Who killed the PDP?
Perhaps, writing the obituary of Nigeria’s main opposition platform, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a tad premature given that two factions are still pulling its skeletal frame in different
Perhaps, writing the obituary of Nigeria’s main opposition platform, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a tad premature given that two factions are still pulling its skeletal frame in different directions. On one side is the court-empowered, Nyesom Wike-backed National Caretaker Committee (NCC). Putting up the semblance of a fight is the wing propped up by Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde and his Bauchi counterpart, Bala Mohammed.
The outcome of the recent Federal Capital Territory (FCT) council polls is a cautionary tale about hasty requiems for a once doughty political party which at the height of its powers controlled close to 30 states and boasted it would govern Nigeria for 60 unbroken years.
Where no one gave it a chance it managed to win one of the six councils up for grabs, while putting up a respectable showing in a couple of others. It was a performance that briefly silenced the upstart African Democratic Congress (ADC) which, in reality, is a congregation of PDP refugees.
For those who believe that the Lazarus type of political resurrection is possible, there is hope yet. The opposing sides are currently locked in reconciliation talks that could yet throw up the party as a viable platform for next year’s electoral contests. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves because the prospects of white smoke emitting from the rafters any time soon look dim.
FCT Minister Wike is said to be playing hard ball, conscious that judicial adjudications right up to the Supreme Court would favour his side – the other camp having scored a fatal own goal by openly defying two explicit court rulings to hold their Ibadan convention late last year.
As things stand, there aren’t too many options left for the Makinde-Mohammed side. One is to abandon the dilapidated house for Wike and his men. Alternatively, they could bow their knees and kiss the Ikwerre strongman’s ring in abject surrender. That doesn’t seem like something the Bauchi State governor is looking forward to given raging reports that he’s on the verge of doing the unthinkable: defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
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Were that to happen the current ruling party would have overtaken its predecessor by taking control of a mammoth 32 out of 36 states of the federation. Makinde could also decide he doesn’t want to be home alone and leave for his rumoured ADC destination. We could then have a situation where the one-time giant finds itself without a single governor in its ranks. Truly, how are the mighty fallen!
What has befallen PDP is the classic case of death by a thousand cuts. It has been stabbed in the back too many times by a colourful cast of culprits. Even as the once redoubtable party haemorrhaged members and goodwill, its assassins shamelessly pointed their blood-stained fingers accusatorily at others.
It wasn’t APC; it wasn’t President Bola Tinubu that delivered PDP into the intensive care unit. The party and its members did the job themselves. Some of those responsible have fled the scene of the crash like typical hit and run drivers. Others stayed back to play the role of undertakers.
The unstoppable slide began long before the incumbent president thought seriously about running for the office he currently occupies. A few numbers would put things in perspective. Between 2007 and 2011 under Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, PDP controlled 28 governorships.
In the run-up to the 2015 elections, the party was unable to manage its internal disagreements and casually watched five governors – among them those of the key electoral powerhouses of Rivers and Kano – walk away to strengthen the emergent APC. They would be joined by the likes of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and one-time Kwara State Governor Bukola Saraki.
What the young opposition party lacked in terms of national spread, it was gifted by a bloated, arrogant and overconfident PDP. Going into the 2015 polls the then ruling party had 23 governors within its ranks. By the time the dust settled, Muhammadu Buhari and APC had pulled off a stunning upset, leaving the former powers-that-be with only ten governors. The deadly slide into irrelevance accelerated from that point.
In 2019, and at the onset of the Tinubu presidency in 2023, the party had up to 13 governors. It must rank as one of the wonders of the world how in less than three years PDP lost 11 of them to APC. The opposition would have you believe that this came about through coercion and intimidation by the government. The facts don’t support this position.
Just as the party was unable to manage its internal contradictions under Jonathan and ended up strengthening their direct rivals in 2014, leading to the 2015 polls, PDP repeated the same deadly error in 2023.
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Some argue that the lop-sidedness of political identification today is down to some Machiavellian one-party plot by Tinubu. The real reason is the unforced error of the PDP going against power shift - which has become accepted as a national consensus.
Atiku, a Northerner, wanted desperately to succeed Buhari, also from the same region who had spent eight unbroken years in office. Even after Wike lost the presidential ticket to him, he refused to allow the party’s chairmanship to go South for purposes of balancing. The former Rivers governor was willing to accept this compromise as a minimum for peace. The former Vice President would have none of it – insisting on keeping his ally Iyorchia Ayu in office to retain control over party structure.
It was a fatal miscalculation because he didn’t anticipate how far Wike and his G-5 group of governors would go to frustrate his ambition. Imagine for one moment that Atiku had consented to sacrificing Ayu, so that the presidential candidate and party chairman wouldn’t come from the same region, would the now FCT Minister have joined forces with Tinubu?
That crack in the PDP created by that disagreement in 2022 was never mended. It would be exacerbated by the bitterness of defeat and the ensuing legal battles. One by one, the far-sighted amongst the party’s first term governors saw they would end up without platforms for contesting elections and moved to secure their futures by defecting to APC. For the same reason, Atiku also jumped ship to launch a platform where the coast was clear for him to run for president again.
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But of all the self-inflicted wounds that have brought a once proud organisation to this sorry pass, the decision of the rump of the PDP led by Makinde and Bala Mohammed to press on with the Ibadan convention despite courts orders barring them from doing so, takes the cake. You didn’t have to be a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to know it would end in tears.
As at November 2025, before the Ibadan misadventure, the party could still count eight governors within its ranks. In the four months between then and now, six of them have defected to the ruling party.
In the eyes of many embittered PDP supporters, Wike is the one who killed the party with unconventional politics that has seen him stepping out to work for Tinubu’s election. What they conveniently forget is the mindboggling decision making that made Atiku and his men to choose selfishness over the accommodation that would have held their party together.
The FCT Minister has a ready taunt for his critics. He’s quick to point out that while he remains a PDP member, most of those who dubbed him a traitor have since joined the supposedly evil APC, or in the case of Atiku, ADC.
PDP may yet survive its grave challenges. But at this point, the best case scenario for the party might see it cooking up a peace deal that allows its candidates to run for every other position except the presidency, seeing as it may be too enfeebled to challenge for the highest office in the land.
Tomorrow is another day and in politics all things are possible. Whether it would ever return to the heights it once reached remains to be seen. If the APC learns from the errors of its predecessor PDP’s long wait for power could continue for a while yet. But it can console itself with fact that its nationwide reach is an asset that would come in handy for what would be a massive rebuild.
