BY AUGUSTINE AVWODE
No Nigerian of adult age by 2010 would ever believe that the then-ruling People’s Democratic Party could lose three national elections consecutively in the country. The party was not just big, it was massive and intimidating. Its tentacles spread into almost all nooks and crannies of the country. It boasted of political big wigs and who is who in the Nigerian political space. Its electoral exploits, either by fair or foul means, were so intimidating that the opposition parties expressed fears that the PDP was subtly working to foist a one-party state on the country.
Unfortunately, the glorious days seem to have since gone. With the onset of a harsh wintry night in 2015, and with the likelihood of it lasting more than anyone ever expected, all is now quiet at the party. Gone are those days when impunity reigned unabated and people were told to “wait for your turn”. All efforts to steer the ship of the party back to winning ways have all proved abortive. It has now kissed the presidential election canvass in three straight sets; and this is without prejudice to the ongoing efforts in court by Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the party, to prove otherwise.
It was such a ‘glorious moment’ for the party that it proudly called itself the “Largest Party in Africa.” And one of its former national chairmen, Vincent Ogbulafor, perhaps carried away by the sheer size and exploit of the party, declared without hesitation and a tinge of arrogance in 2008, that “the PDP will rule for 60 years.” In other words, the party was not contemplating any possibility of an opposition strong enough to unseat it from Aso Rock, the seat of power. He reportedly attributed his claim to the “good policies and programmes of the party.”
From 1999, the PDP enjoyed a steady progression in terms of acceptability across the country as it steadily “captured” more legislative seats at both state and national levels. The trend naturally engendered fear in some quarters. They became apprehensive given the fact that Nigeria, a multi-party and culturally pluralistic country was tilting dangerously toward a one-party structure, with the implication of constricting the political space.
With President Olusegun Obasanjo in charge, the PDP won 21 states out of the 36 in 1999. In 2003, it added more states to move the number to 28 and in 2007 it increased it to 29 out of the 36 states of the federation. The party repeated this progression in the presidential, national assembly and state legislative polls.
The PDP at one time or another, before its unbelievable fall in 2015, controlled such states as Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Bauchi, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, Niger, Anambra, Enugu and Ebonyi. Others were Imo, Abia, Delta, Edo, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom, and Bayelsa States.
Even the South West hitherto considered a no-go area, fell like a pack of cards at a point in 2003 to its invading forces as Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ondo, and Ekiti all came under the ‘umbrella’ leaving only Lagos State under now President–Elect, Bola Tinubu.
With the 2003 elections, PDP expanded its winning streak to 89 out of the 109 senatorial seats and 249 of the 360 positions in the House of Representatives. Out of the 774 local government areas nationwide, the PDP controlled 578 at a time. It had an unbroken record of 16 years in Aso Rock as the party in power
CHANGE OF FORTUNE
A change of fortune, however, started steering the party in the face after the 2011 general election in which President Goodluck Jonathan emerged having completed the tenure of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. That he was able to pick the ticket of the party was ‘war’ on its own as a section of the party believed that a northerner should be allowed to fly the party’s flag to balance the number of years that the South had ruled.
While the poorly managed internal wrangling in the PDP was on, the opposition went back to the drawing board and came up with the idea that only a formidable alliance of smaller parties can push the PDP out of power. The four main opposition parties could not do it on their own alone. Somehow, a major political engineering took place just on time before the 2015 general election.
Four parties managed, even if loosely at the onset, to tag together with the formation of the All Progressives Congress. It was made up of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress of Progressive Change, All Nigeria Peoples Party and a splinter group of the All Progressives Grand Alliance led by Rochas Okorocha.
“With the onset of a harsh wintry night in 2015, and with the likelihood of it lasting more than anyone ever expected, all is now quiet at the party. Gone are those days when impunity reigned unabated and people were told to “wait for your turn”. All efforts to steer the ship of the party back to winning ways have all proved abortive. It has now kissed the presidential election canvass in three straight sets”
In no time, the alliance solidified and started gaining defectors from the ruling party. President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu were the front figures of the new party. Unfortunately for the PDP, its leaders were not mindful of the huge threat the new coalition posed. They carried on as if nothing could change the status quo. In fact, the main accusation levelled against PDP leadership was that of impunity in treating members as if they are of no value and have no option but to accept whatever was dished to them.
