PDP, ADC jostle for opposition ranking
After winning over some nine defecting senators and about five defecting House of Representatives members, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) summarily described itself as Nigeria’s main opposition party. Just like
After winning over some nine defecting senators and about five defecting House of Representatives members, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) summarily described itself as Nigeria's main opposition party. Just like that? Merely on the strength of defecting lawmakers? Yes, it seems. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which they think they have supplanted, was by last week left with only six senators. More could still defect before this week is over, and the direction of defection would be determined not merely by the love of the benefiting party but by the openings available to the defectors to fulfill their electoral ambitions. It is, however, unlikely that ranking of opposition parties will be determined in the near term by the number of lawmakers each party has.
Early last year, the Labour Party, still flush from its unexpected performance in the 2023 presidential election, declared itself the leading opposition party. The party won only one state in the governorship poll, and controlled only the Abia State legislature. Yet it thought itself the leading opposition party ahead of the PDP which at the time had 13 governors. It was characteristic LP hyperbole; but no one was in doubt which party posed the real and substantial opposition to the APC. In the same 2023, before the PDP fell on hard times, it boasted 141 national lawmakers, comprising 36 senators and 105 Reps. The exigencies of the 2027 elections have, however, forced the PDP to shed weight largely in favour of the more organised ruling party. If anything, at least practically speaking, the APC has become both the ruling party and the opposition, having swallowed innumerable members of the opposition.
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Without a shred of doubt, the opposition coalition ADC came as an afterthought last year, pronounced into existence by a group of hardy presidential hopefuls after the party's post-mortem and burial in the 2019 elections. It has not won one seat on its own merits under the tutelage of the former vice president and his crowd of besiegers, even at the state level, not to talk of at the federal level. It has won no state, and has had a very chequered run in recent elections. To pronounce itself the leading opposition party, especially in the face of the still existing PDP, is not just hyperbole, it is hysteria. But perhaps it is fitting to interrogate its shocking gains in recent days. Nearly all its senators have come from the PDP, by lawmakers unable to guarantee nominations in the APC for the 2027 legislative poll; and nearly all its House of Representatives members have come from the LP in states where they have been effectively blocked from access to 2027 nominations. If they had the choice, the defectors would go in a different direction.
In one incapacitation or the other, the PDP will still manage to put its house in order, properly nominate candidates in states where it still wields residual influence, and get dozens of candidates elected. They not only have that capacity, the just concluded FCT council elections, in which they came a strong second while dwarfing the ADC, proved that they are effectively the leading opposition party. It does not matter whether Mr Wike, the PDP inspirer straddling two partisan divides, is likeable or not. The obvious fact is that having presided over national affairs for 16 years since the advent of the Fourth Republic, thoughts of the PDP still linger with many Nigerians who were born and became teenagers under its rule. The former behemoth may lack a voice today, due mainly to bad choices and the hijack of its organs by strange bedfellows, but they have left lasting impressions which obstreperous LP or the rapacious ADC cannot obliterate. The jury is not out on which party is today the leading opposition party; the jury came in years ago and pronounced the PDP leader in that category. It will remain so in the foreseeable future.
