, and CPC went to court, but as usual it was the same story.
During that 2011 elections, it was an open secret that Buhari's CPC was penetrated by the PDP elements and serious divisions were created within the ranks of the party 's fabric, all in order to do their bidding and it really worked perfectly for them then. Apart from that PDP was able to stopped and destroyed the working alliance between the CPC and the Tinubu's ACN, all in order to stop GMB from grabbing the power at the center. As at the that the PDP was 12 years in government , 1999 - 2011.
Between 2012 to date, the story is both intriguing and interesting to some extent.
To be continued....
- Kabir Dalha Kabir
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