For sixteen years, the People’s Democratic Party ruled Nigeria with a tight fist. Right after the return of Democracy in 1999, the party held the country by the jugular for a decade and six years. In those years of pillaging and philandering, its notable stalwarts and chieftains even said the party would rule for 60 years, boosting their reach and penetration.
With remarkable confidence, gladiators within the party take pride in describing the PDP as the biggest political party in Africa, with branches worldwide telling anyone who cares to listen of their immense power, profound influence, and deep pocket.
Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the party gained widespread notoriety for clipping the opposition wings with ferocious rage. Evidence of blatant rigging, flagrant disregard for the rule of law, brazen electoral manipulation, and malpractices dotted the scoreboard of the party. The Obasanjo’s time was a tragic-comedy – the period that ought to fix Nigeria’s institutional rot turned out to entrench administrative malfeasances in every part of our national life. Take electoral contest. You don’t need to show up as a candidate in an election to have results delivered in your favor even if your opponent is popular and accepted by the electorates. Just be a PDP member, signify interest, pick up an expression of interest form, have the backing and support of the President, OBJ, the local power brokers, and influential figures in the community – then boom: it doesn’t matter if you were imprisoned like one former Deputy Governor of a southwestern state who was declared Senator-elect to the chagrin of the opposition or not.
Under his watch, democratically elected governors were yanked off like rags – ask Senator Rashidi Ladoja whose regime was truncated and thwarted for not sharing the N65 million security vote with one of his godfathers, the late Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu. Those who stood against OBJ and his party came under heavy lashes. Many scampers for their safety.
Then 2007 came and OBJ, the acclaimed ‘Ebora of Owu’ with his tricky and dirty politicking reluctantly faded out of the public consciousness. Late Umar Musa Yar’adua, the frail Katsina man brought a little sanity to the national scene and offered to sanctify much of the battered system but death took him away while he was mopping the mess created by OBJ and his co-travelers. Still, former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan took the party projected to retain power for 60 years to one that was booted out of office after 16 years. In 2015, a major political coalition never seen in Nigeria’s history flushed out PDP out of the villa.
In three consecutive elections that followed that 2015 humiliating and shocking defeat, PDP has endured a turbulent and traumatic existence and experience. In a way, the party’s wall has not only cracked but creaked, its most potent ranks defiled while its clouts gradually vanished into the quicksand of irrelevance. An understatement to say the party has lost both its mettle and mojo within a space of a decade. While the likes of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Aminu Tambuwal, Bukola Saraki, and others played the spoilers in the 2015 electoral misfortune of the PDP, that role was inherited by Nyesom Wike, Samuel Ortom, Ifeanyi Ugwanyi, Okezie Ikepazu, all former governors. Only Seyi Makinde of Oyo had re-election to contest and contend with under the same party whose chances they tirelessly undermined, frustrated and sabotaged for pecuniary gains.
For one, it is an open secret that governor Seyi Makinde and his co-travelers G-5 Governors worked to undermined the PDP Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar. Subtly, cleverly and cunningly, they worked for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in an election that produced the most unpopular President in Nigeria’s history. When the going was good, Makinde and co had a good run at the Villa but events of the past few months have turned the good old relationship on its head.
As Tinubu’s government kept Makinde and his people out of the National cake with juicy appointments, the governor equally walked into his shell, lashing out at the government he helped install while hoping for a miraculous rebirth of the PDP from its coma. BREAKINH NEWS: That is not happening anytime soon. No coalition or power brokers has the magic wand to fix the PDP at the national level. From top to the bottom, PDP is embroiled in avoidable clashes.
In Oyo state for example, the party under governor Makinde is grasping for breath. Flash back to the last local government election to confirm my wrinkle. Despite the popularity of the governor, the party couldn’t match up the opposition APC blow for blow, eye for eye in that council poll. Beyond that, the party at the national level has diminished in all spheres. Its neither checking the excesses of the ruling APC nor presenting alternatives to Nigerians. What you occasionally see particularly on social media is the Press release of the likes of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi on the state of the nation. The national leadership of the party is fragmented, polarized and balkanized. And governor Seyi Makinde is one of the architects of the party’s colossal tragedy.
To situate this conversation in a context, it helps to look at the last three governorship elections conducted in under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Kogi, Edo and Ondo. APC for instance cleared the three states with ease. In Edo and Ondo States, Governor Makinde’s media vituperation gave him away as the sort of leader whose cough could send shiver down the spines of the opposition. While flagging off the upgrade and expansion of Samuel Ladoke Akintola Airport, Ibadan on the 19th September, 2024, Governor Makinde had in the presence of the PDP National Working Committee led by its acting Chairman, Umar Damagum, remarked that PDP was poised to win the Edo governorship against the All-Progressives Congress. The Governor made similar remark in the buildup to the last Ondo State gubernatorial contest. He even asserted that the contest would not be between the PDP and APC but between Nigerians and the APC. Specifically, he contended that a vote against the APC will be a payback time for the Party whose economic policies have brought hardship to the people. In those two instances, the governor didn’t take into consideration two important pieces of puzzle that often determine the chances of a party in an election.
One is the strength of a party’s structure. When a party is formidable, it has a good chance of winning election. That structural formidability is reflected in the unity of its relevant stakeholders. Except in a few occasions will a disjointed party head to the poll and win. Perhaps, when such a party wins, it is because the party at the other side of the spectrum is even more disjointed. This was the situation in 2023 gubernatorial election in Oyo state. As a matter of fact, both APC and PDP in the state head to that poll nursing wounds and disaffection. Realizing the potential of that loophole, GSM swiftly reached out to the disgruntled party hierarchy who worked tirelessly to undermine, sabotage and frustrate APC – that’s not to speak of the APC guber candidate and the bromance that had existed between Mr. Makinde and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This perspective, though, is debatable.
The other puzzle is the strength of the candidate in an election. In Kogi where PDP fielded Senator Dino Melaye, against Usman Ododo and Murtala Ajaka of the SDP, it was obvious the PDP was not serious about winning. In Ondo, the party equally fielded Agboola Ajayi, a former Deputy Governor to late Rotimi Akeredolu who got the party ticket in a miraculous way given that he neither had the financial heft nor political clout to defeat an incumbent governor. In Edo where Asue Ighodalo had a chance to win at the poll, the hubris of his godfather, Godwin Obaseki stood gallantly in his way. Cumulatively, these are the nuances that defined and determined who win an election, not just in Edo but in Ondo and perhaps in Osun and later in Oyo.
The defeat of PDP in those elections ought to awaken the party’s stakeholders to various existential threats to its survival. Maybe the likes of Governor will stand up and give the ruling APC a real fight for their money instead of always playing to the gallery.
OYO101 is Muftau Gbadegesin’s opinion about issues affecting the Oyo state and is published every Saturday. He can be reached via @Upliftnuggets on X, muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com, and 09065176850.
