OPINION

River’s PDP: The political climate change must stop

By Odimegwu Onwumere

Whether there was a plan to impeach Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State or not, let there be peace. No people develop in the face of crisis; hence the crisis in the state’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should stop.

While we say the truth on the matter, such should not be seen as taking side with any of the factions, but we must endeavour to put the story straight while at the same time not fanning the embers of the scuttle.

It would amount to incongruity for anybody to dump the party owing to the fact that what is at stake does not favour him or her. What about the good old days?  It is time the members of the PDP in Rivers State would take stand and end this crisis, for all.

The Executive of the party should wield into the matter, eschewing interest. There is no interest that will be gotten in a given society as peace. If the new executive committee of the PDP in Rivers State, which they say is led by Felix Obuah, had put in place a reconciliation committee to guarantee that all members of PDP in the State were appropriately united ahead of 2015 elections, such decision should be enforced, no matter how it is believed he became the party’s chairman in the state.

There is no need the continuous rejection of the new PDP exco in the state since the court had spoken. The continuous support by some members of the party for the dislocated G.U Ake-led executive of the party could be likened to disobeying the court, since the there is a belief that the court is the last hope of the people.

Let there be change when necessary, no matter how long a person had stayed in a position, but such change should follow the due process, which it is believed that there is no due process obtainable as the court.

In the face of war it does not matter where our support and confidence lean but on how the war will come to an end. If a war does not come to an end, the region where the war is being fought is on pendulum.

There should be one interest in a party, no matter the individual differences. Let our actions not come out always with a fight and some persons should stop being rabble-rousers. No youth should again protest in favour of any perceived faction of the PDP in the state. The age-long wise statement which is found in the bible in the book of Mark3:24-25, says, "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand." "And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

Can the persons involved in the political imbroglio remember when they were once politically joined like the Siamese twins?  Why is this happening today? When will our state stop being in the wrong side of news during elections? And when will the presidency’s predators stop causing Rivers State some discomfort because of politics?

In-spite-of-this, Governor Amaechi rejoiced when the court favoured him, and he should not frown when the same court favoured another person. All he needs do now is to make even his perceived arch-enemy his friend. Forgiveness is for the strong. This will not make him look weakling before people. A wise guest, they say, is he or she who knows when to leave. Anybody that is still entangled in the crisis is making a very big mistake.

What we should be looking for is how to reconcile all the factions in the party in the state pending when there would perhaps be a redress in the decision of the court which ousted the G.U Ake-led PDP of the state for Felix Obuah.

No man on earth has ever won in different wars at a time. Such a man learns a very bitter lesson, if not killed in the war, at last. Such a man better change his warring tactics, and use peace, which is even a more dangerous weapon against the enemy.

To some persons in a war, the bullets may be disappointing while at the same time favouring others. No man or woman is still right when the wrath of his village comes against him. Such a person will go down. But even thought that the person goes down, it does not entail that the person is wrong. And the village that uses its power to pull down a villager should ask itself what it has achieved by doing so.

Sometimes it is not political missiles that are the best; this can only cause political muddles. We need political happiness for the achievement of political harmony. Those fighting this political fight in our state should remember that it was not long a fragile peace was achieved from the hands of Niger Delta youth masquerading as strugglers of the economy of the region.

Let politicians stop seeing politics as all about homage; they should as well see it as all about homely and comely. No politician should kill his or her political future for lack of wisdom. We should understand that even though that this is a democracy not all politicians are democrats. We know that a humiliated villager is most time better than a weak king.

It serves no one right that we have come to endure this crisis in a ruling party. It can be said that it is a big disgrace to our collective aspiration of a better Rivers State. Should there be a call for political amnesty among the fraying nerves before this crisis better called nuisance stops?

In politics, arrogance plays in two ways: The humiliator of the arrogant also shows a very high degree of arrogance to subdue his or her victim. Conversely, indiscipline is imminent in democracy, because politicians have the gene of self-serving agenda running in their veins. All of them!   

Leadership in Rivers State must be brought home, and not crisis. There will always be argument where there is something to share, but the soon it is bettered, the best. Our brothers and sisters who are fighting in the Rivers State chapter of the PDP ought to have grown up. Maturity is not mostly about age, there is maturity in everything, not excluding political maturity. What is the essence of saying we went to school, if what obtains in our politics, cannot be expected even among the unschooled market women and men. It is time for all and sundry to grow up.