THINKING ALOUD... With MUKA POPOOLA July 12: Now That Our Candidates Have Emerged (2)

If you are a Yoruba, particularly from England of Abeokuta in Ogun State, you may be familiar with this song:

Baba mogbà, tí won bá n tàn e ko má tanra rèe*

Baba mogbà"

It is an age-long Yoruba folksong made popular by the Egba people of Abeokuta, which literally translates as, if one is being deceived by another, the person being deceived should be wary of his own self-deceit. 

Someone may try to deceive you, what is not good for you is to indulge in deceiving yourself. Don't deceive yourself! Simple message.

That song also finds a correlation with a popular saying in the South East/South South regions of Nigeria which says, "use your tongue to count your teeth". It simply means be truthful to yourself.

The wisdom in both the song and the quote above speak to the current state of our party, the Lagos PDP, and the need for us to reconcile ourselves with reality as we face the forthcoming July 12 local council elections. 

Truth be told, there's a massive deceit in what we've packaged. 

From both the number, and quality of personalities that we're putting forward as our candidates, to the clearly shoddy state of our preparedness as a party, we need no soothsayer to tell us where we're headed on the election day. We won't even get close to the July 12 date before we begin to see the results with our own eyes.

You know it. I know it. Our party managers know it and also, any clear-sighted leaders should see from atop their thoroughly fatigued worn-out high horses. Forget about any make-believe you may be seeing from the house of any leader, everyone who's true to themselves know we're merely making a comic showing (alawada kind of drama) at the July 12 elections as some kind of shameless cheerleaders for a failed team.

Let me tell you this, and please don't say I'm making you laugh like a jackass (I'm laughing here too anyways). In scouting for people to represent our party at this election, the situation got so bad that the LGA and Ward Chairmen went hawking the party tickets on their heads like Obioma guys who hawk gala in a Lagos busy traffic.

I'm sure members who witnessed and participated in previous local council elections up to the last in 2021, either as candidates or in any capacity at all, must be wondering what has happened to their dear Lagos PDP. It wasn't so good then, we can't argue that. But definitely not as bad as we now have.

Even our members must have seen at their individual local governments how our party has become such a huge joke. Getting candidates to contest in virtually all the Wards and LGAs was such an Herculean task for our party managers. 

While one would commend the sacrifices of the patriotic members who have stepped forward to hold aloft the dignity of our party as candidates, we cannot but be sincere with ourselves that our party isn't prepared for this election at all. 

State elections are never always easy for candidates of the opposition parties to win, especially the chairmanship position, because of the obvious skewed pattern of conducting the elections by the state electoral bodies, which clearly allows rigging in favour of the ruling party. We know that. And that is not peculiar to Lagos State. 

The electoral system as we currently have favours the ruling party in each state against the opposition. So it's not wrong to think the APC looks good to sweep the council elections in Lagos State as it had always happened. We know that. But jokes apart, what have we done in terms of organisation of our party and preparations towards the election, even if only to make us compete with some sense of pride?

Our party is in shambles. Or, are we pretending about that? 

As we speak, a lot of PDP faithful in some LGAs are not even aware who has been given the ticket to run either as Councillor or Council Chairman in their local constituencies. Why? They just couldn't be bothered. 

The months of bitter quarrels since the 2023 elections have killed the morale of most members in majority of the LGAs and there has been practically no effective efforts at bringing everyone together.

Come to think of it, our party still indulged in the old practices of imposition and stealing of party tickets that have brought us to our knees. Maybe I'm the one that's not getting it. Can any reasonable person ask, what's there in this election that a leader will sit out there in his majesty and be dictating which person can be a candidate and those who must never be? It's so laughable.

Most of the people that our LGA Chairmen are parading as councillorship and chairmanship candidates are what I call "unwilling aspirants".

Most people you see their faces on flyers in the PDP Whatsapp loops are mere dummy fillers to beat the LASIEC deadline for choosing the candidates, or just a decoy to make the party look like fielding candidates where we apparently had no viable aspirants for the elections.

Inspite of the gloom over our beloved party, however, two things struck me as I quietly observed the processes during the committee sessions at the secretariat. 

One is, seeing members of the committees give their precious time for the assignment. And we're talking of several days. 

That those gentlemen offered to serve the party at this challenging time was really inspiring. The more uplifting was seeing how our aspiring members trickled in from far and wide to be screened, either for the position of Council Chairman or Vice.

Those sights were to me very soul lifting. Their presence bountifully gladdened my heart. After all, we know how terribly our party has been put down with different kinds of discouraging activities, even from the topmost hierarchy of the party leadership. 

To even see that our members in one or two LGAs pursued themselves to the secretariat, struggling and fighting fiercely to pick the party ticket, tells a lot about the political brand called the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).  It shows the abounding faith of our members in the Lagos PDP and their resilience to continue to defend the party against all odds.

The message from those our patriots to the rest of us in the Lagos PDP is a message of hope. So, I'll say let's keep hope alive. Tomorrow will surely shine sunlight over our party after today's darkness.

Wish you the wonderful blessings of this last Sunday of the month.

© MUKA POPOOLA

*Senior member, Agege PDP