I DID not write ‘Kill Corruption, Not PDP’ without prompting. An otherwise very sober and well-balanced reader sent an sms, which I thought was a bit on the extreme. No doubt, there is palpable anger and outrage out there, which translates into a huge dose of vitriol and bile; and I think there is good reason for it. Nigerians are feeling let down by democracy, and particularly by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which presided over affairs of the country for 16 good years, leaving tales that benumb the senses. So, people have good reason to be angry, but should not get too carried away, because we have not gone too far from where the rain started beating us. Here is the sms.

“Without prejudice, seems President Jonathan sat over liquidation of Nigeria and handed over a carcass via PDP, which plundered and decimated the nation. For this suicidal and constitutional breach PDP deserves to be deregistered by INEC and proscribed, while its officials implicated in the abomination should be blacklisted from future politics. Those elected under PDP will vacate for fresh elections”

This very kind reader regularly bounces his thoughts off me, depending on what issues are trending in the week. Being in the media, he thinks I have more access to information and we thus engage in long conversations via sms. He is, without a fail, the first to send an sms every Sunday morning, upon reading this narrative. I have never met him and I don’t know whether he is black or white, but we have a relationship and I hold him in very high esteem.

I felt concerned that if he, as informed and democratically inclined as I perceive, holds that strong and damning opinion of the PDP as a political party and its fallen members, others out there, who are not so temperate and are easily vexed to advocate mob rule, would already be in a firing squad mood. That was why I ventured to attempt to calm frayed tempers, and to remind us of the tortuous political journey that birthed the PDP and the others in 1998/99.

I wanted to remind us that political parties in any dispensation could only be as good as people want them to be. The challenge thus, would be that as the people get more involved and informed in the democratic processes, we would collectively regulate the moral fibre of the party system and get better. After all, Nigeria has been work in progress and has not been destined to end with the current party in government.

If my favourite reader’s initial thoughts of the PDP and what to do with its remains provoked me to write ‘Kill Corruption, Not PDP’, more jarring reactions have again prompted me to push the conversation one more time. This is a democracy and we need to engage more so that it can get better. Genuine lovers of democracy need to listen to others and not be in a killer mode all the time. We still need to listen to ourselves; we need to keep talking. Otherwise, without realising it, we may be reversing ourselves several years back to that era when it was an offence to engage in any debate.

I insist that we do not need to kill PDP as a political party by any subterranean means, because there is no DNA examination that says any of the other political parties is free of the corruption virus that has plagued Nigeria for decades. Persons manage political parties; parties do not dictate how they are to be run. If party members decide to be crooked and dumb at the same time, nothing good can be achieved of such. That is why it sounds cheap and defeatist when people argue that PDP should be proscribed, or when state operatives get on over-drive in the attempt to decimate PDP, simply because officials of yesterday hid under its now disheveled umbrella to rob Nigeria. It’s even thoughtless and ludicrous when remnants of the party moot the escapist idea of name or brand change, as if that will exorcise the thieving gene that afflicts the political class.

Or have we forgotten that all the military regimes made futile attempts to sanitise the party system, including banning and proscription of parties, in the expectation that those that will come after would be better? Didn’t the military send corrupt politicians to jail in 1984? Didn’t they ban old politicians from participating in politics, allowing only new-breed to get registered? Did the new-breed not fail woefully, worse than the old breed? How we can reform the party system and make public service less corruption-prone is my concern.

Before 1999, Nigeria had become a global winner of the corruption medal. Transparency International (TI) had become accustomed to Nigeria’s lowly place in the list of countries that wear corruption as a garb. In those assessments, TI wasn’t even particular about the political class. It looked for places and sectors where corruption was traded as a commodity – the Police, Power sector (before privatization), the Customs, Judiciary, and such places where you cannot move a file without parting with money. It was also about the attitude of regular operatives whose duty is to facilitate service, in the tax system, business registration and so on.

By the time the civilians came on board in 1999, Nigeria was a very bad case as far as corruption was concerned. Alarmed that huge oil revenues were not being put to good use, and worried that a day would come when revenues would go very low, and fearful of the apocalyptic season when there wont be any revenue at all, some concerned Western countries encouraged the PDP government under former president Obasanjo to come up with a regime of economic reforms that would enthrone transparency and accountability in public finances.

Efforts in that regard led to the establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Tribunal (ICPC); and in enacting legislations that attempted to streamline public procurement and introduce due process; enhance fiscal responsibility and generally discourage public theft. It is most unfortunate that the same PDP that set out consciously to undo the rot the military had left behind in their decades of plunder has witlessly surrendered itself for today’s immolation. This is an aspect some out there do not want to engage. They have forgotten that some good parents give birth to criminals.

It could be said that generations who did not know the founding rules of the PDP, asinine characters who lacked the honour, restraint, vision and selflessness of men in the mould of the late Sunday Awoniyi and Solomon Lar, Alex Ekwueme and a few others turned Wadata House into a den of thieves. They are the ones who have made mockery of the vision that gave Nigeria the first nationalist party that left regional sensibilities unstrained. The PDP at onset made it easy for political offices to be shared equitably, without letting any region feel unwanted or marginalised.

The PDP introduced Nigerians to the best form of party primaries, not perfect, but good enough to make losers feel equally triumphal. This is the party that made it possible for a Niger Deltan, Goodluck Jonathan, to become president (minus the deficits), having won convincingly in all the geo-political zones as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic. Should we, therefore, kill everything PDP?

What we can be grateful for is that the tendency to steal rapaciously and foolishly is being discouraged as of today. It is not yet Uhuru for Nigeria as a country because there is more work to be done, to rid other sectors of corruption. Has the attitude in the Police changed for good as of today; what about the men of the Customs, civil servants, educational institutions, media, civil society, etc.; are all out institutions free of corruption today, as we bury all efforts to unravel the PDP?

Someone said he was sure I am a card member of the PDP for ‘whining over its losses’. Be sure that I do not know the way to Wadata House. I have never been there. I detest what those PDP members have done to Nigeria, but we do not need to kill the party. We have killed enough parties since 1966 and it has not got us anywhere. We need to build and strengthen institutions that will endure, so that when the saintly founding fathers of the All Progressives Congress (APC), are no more, the anti-corruption flame will not burn out. Let PDP learn from its mistakes, let it live. But we must kill corruption.