“Even if I die today, I have brought up well-groomed politicians, who will take PDP to greater heights in Ogun; which truly translates to mean that, Ogun PDP can never go down, much less die.” Affable politician, the late Senator Kashamu Buruji, was reported to have expressed the conviction way back in 2019, during a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos.
Today, almost a year after his death, Buruji’s words appear to be coming true, vindicating his clairvoyance. While still alive, the party was virtually in tatters with three diametrically opposed factions, namely Buruji’s, ex-Reps member, Oladipupo Adebutu’s and ex-governor Gbenga Daniel’s. All efforts made by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party from Abuja, to unite the factions had always met with brick walls. Meanwhile, as the wind of the 2023 election campaigns whiffs in the air, the party was recently hit by a thunderstorm in the defection of Daniel to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), where he is now poised to work for the re-election of Governor Dapo Abiodun.
Curiously, however, Daniel dumped the PDP a few months after his claim that he had made up with Buruji before his death, and that the latter handed over his structures in the party to him. But to vindicate the late Buruji, a few months after his passage, and possibly as a fulfilment of his foresight, one of his acolytes, Mr. Taiwo Shote, an Ijebu-Odeborn lawyer, and also reputed as a moneybag, came on the scene. Shote, popularly known as Pepe, a former PDP House of Representatives candidate, was always in charge of Buruji’s many business concerns while the latter was alive. He has ever since the passage of his benefactor, assumed the godfather role for the Buruji faction.
Reconciliation
But more profoundly, the PDP in Ogun State was still threading on the beaten path of factional bickering, even after the death of Buruji, until the Senator Bukola Saraki-led reconciliation committee of the party, waded in. The Saraki team, upon arriving in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital recently, first made consultations with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, before proceeding to reconcile members of the Buruji faction with those of the Adebutu faction. Incidentally, some remnants of Daniel’s loyalists were involved in the chummy reunion, as not all of them followed their boss to the APC.
Though Saraki reunited the factions privately, they soon made a public show of it, as the factions announced that the war is over. It was a gathering that had in attendance, leaders from both factions of the party, namely Chief Doyin Okupe, Adebutu, Aare Tunde Alabi, and Prince Segun Seriki, among others. The two factional chairmen of the party, Sikirulahi Ogundele and Samson Bamgbose were also at the event, where they both agreed to work together for a united PDP in Ogun. Ogundele particularly said the reunion marked the beginning of a new relationship that would make the party reclaim power in the state, in 2023.
“I am happy that the PDP of 2003 is now back. We are now together in harmony, looking forward to having a united PDP in Ogun State. We are going to get back our mandate from the misrule of the APC, a party that has no blueprint. They just wake up in the morning and embark on any project that comes to their head. They give water or road where not needed. The PDP is the best party so far and we are winning in 2023,” Ogundele enthused. Speaking too, Bamgbose expressed optimism that “as God brings us together again, we shall march to victory, stronger than we were in 2004.” He urged members of the party to work together like in the days of former Governor Daniel, saying the PDP was zero when OGD (Otunba Gbenga Daniel) came in the build-up to the 2003 election.
APC mocks reconciliation
Meanwhile, the Ogun State APC has sneered at the PDP reconciliation groove, particularly, describing its determination to take- over the state in 2023 as daydreaming. “It’s daydreaming, infantile fancy and political grandstanding devoid of practical reality,” the state’s caretaker committee of the party said, in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Tunde Oladunjoye. The APC dismissed the reported unity of factions in the PDP as “a charade meant for photo-ops, camera lights and cheap publicity and also a belated cry when the head was already off. Let me assure you that APC and Governor Dapo Abiodun will not be dragged into the 2023 electioneering yet.
This is a government that will just be two years in office next month. We want our work to speak for us, while the opposition continues to daydream and engage in shadow-boxing.” The party, however, described as very unfortunate, a statement credited to the factional chairman of the PDP, that the Abiodun administration was providing road and water where they were not needed.
It stated that “it is very unfortunate, laughable and an indication that PDP is still in stupor. We recognised PDP’s unwitting acknowledgment of the truth that our government is providing roads and water among many other amenities being delivered by Prince Dapo Abiodun to improve the standard of living of the good people of Ogun State.
“We challenge the factional chairman to mention just one place in Ogun State that the Dapo Abiodun-led government has provided roads and water where they were not needed? We believe that comment came out of vague reasoning and bellyaching; and it confirmed that the PDP has totally lost touch with the needs of Ogun people.” The APC further remarked: “The body and soul of PDP in Ogun State have since left the party for APC; the juggernauts of PDP; the well-experienced politicians that really matter are already with us in APC. Those leftovers in PDP now are just some remnants clinching to the skeleton of their mutilated party. The PDP members are like the Bouborn monarchs in France; they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”