AFTER the Supreme Court sacked Ali Modu Sheriff as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Working Committee (NWC) chairman in July, he found himself in the most uncomfortable and unusual crossroads of his political career. Too tongue-tied to say anything coherent after the apex court pulverised his hidden ambition and gave victory to Ahmed Makarfi, his rival to the leadership of the opposition party, Senator Sheriff told the media that he would continue to watch events as they unfolded but asked his supporters to stay put in the party. About two months after the apex court unhorsed him, however, there are indications his supporters appeared poised to migrate, either in trickles or en masse, to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). It seemed that staying in the PDP and submitting themselves to the authority of the Senator Makarfi crowd had become too galling to contemplate.
The 61-year-old Senator Sheriff is too cantankerous and often too flighty and impulsive to easily make up his mind one way or the other. It is even doubtful sometimes whether he can recognise his own ideological leanings. He started out as a progressive of some sort in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1990, flirted with the unprincipled transition of the late Sani Abacha government during which he was elected as a senator on the platform of the United Nigeria Congress Party, then migrated to the mildly conservative All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in 1999 on whose platform he became governor in 2003, briefly waltzed his way back into progressivism, whether heartfelt or affected, through the iconoclastic APC as a foundation member, and then after much hemming and hawing pitched tent with the conservative PDP in 2014 where he brazenly and abruptly schemed his way into the party’s leadership in February 2016.
So far, he has not publicly disclosed where he wants his shrinking number of supporters to berth, whether in the APC, as some of them moaned regretfully, or in the PDP where they are outnumbered, outgunned and outmanoeuvred with humiliating ferocity. Indeed, whether he will give direction to his supporters anytime soon is debatable because of his impulsiveness and general lack of depth and reflection. But there is no doubt that once he makes up his mind, he truly gives the cause his all. More, there is even now no indication that his supporters are of such number and possess such vibrant tenacity that they are still amenable to his dictation and fading voice. There are pointers to the fact that many of them have already become so impatient that they may be inclined to pursue independent ambitions and options. If Senator Sheriff still has some time at all to impose some discipline on his supporters, it is doubtful whether it will yield him the desired result.
Senator Sheriff met his litigious match in Senator Makarfi. Feisty, rich, colourful and intrepid, the former Borno governor gives as much as he gets. His failure to scheme his way into the sort of prominence he thought his stature deserved in the APC in 2013 might have laid the foundation for his political peregrinations that saw him come to grief in the PDP barely three years later. Riding on the crest of a disputed judgement of two High Courts in Abuja and Port Harcourt, he was lucky to receive a subsequent approving judgement from the Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt. But that favourable judgement merely prolonged his tenure as NWC chairman of the PDP. Eventually, a little over a year after he climbed to the dizzying position of chairman of a party he joined only two years before, the proud and uncompromising former Borno governor is, strictly speaking, without a party. In name, he is still a member of the PDP; but in reality, he is unable to subject himself to a rival he disdains so much and with whom he rules out any form of compromise.
The more Senator Sheriff postpones a final decision on his political direction and destination, the more difficult it becomes to make up his mind or give leadership to his fretting supporters. He has not become less wealthy, nor less fearsome and inflexible. To that extent, he can both afford to wait placidly and to growl when the occasion and the emotions seize him. He cannot go back to the APC until some seismic events occur in that fractured and desperate party. And he cannot realistically stay in the PDP that has just dethroned him and made a mockery of his political sagacity. Left high and dry, and consumed by a desperate desire to belong somewhere in a country where political leaders are adept at blackmailing business moguls, the former Borno governor will have to hope for a celestial sleight of hand to reabsorb him into the hypothetical mainstream. For a man so comfortable in his own skin, no matter how badly pigmented, and so unused to walking a tightrope, he faces the appalling dilemma of being a political applicant when he should be courted as the most adorable political suitor.
Since his support base is so depleted as to be incapable of lending him support or offering him a bargaining chip in either of the two main parties, he faces the daunting prospect of relying almost entirely on his wealth and pugnaciousness to shore up his political standing and crumbling political empire. His men are discouraged, and he himself is confused. But even though he does not possess it, he hopes that he can still take advantage of one hypothetical joker quite capable of catapulting him either over the top or at least into some renewed prominence. That joker straddles the two political divides, and it consists of either a desperate PDP eager to win the 2019 polls and needing every fighter it can get, especially a tested and famous political pugilist like Senator Sheriff, or an equally desperate President Muhammadu Buhari whose support base has become so eroded that he would need famous converts like the former Borno State governor to weary his enemies in 2019, if it came to that.
The battle for 2019, which is gradually and faintly unfolding, is by no means clear-cut. The PDP ground forces may not be quaintly arrayed in battle at the moment, but their intentions are fiercely obvious. They may not have made atonement for the damage they did to the polity, not to say the economy, but they have clumsily put all that behind them, and are prepared to give battle to the APC next year. It was thought that Senator Sheriff was interested in the 2019 presidential battle, thereby explaining his fancy footwork in the party that saw him attempting to railroad the PDP into a form of unaccustomed monarchy, his monarchy. If he is to return to the same party, if his help will be needed to shore up the party’s defences against a rampaging APC, party leaders will have to offer him humiliating concessions. It is unlikely they will be so high-minded.
Will Senator Sheriff, therefore, return to a party he left so abruptly in 2014, especially now that the APC evidently lacks colour and character, not to talk of being devoid of the big names that magnificently drove the party into power in 2015? The offer, if it ever comes from the depleted ranks of the president’s supporters, may be tempting; but for a divisive and combative Senator Sheriff, a man so self-sufficient and so ideologically independent in all he does, it is hard to see him submitting to authority on a scale he is unused to, not to say violently opposed to. But he also customarily drives hard bargain. If the ruling party should experience a tumult next year and many of its great and notable pillars jump ship, it may not be inconceivable to also see the former Borno governor attempting to fish in that shallow, restrictive pond abandoned by fleeing party bosses.
There is yet a third option for the gloomy Borno politician. There are a dozen or more political parties which good fortune and circumstances might conspire to catalyse into prominence. Senator Sheriff might wish to fraternise with one or two of these promising dark horses, where his wealth, disposition and worldview could see him making a pitch for leadership. But no one knows assuredly whether the former governor is not by now tired of his nomadic political lifestyle, nor whether he would not prefer to wait very patiently in the cold until he is courted and offered a tantalysing position hard to resist. What is, however, certain is that Senator Sheriff will not make up his mind as quickly as his disenfranchised and feckless supporters will.
Logging you in...