Ogbulafor in one of his interviews with newsmen recalled how he counselled former President Goodluck Jonathan not to tamper with the Nigeria Governors Forum, warning him that such may have dire consequences.
“I advised him not to touch the structure of governors. He went and tampered with the structure; that was when they said 16 is greater than 19. So, some solid governors left the party; people like Rotimi Amaechi, Bukola Saraki and Aliyu Wamakko. Those are areas where you get a good number of voters. When they left, the party collapsed.”
Effectively, the PDP died on August 31, 2013, when seven of its governors, mostly from the north, walked out of its mini-convention. That was the day the party’s civil war blew open following internal bickering over who should pick the party’s presidential ticket. Many political observers believed that allowing those governors and several lawmakers to team up with the opposition APC was a grave error the party shouldn’t have made. From that day till now, PDP has never been the same again.
A chieftain of the party from Delta State, Ogaga Imoni-Edafe, a lawyer and public affairs analyst told The Point that the ‘ghost of 2013’ will be for a long time haunt the party.
“The problem of PDP started way back in 2013. Some people were expecting power to revert back to the North in 2015 and were already actually preparing themselves, or let me say, positioning themselves for whatever post catches their fancy. But Jonathan was working to continue as President. So, the first war within the party was whether Jonathan qualifies to run again or not. Well, some PDP heavyweights, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, reportedly dreaded the notion of Jonathan remaining in office and the danger of letting Nigeria slip into the abyss.
“There were allegations that he was arming militants and promoting ethnic and religious agenda, which could set the country ablaze. You could tell from the tone of the letters from former President Obasanjo and retired Navy Admiral Murtala Nyako, which were addressed to the president and other key stakeholders. They accused Jonathan of lying about committing himself to zoning principles within the PDP, condoning corruption, empowering ethnic warlords, dividing Nigeria along religious lines, and deliberately refusing to act swiftly on the Boko Haram crisis for political reasons.
“The PDP power brokers who were disenchanted with Jonathan became a major source of inspiration for the new APC. Meanwhile, the Jonathan administration started showing signs of weakness. There was growing insecurity and rampant corruption. The emergence of Buhari as a leading opposition figure further dealt a severe blow to the PDP. With the formation of the nPDP made up of governors, lawmakers, and sundry chieftains in different capacities across the country, it party was just a shadow and carcass of itself.
“Personally, I was not surprised when Jonathan quickly congratulated President Buhari back then. For him, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain and that was what it turned out to be. He became popular and famous across the country and the world and those who orchestrated the falloff PDP then are the ones stewing in it now. I always knew too, that GEJ will not intervene in the crisis involving the G5 and the party’s hierarchy. If he did anything that you read or saw it was just for people to see. With the 2023 presidential results, we wait to see what the court would say or decide. But as for me, I think people should think of moving the country forward and let bye-gone by bye gone,” he stated
WINTRY NIGHT CONTINUES
From all indications, the wintry spell in the PDP is set to continue and for such a time nobody can predict. It is always the practice for politicians who lost an election in one party to quickly jump ship and join the ruling party. With such an established political culture, it will be safe to hazard a guess that some PDP members who lost may find their way out of the party, thus further depleting the chances of the party winning future elections.
More importantly, if the result of the last February 25 is anything to go by, the party has lost a traditional support base to the Labour Party whose presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has done marvelously well in that it has effectively introduced the Third Force into the Nigerian political space. It cleared the South East States
With the G5 led by Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, still holding unto its demands for fairness and equity in the party, the only possible panacea to averting an unduly long spell of the wintry season for the party is if it would bend backward and return to the vision of the founding fathers where justice, fairness, and equity remain cardinal points and major pillars of the party. Until then, all is quiet at the party for now.
