It is a little over one year after the 2023 general elections. But the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is still struggling to find its bearing. The opposition party lost the February 25, 2023 presidential election to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The PDP apart from winning only 10 governorship seats in the gubernatorial election, it also failed to regain the majority in the National Assembly.
However, since after the general elections, it has been one week, one trouble, for the PDP as it has continued to grapple with internal wrangling, which largely contributed to its abysmal performance in the said 2023 polls.
Prior to the 2023 general elections, a group of five governors led by Nyesom Wike, who is also a former governor of Rivers State, had fallen out with Atiku Abubakar and the PDP leadership, following the nomination of former Delta governor, Ifeanyi Okowa as PDP vice presidential candidate.
The Wike group popularly referred to as the G-5 Governors had insisted on the removal of Iyorchia Ayu as PDP chairman and as a condition for peace.
However, while the former Senate President insisted that he would not quit, Atiku maintained that it was not in his place to ask Ayu to resign. Thus, the PDP went to the poll with a divided house, leading to the party’s heavy defeat.
Ayu was later removed as national chairman, immediately after the 2023 polls, following his sack as a member of the opposition party by his ward in Benue State.
But, the former Senate President, who was replaced by the PDP Deputy National Chairman (North), Umar Damagum, as acting chairman, is currently challenging his ouster at the Court of Appeal.
Nevertheless, the party has remained polarized with Atiku’s loyalists calling for sanction against the former Rivers governor over alleged anti-party activities. The romance between Wike, who is currently serving as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) in the APC-led administration, has remained a source of concern for the opposition party.
Sunday Sun gathered that efforts to rebuild the party is being stalled by power tussle amongst PDP bigwigs at both the national and state chapters. This is especially as the cracks in the various organs of the party have made it impossible for the PDP to hold a meeting of its National Executive Committee (lNEC) to take decisions on critical issues.
A former PDP presidential aspirant, Cosmas Ndukwe, summed up the situation in the opposition party thus: “The problem in the PDP is still widening by the day. They are arguing over who should be the national chairman and who would not be. The camp that will produce the national chairman and the camp that will not produce the national chairman. The camp that will produce the secretary and if the secretary that left to contest in Imo State should stay or would not stay.”
Former Ogun State governorship aspirant, Segun Sowunmi, apparently exasperated by the state of affairs, recently filed a suit before a Federal High Court in Abuja to compel the PDP National Working Committee ( NWC) to convene a NEC meeting.
Ostensibly disturbed, the Bauchi State governor and Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, Bala Mohammed, while speaking at a recent party function, said that the opposition party cannot afford the luxury of crisis in its fold.
“We are hoping to make sure that we reposition the party, reduce and minimize rancour and division, which have characterized us in the past because of our size and our divergent interests. Certainly, we don’t have the luxury of doing that.
“The country is suffering. There is a lot of hunger and anger, for the third time the country is looking up to us, we cannot continue to be the weeping boys or girls or women.
“We must close rank, give benefit of doubts to each other, give benefit of doubt to the party.. We don’t have the luxury of division,” Mohammed fumed.
Two weeks ago , the PDP NWC, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, announced that the much awaited NEC meeting would hold on April 18.
The NEC meeting, Sunday Sun, gathered is expected to take a decision on the issue of getting a substantive national chairman for the PDP, sanctions against those alleged to have indulged in anti-party activities during the last general elections, among other issues.
It would be recalled that the PDP National Organising Secretary, Umar Bature, at a recent meeting with chairmen of state chapters of the party mandated them to submit the list of members suspected to have indulged in anti- party activities to the national secretariat for onward transmission to NEC for necessary actions.
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