Damagum’s anti-party will be the elixir for PDP’s smooth victory in 2027 – Calculate

November 23, 2024

In this interview with Mohammed Ismail Adamawa’s renowned politician, Umar Bello Jada also known as Calculate disclosed that despite the double standards and anti-party posture of the national chairman of PDP towards ensuring the woeful defeat of the major opposition party in 2027, the party will against all odds emerge victorious as evil can’t triumph over good.

Excerpts

How will you rate the future of the PDP considering the intractable conflagration rocking the party now?

Breaking: Umar Bello Jada resigns as SSA to gov Fintiri

Calculate, calculates Fintiri’s fatal political miscalculations

Let me begin this conversation by putting to rest the widely acclaimed view that Damagum’s anti-party posture will rock the party come 2027. That position is mainly reactionary and pedestrian which has no basis from the political point of view.

The fact remains that the only alternative to the misgovernance that APC represents in Nigeria is the PDP and Nigerians, young and old have internalized and validated that position. That is why even children on Nigerian streets are clamouring for the return of governance to PDP considering the state of the nation when PDP was in charge and the state of the nation currently.

Let me tell you, the silence of majority of the PDP members in the face of the raging impunity in the party is deliberate and calculated. Discerning members of the party have decided to allow Damagum to continue with his devious ways knowing that there is a limit to such actions. Therefore, there is no need for any nuance of anxiety considering the fact that when electioneering process begin, it is the electoral act that will be in reckoning not even the party constitution. Let me assure you, if Damagum will remain the party chairman till eternity, he can never bar anyone from contesting the party primaries nor impose an unpopular candidate on the party because his hands will be tied based on the dictates of the electoral act and INEC oversight. So at the end of the day, Nigerians will give their mandate to the person who they think will rescue the nation from going adrift.

In a nutshell, the antics of Damagum will rather become an elixir for PDP’s victory than what naysayers are conjuring. PDP’s victory is just a matter of time as Nigerians are tired of the imposed and artificial hardship and hunger created by APC in the last nine years.

But I will not fail to state that in the interim, the party’s national chairman alongside the national secretary and the deputy publicity secretary have devised a decoy of demarketing the former vice president Atiku Abubakar for which they are getting a lot of patronage from the APC government. They are deceiving the president into believing that they can frustrate the former vice president being the most feared opposition figure who has the clout to wrestle power from the president. But their wicked plans will soon boomerang in their faces.

Another lie they were telling the president is that they will frustrate the possibility of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Peter Obi’s return to PDP in order to prevent them from joining forces with Atiku because they know no force on earth can prevent PDP from winning if Atiku join forces with Kwankwaso and Peter Obi. In the interim, that is the devilish role Damagum is playing to bolster the chances of Tinubu and kill his own party.

It is a known fact that the opposition have over 16 million votes which is a sharp contrast to the paltry 8 million votes of APC, with the help of over 5 million APC supporters who were discarded and abandoned after victory, you don’t need any seer to tell you that the APC’s woeful outing come 2027 is a fait accompli.

And one thing that add to the strings of the APC misfortunes is the fact that while it conveniently sidelined those who worked tirelessly to ensure it’s victory, it has gone into a strange romance with elements who vociferously and stoutly opposed Tinubu’s ambition. It is poingnant to recall that Daniel Bwala who stoutly desecrated Tinubu, cast aspersions on our religion, desecrated our culture and abuse our identity and by extension that of Tinubu now sits comfortably on Tinubu’s dining table were he savours sumptuous delicacies. In the same vein, a number of ministers and Chief executives of juicy organizations were given to those who never believed in Tinubu’s leadership at the detriment of millions who stood with the president in thick and thin.

But there are arguments positing that PDP has been fair to Atiku and has given him its ticket twice but he failed to make it. Don’t you think the party is right to try another hand?

That line of argument has a lot of autocratic tendencies. What we are saying is that Atiku as a party man has the right to express and move to actualize his ambition since the Nigerian constitution did not debar him from doing that.

Those forces who do not want Atiku including the presidency and their bed fellows in APC can also mobilize forces against him. If Atiku is defeated in a free and fair contest, as democrats we will naturally support whoever emerges. The same thing should happen, if Atiku wins the primaries, let other patriots support him during the general election.

Atiku is one democrat that has shown tremendous faith in the democratic processes and tenets. That is why he kept contesting. On a number of times he lost even the primaries but he kept faith till he starts winning the primaries. With the kind of maturity and faith he has invested in democracy, it is my fervent hope that one day he will also win the presidency in a similar passion he has been winning the party primaries

And again if after a free and fair contest someone defeated Atiku, then we will have hope that that person who is popular than Atiku will easily defeat Tinubu going by the outcomes of the last presidential election. Whatever happens, it will be a win win for democracy as a formidable candidate who has the potentials of wrestling power from Tinubu will emerge.

This is where I will fault the so called elders like Bode George who speak from both sides of their mouths. You may wish to recall that in the lead to the 2023 general election, George has come so hard on Tinubu saying that the president lacked the integrity and character to contest for the plum job based on a number of infractions he committed in the past. He even vowed to go on exile if Tinubu won the polls. But at last Tinubu has won but instead of George to fulfill his promise of going into exile, he remained in the country and transformed to a presidential bootlicker. He, like his co-travellers including Wike and Damagum joined the anti-party bandwagon and waged a debilitating war against the party in order to incapacitate it ahead of 2027 election.

I challenge George who is now asking Atiku to rescind his ambition on account of age to tell us how old is Tinubu since he has once said the president has falsified his age? But I’m not in any way surprised by George’s sudden u-turn knowing that he was both an ex-convict and a money monger.

Finally What advice do you have for the likes of Atiku who you believed are being provoked into leaving the party?

Let me tell you, Atiku will remain in PDP as no one can force him out of the house he worked hard to build. He will work to ensure that the party is given a new lease of life. I assure you that despite provocations and the actions of fifth columnist in it, PDP will survive and will trounce APC hands down.

Those who are trying to kill the party including its national chairman are being clever by half. For instance, I know for a fact that both governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, governor Seyi Makinde and governor Bala Mohammed who are Damagum’s good friends are nursing presidential ambitions. If he killed the party, how will he compensate his so called friends? And it is a known fact that every governor want his party to win all senatorial seats, house of representatives seats and house of assembly seats and also wants to install his successor so as to have soft landing. So if Damagum killed the party, how will his friends succeed at ensuring the continuity of the party? So if the governors allow Damagum to kill the party they are only shooting themselves on the foot.

And another thing you must know is that by this time next year, the APC will be drowned by the litany of internal challenges rocking it and it may be too busy trying to resolve such issues that PDP will come from behind and defeat it. For instance in Kaduna State, there will be fierce battle between El-Rufai supporters and Gov Uba Sani supporters and their conflict is irreversible. In Kano the so called Gandujiyya has been splitted into almost four factions; Ganduje faction, Sule Garo faction, Gawuna faction and Gwarzo faction. The conflict in Kano is also irreversible. Wherever you go, APC is in a serious mess. So APC will be too preoccupied with containing its surfeit of internal challenges and would have no time to destabilize other parties.