By Azu Ishiekwene
If the name of the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), its secretary, or convention date were the subject of a quiz, there would not be a correct answer because answers don’t exist. The best attempt would be an open-ended response: It depends.
It either depends on who has the latest favourable court ruling or who has forced their way into the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja, assisted by the police, thugs or a combination of both. Why has the mighty party fallen?
In April, a faction, led by Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed and his Oyo State counterpart, Seyi Makinde, with six PDP governors and two deputy governors in attendance, agreed that the party would hold its convention on November 15 and 16 in Ibadan.
If the convention went ahead, it would be a grudge convention, over the party’s dead body. What, by many accounts, would have been the party’s first convention in 17 years is now fatally derailed by court orders.
After the reggae…
After many years of chaos, compounded by the post-power withdrawal syndrome, the Ibadan meeting in April presided over by Mohammed, where the governors all wore aso-ebi, offered hope of reconciliation and renewal. The party seemed to have so much wind in its sails that former Minister of Information, Jerry Gana, even said he was speaking authoritatively that former President Goodluck Jonathan might be the party’s flagbearer in 2027.
Sadly, since the Ibadan meeting, dozens of the party’s members, including four governors, have defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), with at least two more governors predicted to be on their way out, including Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang, who is under self-manufactured pressure to defect.
The seed Atiku sowed
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who sowed the thorny seed of upending the party’s rule of power rotation in the 2023 presidential primaries – its best chance yet at recovery – has since left the acrimonious harvest to other undertakers. Even if Atiku and his cohorts have moved on, building a new foundation without clearing the debris of the old will remain a formidable challenge for those who stay within the ranks.
In this dysfunctional state, the PDP has become a notorious example of organised chaos – one faction backed by the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, whose voice is that of the PDP, even as his hand appears and feels like that of the ruling APC.
Gale of suspensions
In a gale of “my-suspension-is-more-effective-than-yours”, Wike’s faction suspended Acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum and five other members of the National Working Committee (NWC), alleging incompetence, financial misconduct, and defiance of court orders. They then appointed Mohammed Abdulrahman as the acting national chairman.
To avoid being caught off guard, Damagum’s loyalists suspended Senator Samuel Anyanwu (the national secretary), National Legal Adviser Kamaldeen Ajibade, and others, signalling deep-seated mistrust and suspicion.
Apart from the pro- and anti-Wike factions, former Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, also obtained a court order against the PDP’s Ibadan convention over the party’s refusal to allow him to purchase a nomination form to contest the chairmanship.
On top of this mess, judicial rascality compounds itself, with some judges descending into the political arena by issuing orders that even the black market would be ashamed to trade in.
Once dominant and celebrated for its ability to manage internal conflicts as a “family affair”, the PDP now faces existential threats from bitter rivalries, anti-party activism, and fragmentation. It is a grave irony that a party aspiring to rule a country with over 200 million citizens is having nightmares trying to hold a national convention or, for that matter, determine who its authentic national chairman is.
Vanishing promise
This is anything but the party that its former chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, boasted would rule for 60 years in 2008. But maybe the party’s former National Secretary, Iyiola Omisore, was right after all – that the PDP is nothing without power.
With the near-absolute power of Nigeria’s presidency, unrestricted access to resources and the copious resourcefulness of “fixers”, what the PDP could not do did not exist. It could get away with just about any heist. It was not only the political place to be, but it didn’t need a register of membership to qualify itself as the largest political party in Africa.
When Ogbulafor made his declaration, brimming with overconfidence, all indicators and indices were in the party’s favour. The PDP controlled 29 states in a 36-state federation, 263 (out of 360) seats in the House of Representatives, and 87 (out of 109) seats in the Senate. There was no other iroko as tall on an insurmountable hill like the PDP’s umbrella, back in the day.
The other parties – the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Action Congress (AC), All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), and Labour Party (LP)- were condemned to share three, two, and one state each, respectively, among themselves. All considered, PDP’s boast carried the weight of anecdotal and demographic evidence.
Their nemesis
In 2015, seven years after Ogbulafor’s forecast, the PDP lost its way. It imploded due to disagreements over succession, poor internal governance, corruption, and the exhaustion of ideas. Its size, which was the source of its pride, became the root of its decay, and its symbolic umbrella has been unable to weather the rain, not to speak of the storm.
The party has disappointed none but itself in failing to capitalise on the socio-economic problems witnessed under the APC to reorganise and reposition itself in Nigeria’s political landscape. The last few years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration were so disastrous that a serious opposition needed only a nudge to topple the ruling APC. However, the PDP was too weak and divided to seize the opportunity.
If the goal of political parties is leadership recruitment, the crises rocking the PDP indicate that there are no leaders to be recruited from its ranks. The focus of its membership and stakeholders does not suggest that they ever wanted power for any reason other than its own sake. In this, nearly all the parties are only different in their sameness.
Cautionary tale
APC may gloat over the crises in all opposition camps and salivate at the smell of an easy victory at the polls. However, the troubles within the PDP serve as a cautionary tale: the biggest threat to the ruling party, if it’s not careful, may well be its large harvest of strange bedfellows whose real motives are hardly different from those of the droves of the political almajiris who defected to the PDP in its heyday.
In politics, as in life, history repeats itself.
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book A Midlifer’s Guide to Content Creation and Profit.
