WADATA PLAZA AND PDP’S FALTERING FRONTPDPWADATA PLAZA AND PDP’S FALTERING FRONT
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) must be licking its lips at the incipient crisis festering within the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Since the PDP lost the 2015 general election, the party has generally struggled to contain the roiling discontent within its ranks, with only the greedy self-service of politicians and daydreams of power keeping the party together. But just as a running stomach inevitably sends one to the outhouse, it is only a matter of time before it all comes apart for the self-proclaimed largest party in Africa, one which once held Nigeria to ransom for 16 years, even prophesying a 60-year stay in power.
Though one can never discount the machinations of the APC which after promising change has failed Nigerians as roundly as the PDP did, the afflictions of the PDP appear to be home-cooked, baked in the oven that the Wadata Plaza has become since the crown slipped from its head nine years ago, taking with it the soul of the party.
A few days ago, the party’s National Working Committee suspended its National Chairman, Umar Damagum, and National Secretary, Samuel Anyanwu, from the party for alleged disloyalty to the party. This was shortly after another faction within the party purportedly suspended the National Legal Adviser, Kamaldeen Ajibade, and National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba.
While the uninitiated may think 2027 is three years away, those who make their trade in Nigeria’s political trenches would explain with intense urgency that 2027 is close, and breathing down the necks of political parties in Nigeria, especially the PDP.
Since it was unceremoniously shunted into the arena of opposition politics, the PDP has struggled badly on all levels. Apart from failing to offer Nigerians serious alternatives since losing power in 2015, the party has been largely incoherent in espousing the ideals of a virile opposition party. This has come as no surprise though because once the unthinkable happened to it in 2015, it was predicted that a party that had so misused and abused power would struggle to know what to do with itself once removed from power.
The PDP’s disastrous courtship of self-destruction has been hastened by the presence in the party of many political cowbirds who are content to lay their eggs in any available nest, leaving others to feed the dangers they leave behind.
The most prominent of these political cowbirds would be Nyesom Wike, former Rivers State Governor, and the current minister of the Federal Capital Territory. As the days when he ruled Rivers State with an iron fist and a loud mouth hurtled to a close, he openly defied the PDP by working with and supporting President Bola Tinubu as he sought to become Nigeria’s president under the APC.
Wike refused to support his party’s candidate, clearly and disastrously working against it in Rivers State where electoral observers documented an electoral heist. Wike’s reward for his open betrayal of the PDP was the portfolio of minister of FCT, from where he has continued to work assiduously to destabilize the PDP-led government in Rivers State.
His open defiance of the PDP and its failure to discipline him has portrayed the party as weak. In a country where the ruling party always manages to somehow fail, a weak opposition is the last thing Nigerians need.
However, it has not all been bad news for the PDP’s purulent politics. After all, it was its disingenuousness that forced the wildly popular Peter Obi to leave the party and set up shop with the Labour Party before the 2023 general election. The result was unlike anything seen in Nigeria since 1999:one man galvanizing most of Nigeria’s young people and giving the political establishment a run for their money.
Shame should swell the plates of the PDP that is if it has any left in stock at the Wadata Plaza. Its failure to do anything of note for Nigerians was what opened the door to the pack of wolves that is the APC. It has since managed to fail to test the APC sufficiently as an opposition.
It has failed to keep the underperforming ruling party on its toes, largely leaving the mammoth task to the nascent Labour Party which has performed admirably under difficult circumstances.
Nigerians will always remember their betrayers and those who betrayed them to their betrayers.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
