The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), once the behemoth that reigned supreme in Nigeria, is crashing like a house of cards. Its members are moving in droves to the camp of the All Progressives Congress (APC), now the ruling party. Various reasons, ranging from the absurd to the ridiculous, are being advanced by the defectors for their action. Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State said he decided to leave PDP because he discovered that the party did not plan to zone the presidency to the South-East in 2023. Ben Ayade of Cross River State said his own action was based on his latter-day discovery that President Muhammadu Buhari is a good man. Ayade said such a good man needs to be assisted to take the country to glorious heights. Those were some of the jibes and vibes from the deserters.
But Nigerians know and believe otherwise. They are not taken in by the antics of the smart alecs. The leadership of the PDP is also not amused by the pretentious posturing of the defecting governors. Its national chairman, Uche Secondus, believes that its members are being intimidated to join the ruling party. I am yet to understand how this intimidation works.
But let us go back to the basics. The PDP, as we all know, lost power by default in 2015 after presiding over the affairs of the country for 16 years. Under its order, three presidents held sway. We had an Olusegun Obasanjo, an old warhorse, who understood and knew how to manage the complexities of the Nigerian state. He was succeeded by Umaru Yar’Adua, a broad- minded Nigerian whose mission at the Presidency was guided by the philosophy of live and let live. Then enter Goodluck Jonathan, the reluctant President, who was pulled out against his wish, from the quiet recesses of his native Bayelsa State, to operate at the Presidency. Jonathan’s first coming was heralded by a lot of goodwill. He berthed at the Presidency without rancour. But his second term went soar. Conspirators seized the stage. Jonathan, a product of political anointment, saw no reason to put up a struggle. He gave the hawks a free reign. They preyed upon his presidency ravenously and hounded him out of office.
The circumstances that led to PDP’s loss of power looked unreal. But they took place under the Jonathan presidency. The plot to unseat Jonathan was a northern agenda. It knew neither party nor association. That was why powerful northerners of PDP extraction who worked closely with Jonathan participated actively in the scheme to oust him. Jonathan saw the looming danger. But he chose the path of complacency. The northern plot worked because a section of the South, in this case the South-West, bought into the agenda. Curiously, the PDP, the party in power, looked on, almost helplessly, as the drama of conspiracy unfolded. The party could not effectively counter the onslaught from the opposition because a good number of its members had become moles. They had joined the plot to see to the defeat of their own party. That was how PDP fell by the wayside.
Then enter the APC. Since its ascension to the political throne, the APC cannot claim to have done better than the party it upstaged. If anything, it is widely believed by dispassionate assessors that the PDP was better as a ruling party than the APC. The Achilles heel of the APC administration resides with the presidency. As President, Buhari has left Nigeria a sharply divided country. His nepotism and clannishness remain unspeakable. Nigerians can hardly believe that the President of a country could display that level of sectionalism.
It is bad enough that the President has failed to manage the country’s diversity. It is even worse that he has also failed in the area of programmes and policies. The country’s economy is in dire straits. Galloping inflation has impoverished the people, leaving them hungry, helpless and hapless. The worst of it all is what life has become under the Buhari presidency. Life has lost its meaning and essence in Nigeria of today. Nigerians are saddled with a presidency that has unleashed killer herdsmen on them. If Nigerians had Boko Haram to contend with under Jonathan, they now have Boko Haram, murderous herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers to deal with. In other words, the country’s problems have more than quadrupled. We need not enumerate the misfortune that has befallen Nigeria under the APC presidency. Suffice it to say that the party has left the country worse than it met it.
This being the case, the expectation is that the opposition PDP would cash in on APC’s failures and ride on that pedestal to relaunch itself to political reckoning. Regrettably, the PDP has failed to do so. In the immediate post-2015 years, it was taken that the PDP was busy managing its loss to the extent that it was scarcely in a position to put itself together. It is also noteworthy that the party was also enmeshed in leadership crisis, which saw the party factionalized between Ahmed Makarfi and Ali Modu Sheriff. When the gale was over, the party installed a new leadership under Uche Secondus. That leadership is still in place.
But it is sad that the PDP under this present leadership has not found its bearing. It is still gasping for breath. The party, more than six years after, has not risen from the ashes of defeat. That it is why it has not been able to keep a ruling party that has performed badly in its proper place. The APC has been getting away with blue murder because the PDP has not been able to rouse the populace into action. This is unlike what obtained under Jonathan when the opposition charged the polity with propaganda to the extent that it looked like the country was going up in flames.
If the PDP were a strong opposition party, its members would have no reason to join the APC. If anything, the strength and force of its interjections and interventions on national issues would have weakened the APC to the extent that no one would want to touch the ruling party even with a very long pole. What we have instead is that people are joining a party whose President has left the country in a comatose state. This situation speaks volumes about the waning appeal of the PDP. The party’s leadership has not moved the party from where it was to the next level. That explains why the party is incapable of devising a staying power that will make it more attractive than a party that has badly misgoverned the country. Now, we hear Secondus talk about intimidation from the APC. How does that happen? We need some education here. But whatever anybody may have to say, the fact of the situation is that the PDP must return to the drawing board, if it wants to be regarded as a living party. Its complacency and lack of strategy is reducing Nigeria to a one-party state. This must not be allowed to happen.