From 1999 until last year, PDP dominated the political scene in Nigeria and controlled the National Assembly, with majority of seats in both Senate and the House of Representatives. Things began to fall apart when some governors stormed out of the party’s convention in 2014 and became part of the opposition grand alliance. There was a time PDP was so powerful that being its flag-bearer in any election was a virtual guarantee of success. Not anymore. Not only did it lose the Presidential, Governorship and National Assembly elections last year but since then, many leading PDP members have also deserted the party.
PDP has replaced its National Chairmen too frequently and the politics of its Governors’ Forum is tearing the party apart State Governors strut around the political space like overlords and talk down to party officials. With two important governorship elections around the corner, PDP is hardly ready to seize the opportunity. The current crisis in the party led to parallel conventions in Port Harcourt and Abuja. Although the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) agreed to observe the Port Harcourt convention, a court order restraining PDP from holding elections to the offices of Chairman, Secretary and Auditor truncated the convention.
Though party chairman Ali Modu Sheriff announced that the convention was postponed in deference to court orders, PDP’s governors went ahead with the convention and announced the sacking of Sheriff and his entire National Working Committee, NWC. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike justified Sheriff’s removal by saying the party under his leadership was headed towards the precipice. In his place a caretaker committee was appointed led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi which was given three months to organise another convention. Meanwhile, the Prof. Jerry Gana-led parallel convention in Abuja appointed Senator Ibrahim Mantu to lead its own team.
With three different factions each claiming to be the authentic leadership, heavily armed policemen took over the party’s national secretariat in Abuja to forestall a breakdown of order. This prevented the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led caretaker committee from resuming at the secretariat. While the Mantu/Gana faction said it was prepared to work with interim Chairman Makarfi, Sheriff insists that he remains Party Chairman.
Matters were further compounded by two conflicting court orders. While a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt restrained Sheriff from parading himself as the party’s chairman, another Federal High Court in Lagos, to which Sheriff loyalists rushed to, stopped Makarfi’s interim committee from talking over. Such is the indiscipline among Nigerian politicians that rather than go to the Appeal Court to appeal an unfavourable high court ruling, some people would go and obtain a parallel and contradictory high court order of the kind that caused confusion in Nigeria during the June 12, 1993 crisis.
PDP’s political rivals, especially members of the ruling APC, have every right to gloat about their opponents’ misfortunes. Many observers are also saying, with justification, that it is PDP’s culture of impunity that still bedevils it even when it is out of power. We are not joining them in the gloating because we believe that Nigeria needs a viable opposition party. However popular or focused the ruling party is, Nigeria’s democratic order is best served when there is a viable opposition party that keeps the ruling party on its toes. It is for that reason that we urge PDP leaders to pull themselves together and try and overcome their current challenges. We know that such crises and jockeying are often inevitable in politics, but they should not lead to a total implosion.
