Modu Sheriff, PDP & ‘Jotham’s parable of the bramble’

The emergence recently of Ali Modu Sheriff, a former governor of Borno State, as the new acting national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), left many observers tongue-tied.

Many have questioned the rationale for the choice of a man who allegedly has some baggage at his back and is constantly in the public court.

Critics say that the development at a time PDP needed all the wisdom it could muster to launch back to relevance after the disastrous defeat at the general election last year was very dangerous and only goes to justify insinuations in some quarters that the party is on its way to extinction.

Sheriff, analysts have argued, seems not to have the moral fibre to instill in the PDP the needed vigor it desperately needed to get back its charm.

For crying out aloud, the story surrounding the man, at least, up till the exit of the PDP from the power stool, is that Sheriff was touted to have overtly or covertly contributed to the security woes in the country.

Many observers have also wondered the mathematics and wisdom that propped up the name of Sheriff for consideration for a post that has the capacity to sound a death knell on the PDP, let alone his emerging as winner.

Days before his name was announced, many big names in the party from the North East had been bandied and Sheriff was never in the picture. At what point he joined the race is only known to the elements that masterminded his emergence.

As expected, his arrival on the scene has since worsened the feeling of disaffection within the party as many of those who felt hard-done-by are still sulking.

That Sheriff has been around as an astute politician is not in doubt, what is in question, therefore, is the strength of character he is bringing to bear on his new job.

Although the party’s Governors’ Forum has promised to give him all the necessary backing, analysts strongly believe that the taste of the pudding is (always) in the eating.

The former Borno State governor has for a long time suffered image problem, this got to a head in the dying days of the administration of Goodluck Jonathan.

Jonathan, at a point, was castigated for openly fraternising with Sheriff in the heat of the allegation that the Borno man was an enemy of the state. And the All Progressives Congress (APC), which was an opposition party at that time, made sufficient bone out of Jonathan-Sheriff dalliance.

How Sheriff plans to wake the party from the ashes of defeat and ignominy remains to be seen.

Sheriff, a former chairman of the defunct All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), was also a member of the APC as a founding member. In 2014, he defected to the PDP and was chairman of the party’s national working committee until his recent appointment.

Speaking with BDSUNDAY on the choice of Sheriff, who only joined the PDP in 2014, as a national chairman, a prominent member of the umbrella party, of the northern extraction, who also craved anonymity, said: “They have killed the party. Modu Sheriff has been doing everything and then they have gone to bring him to lead the party, they have finished up the party. Those behind the charade will soon reap the fruit of their rascality.”

Reacting to Sheriff’s appointment, Doyin Okupe a former senior special assistant on Public Affairs to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, he was a wrong candidate and also coming in at a wrong time.

“Alhaji Ali Sheriff is a longstanding political associate of mine and a very adroit and astute politician of perhaps a sublime class. But for the post of the National chairman of the PDP, he is a wrong candidate and also coming in at a wrong time,” he said.

“According to many of his proponents, his strong point is that being a man of great financial resources, he will be favourably disposed to funding the activities of the party easily. But the antagonists believe that he is bringing along with his wealth a crushing weight of burden capable of fatally destroying the few strands of moral fibers on which a rejuvenation will depend on,” Okupe further pointed out.

On the implication for the PDP, he said: “For a morosed and severely prostrate political party, thanks to the overwhelming and effective propaganda machinery of the (opposition) party in power, this may yet be the mortal wound that may cause the eventual haemorrhage of its long perplexed followership.”

Indeed, Sheriff’s emergence reminds one of an interesting episode as recorded in the Book of Judges (Chapter 9). Abimelech, one of the sons of Gideon, from another woman, had emerged king of Shechem through back-door tactic. He killed 70 true and biological sons of Gideon to pave the way for him to avoid any challenge from anywhere. But Jotham, the surviving son of Gideon, and a cripple, managed to escape the assassination and went up to Mount Gerizim where he gave a parable that fitted the insurrection by Abimelech.

Jotham recounted how trees had decided to select a king from among them; and how they had approached the olive, fig and the vine begging each of them in turns to accept the offer of kingship, but they all rejected, saying they would not leave their responsibilities which, according to them had been of great benefit to mankind, to serve as a king to the trees. But when the trees approached the bramble, it accepted with relish, but not without spelling out the consequences to them.

And it was not long after the coronation that the peace accord broke down, and fire came out from the bramble and devoured the “cedars of Lebanon”.

It turned out that Abimelech became a thorn in the flesh of those who made him king and vice versa.

Sheriff has accepted the offer by some self-serving political practitioners in the party; events in months to come will prove whether or not the Jotham parable would, in any way, have a relationship with the event of Tuesday, February 16, 2016 in PDP.

For Azubuike Ishiekwene, a media practitioner, “Modu Sheriff is the most frequently mentioned name on Boko Haram. He is a grassroots politician with extraordinary contacts. He has a cult following and is feared and loved in equal measure.

“To be fair, he has not been found guilty or even charged with any crime in relation to Boko Haram. But it was on his watch as governor of Borno State between 2003 and 2011 that the terrorist group took root and grew to become the single deadliest security threat to the country. He has spent the last seven years fighting off allegations that he had a hand in the making of the Frankenstein monster, but the ghost is not going away.

“And now, in the midst of its dreadful woes, PDP has decided that Sheriff, who himself is in need of salvation, is just the man the party needs to save itself.”

Wondering who must have bewitched PDP into choosing Sheriff as its national chairman, Femi-Fani Kayode, a former minister of Aviation, said: “What on earth has happened to us? As the Book of Galatians in the Holy Bible asks, “who has bewitched us”? Over the course of the last 17 years, in terms of the quality of party leadership, the PDP has gradually descended into the unceremonious cesspit of mediocrity. Worst still, with the recent appointment of Ali Modu Sheriff as our national chairman, we have chosen to spit in the wind, sleep with the dogs, dance on the graves of our fallen heroes, piss on the blood and bones of the slaughtered innocents and wallow in the filthy pool of compromise, deceit, doublespeak and shame.”