The Peoples Democratic Party ruled Nigeria for 16 years during which it dominated the country’s political space until it lost power and dominance to opposition All Progressives Congress. LEKE BAIYEWU writes on PDP’s battle to re-lunch itself to relevance
It is six months since the Peoples Democratic Party, which ruled Nigeria consecutively for 16 years, lost power to the All Progressives Congress. The PDP, now the biggest opposition party, is still struggling to find its feet. However, leaders and drivers of the party have yet to come together to mutually agree on the cause(s) of its failures.
If proper diagnosis of the problems afflicting the PDP has not been made, the solution(s) will remain far-fetched, political pundits have said.
On August 10, 2015, former President Goodluck Jonathan with other leaders and stakeholders of the PDP endorsed a blueprint for the revival and rebuilding of the party in preparation for the 2019 elections.
A meeting to ratify the roadmap was held at the Peoples Democratic Institute in Abuja, where some party leaders, including Senator Ahmed Markafi and former Minister of the Environment, Mrs. Laurentia Mallam, discussed a restructuring plan which was designed by the steering committee of the ‘Restart PDP Project.’
The convener of the parley, Nwosu Butches, who addressed journalists shortly before the meeting went into a closed-door session, stated that the blueprint for the revival of the PDP had been circulated to all the party leaders, including Jonathan.
Butches said the PDP had learnt lessons from its past mistakes, noting that impunity and imposition of candidates were part of the things that derailed the party and made it lose the 2015 elections.
The blueprint listed the challenges facing the party to include intra-party crisis, manipulation of party structures by state governors and lack of internal democracy, among others.
The plan also discussed strategies for an online registration of members, removal of party officials, electronic authentication and voting at party primaries, funding, removal of waivers for returning members and party constitution.
In the wake of its poor performance in the last general elections, the leadership of the PDP in June set up a Post-2015 General Elections Committee, headed by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, to probe into the complaints by party stakeholders on how pre-election and post-election affairs of the party were conducted.
This was widely seen as the first step the PDP took towards reengineering itself and putting the pieces of its house back together.
On September 30, the post-election review committee submitted its report to the National Working Committee of the PDP, with a recommendation that the party picks its presidential candidate from the North for the 2019 election.
The Ekweremadu-led committee also recommended that the party should adopt direct primaries to produce all its candidates for future polls.
Ekweremadu said in part, “It is also recommended to the party to strictly apply the zoning principle at all levels. In particular, since the last President of PDP extraction (Goodluck Jonathan) came from the southern part of Nigeria, it is recommended that PDP’s presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections should come from the northern part of the country.
“This is in accordance with the popular views expressed in the submissions to the Committee. This will also assuage any ill feelings in the North over any perceived breach of the party’s zoning principle.
“Furthermore, it is recommended that the party adopt direct primary as the sole means of electing PDP candidates for any election at all levels. The use of delegates has been grossly compromised and abused, and should therefore be discontinued forthwith to return true ownership of the party to the people.”
It will be recalled that long before the 2015 elections, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had accused Jonathan of sabotaging the zoning formula of the party, adding that the ex-president should not seek a second term as he (Jonathan) had allegedly signed a one-term agreement with PDP governors and some national leaders of the party. Jonathan, together with his loyalists, repeatedly denied this.
The then Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum and ex-Governor of Niger State, Babangida Aliyu, and several leaders in the North attested to Obasanjo’s claim. Their argument was that ex-President Umaru Yar’Adua died in office while it was the turn of the North in the power-rotation plan, hence the need for Jonathan (as the vice president) to step down after completing Yar’Adua’s first term and staying in power for an additional term.
Again, when the North hoped to present a candidate for the 2015 presidential election, some party leaders loyal to Jonathan announced him as the consensus candidate of the party, granting him an automatic ticket to run for a second term. Other aspirants who had purchased Nomination and Declaration of Interest forms were refunded their monies. If Jonathan had won the election, he would have spent 10 years in office.
A similar scenario had played out in the party across the states, where several candidates emerged for various elections in what the aggrieved co-aspirants saw as imposition. There are examples of outgoing two-term PDP governors, who imposed their successors; a large number of these governors too got their senatorial tickets amid protests.
During this period, there was a mass exodus of aggrieved members from the PDP to the APC, where many of them got tickets and won elections. Today, a large chunk of the ruling party is made up of ex-PDP members who had grievances with their former party.
