That Dogara’s Trending PDP Speech
By Amb Aminu Iyawa
POLITICS DIGEST- A former Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, has been trending big in the last 24 hours, after delivering speech as a guest speaker at the Northern Christian Summit held in Abuja yesterday.
The paper trended on most of the social media platforms, shared enthusiastically by especially the Peoples Democratic Party members.
Mr Dogara’s paper could not have been written better by the Chairman of the PDP, which content, as expected, tried to whip religious sentiment, but at the same time accusing the ruling APC of playing religious politics.
Despite his effort of trying to sound loyal to the party with the bogus claim that he is not against Tinubu or Shettima, yet, he came out harsh on the same faith ticket, claiming that the party had regretted the decision and that the PDP ticket is already giving it “sleepless nights.”
Mr Dogara may be disappointed to know that the PDP Muslim-Christian ticket is not giving the APC sleepless nights, not even a single night. On the contrary, it is the Muslim-Muslim ticket that is giving the PDP sleepless nights, which is the same as giving the small group of spoiled-politicians he belonged to, heartache, because their false sense of entitlement has been tested.
For long, this group has had it so good, reaping from the generousity of bounties of the self-imposed, one-sided political correctness of the Muslim North.
It is natural for Mr. Yakubu Dogara to react the way he did for two reasons; one, he was hurt by the fact that he was not picked by the APC to join Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu on its 2023 presidential ticket, a blow he could not take kindly or lightly, and hence the outburst and the reason for demonising the Party.
Mr. Dogara will be forgiven for his vituprations on the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket, because he knows it is a matter of strategy and not religious consideration. And in fact, it was precisely a matter of strategy when exactly two years ago this week (July 2020), that this nomadic politician dumped the PDP and returned to the APC with the hope of clinching the 2023 vice presidential ticket and not for the love of the party.
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Secondly, his heart has always been with the PDP and continued to be a strong ally of its 2023 presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who pushed some buttons in 2015 to make him the Speaker of the 8th green assembly.
Therefore, his PDP sentimental speech yesterday, castigating the APC, did not come as a surprise. He will sooner, rather than later, migrate (formally) to the PDP again in anticipation of a big reward, but he will ultimately be disappointed and crawl back to the APC after Tinubu and Shettima take oath of office.
It is a game that he perfected. When he left the APC in September, 2018 for the PDP, he naively believed that his mentor, Atiku Abubakar would win the 2019 presidential election and he would return to the national assembly as its 9th speaker. That, of course, did not happen and the rest, as they say, is history.
The good thing is that while Mr. Dogara and his co-travellers continue to campaign for the PDP, relgious politics has never significantly affected the outcome of the voting pattern of Nigerians.
There was nothing bad under the sun that was not said about President Muhammadu Buhari in both 2015 and 2019, but he still managed to win with massive landslide, especially the latter, when Governors Samuel Ortom of Benue and Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State launched campaign of columny against him.
The North can and have been electing christians massively; Obasanjo in 1999 and 2003, and Jonathan in 2011, but can as well rally round its candidates when they are profiled unfairly. The 2019 election is a good example. Instead of the main opposition PDP to tackle the incumbent president on issues, point out his failures, they personalised it, villifying the President and his religion by falsely accusing him of implementing islamisation agenda.
That, wiitingly, angered every Muslim Northerner, when in fact they constitute the majority of victims of the insurgents. Instead of gaining sympathy, the PDP was seen by the Northern majority as having an agenda of demonising them for their religion.
It is a similar script being written by Dogara and the PDP as their 2023 campaign strategy. It will certainly boomerang. If Muslims can ignore the Christian-Christian tickets in 1979 mastered by our super politicians Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr Nnamdi Azikwe, why is the Tinubu/Shettima ticket being treated differently? A typical definition of unfairness.
Aminu is a former Nigerian Ambassador to Mexico,
