Has the Long-awaited Implosion of PDP Come?

The Friday’s factionalisation of the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party is the consequence of the party’s failure to maintain discipline among its members, promote justice and fairness, and sanction the agents of external forces, who hijacked its leadership, and were leading it to the slaughter house, Ejiofor Alike reports

The National Secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja and the offices of the supporters of the ruling party in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may have erupted in jubilation last weekend when the news of the factionalisation of the national leadership of the PDP broke with Yayari Ahmed Mohammed and IIIiya Umar Damagum, leading each of the two factions.

With each of the two leading opposition parties – the PDP and the Labour Party (LP) – parading two national chairmen, the ruling APC may already be coasting to victory in the yet-to-be held 2027 general election.

Before its national leadership was factionalised, internal discipline, party supremacy and internal cohesion had vanished from the PDP.

PDP is the only political party where a prominent member can choose the candidate of any other party of his choice to support in any election without facing any disciplinary action.  

Any prominent member of the PDP can also go to the press to threaten and mock all the governors elected on the platform of the party, malign the party’s leadership and de-market its candidate in an election without any sanction.

PDP ran into troubled waters when it failed to address the genuine grievances arising from the emergence of its presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the 2023 general election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Delta State governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, respectively.

After losing the presidential ticket to Atiku in a hotly contested presidential primary, the then Rivers State governor and now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, was alleged to have lobbied to become Atiku’s running mate.

A former senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, had while speaking on ARISE NEWS Channel, claimed that: “He (Wike) called me 19 times in two hours when Atiku was going to mention his vice-presidential candidate, lobbying me with everything possible to influence Atiku to announce him as his running mate.”

However, Atiku settled for the then Delta State governor, Okowa, as his running mate.

Apparently aggrieved that he lost both the presidential and the vice-presidential tickets of the party, despite what he strongly believed was his enormous contributions to rebuild the party, Wike mobilised four other PDP governors under the umbrella of G-5 to work against the victory of the party in the 2023 presidential election.

According to insiders, the FCT minister had stood by the party when it was abandoned by Atiku; former Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki; former Governor of Sokoto State, Senator Aminu Tambuwal, and other PDP governors, who had defected to the APC ahead of the 2015 general election.

One of Wike’s loyalists told THISDAY that after losing the two tickets, the former Rivers State governor, though still in the PDP, started building a new alliance with the APC leaders, a party he had once described as cancer at stage four. 

Speculations of his imminent defection to the APC had heightened following his reported meeting with the then presidential candidate of the APC, President Bola Tinubu in London.

Despite courting the leaders of the ruling party, Wike and his camp were never called to order as the PDP neither made deliberate efforts to address their grievances nor sanctioned them for anti-party activities.

Wike’s loyalists believe that he justifiably felt betrayed by the PDP leaders who had left the party to be destroyed in the hands of the agents of the ruling party when Senator Ali Modu Sheriff was piloting the affairs of the main opposition party.

According to one of Wike’s loyalists, he unilaterally deployed enormous resources to rescue the PDP from the grip of the agents of destructive forces but Atiku and others who under the umbrella of the nPDP, had left the party in “carcass,” returned and hijacked the presidential ticket when it was obviously the turn of the southern part of the country to produce the president.

According to the Wike’s loyalist, the FCT minister was also displeased with Tambuwal, whom he allegedly supported his presidential ambition in 2018, only for the former Sokoto State governor to throw his weight behind Atiku against him in the party’s presidential primary in 2022.  

Consequently, Wike and his G-5 governors worked against Atiku in the presidential election and facilitated Tinubu’s victory, claiming they were fighting for justice and the return of power to the southern part of the country.

Expectedly, Wike was compensated with the position of the FCT minister where he has been working for the APC, while retaining his membership of the PDP.

But despite being PDP members, Wike and his loyalists worked against the victory of the party in the recent governorship election in Edo State.

Wike’s recent war of words with the PDP governors over the political crisis in Rivers State was also another consequence of the party’s failure to put its house in order.

With the PDP failure to address these internal wranglings, it was not surprising that its national leadership, which had already been hijacked by the agents of the APC, was factionalised into two last Friday.

Before the factionalisation of the party’s leadership, the running of the affairs of the party by Damagum had been characterised by intrigues, and shadow-boxing, which made it difficult for the top organs of the party to hold meetings as at when due.

The NWC members at last Thursday’s meeting were split sharply along the line of those loyal to the FCT minister and those purportedly rooting for the supremacy of the party’s Constitution.

However, the Wike-backed faction led by the party’s National Chairman, Damagum on Friday suspended the National Legal Adviser, Adeyemi Ajibade, and the National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, and set up a committee to probe their alleged disloyalty to the party.

In a statement on Friday morning, the factional acting National Publicity Secretary, Ibrahim Abdullahi Manga said the decision to suspend the duo was reached at the 593rd meeting of the NWC held on October 10, 2024.

Manga and Okechukwu Osuoha, were appointed as replacements for the duo.

But in a counter reaction, the factional National Publicity Secretary, Ologunagba, in a detailed statement, announced the suspension of Damagum and the National Secretary, Samuel Anyanwu, by the NWC due to what the statement described as the series of complaints raised against the duo.

With this latest development, it is obvious that external forces, which had hijacked the party, have destroyed it for the APC to coast to victory in the 2027 general election.

Though Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja, later on Friday, gave a restraining order against the removal of Damagum until December 2025, two national leaders have emerged for the party, setting it on the path of imminent implosion.