The PDP approached the 2015 elections amid protests and lost the presidential seat, majority in the two chambers of the National Assembly — the Senate and the House of Representatives — and the majority of state governorship seats.
Until this year’s election, the PDP was so successful that it prided itself as the biggest party in Africa. Due to its strong grass-roots base, it was active in the nooks and crannies of the country. The PDP had claimed to be the only national party, while regarding opposition parties like the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for Progressive Change, All Nigeria Peoples Party and the All Progressives Grand Alliance as regional parties. At a point, a former National Chairman of the PDP, Okwesilieze Nwodo, had boasted that his party would rule Nigeria for 60 years.
As the PDP was in a state of euphoria, the ACN, ANPP, CPC and a faction of APGA merged to form the APC, which became the biggest opposition party that unseated an incumbent president for the first time in the country’s political history.
Some political analysts believe the APC won the 2015 election largely because many people were tired of the excesses of the PDP and its successive governments and not because they were sure of what the new party had to offer.
This school of thought believes there is no significant difference between the PDP and the APC due to the massive influx of ex-PDP members in the APC, but for some national leaders of the ruling party noted for being in the opposition all the while.
In what many Nigerians see as the second major self-help mission by the PDP, the party inaugurated a 53-member committee led by the Chairman of Daar Communications PLC, Raymond Dokpesi, to organise a stakeholders’ conference to actualise the plan to refocus and rebrand the party. The party said it waited to receive the report of the Ekwerenmadu-led committee before holding the conference.
The Acting National Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus, said the move had become necessary as the events of the last six months of the APC-led administration indicated a palpable fear that the gains of democracy achieved by his party were under serious threat.
“This national conference is meant to fashion out strategy that would help PDP sustain democratic ideals while in opposition, hence the choice of the conference theme, ‘PDP and the Sustenance of Democratic Ideals in Nigeria.’
“The conference can be used to re-engineer the ideals, core- values and principles of the PDP as bequeathed to us by our founding fathers,” he said.
Members of the Dokpesi-led committee include Senators Ken Nnamani, Ibrahim Mantu, Ahmed Makarfi, Mao Ohuabunwa, Ben Obi, Joy Emordi, Musiliu Obanikoro and Murtari Shagari.
In the first official assignment of the ‘image-making’ committee, Dokpesi, at a press conference on November 10, asked Nigerians to forgive the PDP for its inability to meet their yearnings for 16 years. He added that the party was aware that Nigerians were angry with it because of some actions it took when it was in power.
He also said fielding Jonathan as the PDP candidate for the 2015 presidential election was an error.
Dokpesi attributed the defeat to many errors committed by the party and its leadership and asked Nigerians “to forgive and forget.”
He said, “We are aware that there were errors we made. We admit that we made mistakes and we have not met the expectation of Nigerians and we tendered unreserved apologies for these mistakes.
“You must have seen the Ike Ekweremadu report on why we are apologising. There was no internal democracy. There was impunity within the party and there was no level-playing ground for members of the party.
“Zoning principles of the party were abandoned and gamuts of all other issues, which will come out during the conference and for all these and the people who have been offended; for people whose toes were stepped upon, we also tendered an unreserved apology.
“These are the reasons why we are begging and apologising. We want to assure every founding member of the party that we deviated from their visions. That is why we are going to have all our founding fathers, like Adamu Ciroma, Dr. Alex Ekwueme and other members of the G.34, to come and talk to us at the conference.
“For every and any mistake we have made, I therefore say, we tender our unreserved apologies.”
Dokpesi admitted that it was wrong for the PDP to have abandoned zoning in preference for Jonathan. He said the party ought to have allowed the northern part of the country to complete its term when Yar’Adua died in 2010.
He added, “Make no mistake, the PDP is aware that there were errors made along the way. We admit that at certain times in our past, mistakes have been made: we did not meet the expectations of Nigerians.
“But the past is exactly what it is. While we should not forget the past and its errors, we must look forward and begin to show true leadership within and outside our party.”
However, in what many observers see as taking two steps backward after taking a step forward, the PDP dissociated itself from Dokpesi’s comments, saying the media mogul was not speaking for the party.
The national leadership of the PDP stated that the party did not force Nigerians to support Jonathan’s second-term presidential aspiration.
The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, said statements made by Dokpesi were his personal opinion and did not represent the official position of the party in any way.
He said, “In the first place, Dokpesi is not a member of the national executive of the PDP and he can only speak in his personal capacity and his opinion remains personal and does not represent that of the party.
“The decision to field former President Jonathan in the 2015 presidential race was approved by the National Working Committee, the National Executive Council and the party’s national caucus.
“In addition, the constitution of the party allows a sitting president to exercise his personal right to run for a second term if he so desires.”
In Metuh’s argument, all stakeholders were involved in the adoption of Jonathan as the party’s consensus candidate.
“How can you regret a decision taken where everyone was there, the NWC, NEC and the national caucus? What are we talking about? Everybody was conscious of the decision; nobody was coerced into supporting the position,” he stated.
A former Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, had argued that Jonathan did not cause PDP’s defeat in the last elections. He said, rather, the party’s loss was caused by the then Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, and the electronic card readers used for the elections.
Okupe stated in his Facebook post last Sunday that being an incumbent president gave Jonathan an automatic right to be the party’s presidential candidate.
He said, “That Jonathan was an error is in itself a grand fallacy, which totally undermines the whole truth about the sanctity and correctness of the wisdom of the PDP National Executive Committee which made and ratified that decision.
“All over the world, when an incumbent signifies an intention for a second term, it is customary that the established machinery of the party wholly backs and gratifies such an intention.
“If any error was made, it was firstly the failure of the PDP administration to sack the unfair and compromised electoral officer who was allowed to conduct the election in spite of his obvious and profuse partisanship.
“The second error was the inexplicable acquiescence of the PDP government to the use of the infamous card reader, which was skilfully manipulated to the disadvantage of the PDP presidential candidate.
“The third error of the PDP was to have fielded a good, God-fearing and patriotic man, who in spite of his enormous power, the avalanche of deployable arsenal of war at his disposal, transformed himself to be the victim and refused to fight so that his countrymen may live and his nation survived. The situation in Burundi today is highly instructive.”
Perhaps President Muhammadu Buhari saw how the blame game has continued in the opposition party ever since its defeat six months ago when he said last Monday that Jonathan and the PDP were not mentally prepared for the defeat they suffered during the general elections.
The President said this in his keynote address titled, ‘The Challenges of Transition in Nigeria and the Imperatives for a New Framework,’ at an event organised by the National Democratic Institute, themed ‘Strengthening Nigeria’s Transition Framework for Democratic Consolidation.’
Buhari, who was represented at the event by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said, “Indeed, the last election heralded the first real transition in the history of our nation, being the first time that an opposition party will sweep the ruling party out of power. This probably explains why the then ruling government was completely caught unawares by the outcome of the election.
‘For the government led by a ruling party that vowed to stay in power for 60 years in the first instance, they were not prepared for the transition that would not be from themselves to themselves. How can they, when they felt invincible, judging by the perceived strength and assumed popularity and the huge resources at their disposal?
“Because they were not mentally prepared for the outcome of that election, they were unable to put in place structures that would make the transition process that followed. Because our country lacks an institutionalised transition system, the then ruling government simply did not know what to do, and unpatriotic elements exploited the situation, which almost led to a national crisis.”
It appears that the PDP is resolved to field its next presidential candidate from the northern part of the country, where the incumbent Buhari comes from. Political pundits are, however, pessimistic about the availability of a candidate with widespread popularity enough to intimidate the President in his base.
Analysts have said the PDP has to do some image laundering for itself and choose its next presidential candidate carefully.
SUNDAY PUNCH had exclusively reported last Sunday that PDP had opened discussion with notable political leaders from the northern part of the country in the APC on the need for them to return to the former ruling party.
The discussion was aimed at convincing them that they could be the party’s presidential candidate come 2019, as the party had zoned its presidential ticket to the North.
Investigations by SUNDAY PUNCH had showed that some members of the NWC of the PDP had been having meetings with notable politicians who defected from the PDP to the APC.
Among those being wooed were the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki; a former Governor of Kano State and former presidential aspirant of the APC, Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso, and many others.
Apart from Saraki and Kwankwaso, it was also gathered that the PDP was looking at the direction of a former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido; Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State; and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogora, as its possible presidential candidate in 2019.
Saraki and Dogara were elected into their current positions with the help of members of the PDP in the Senate and the House.
Both men, who were former members of the PDP, have also decided to pay members of their former party back with headship of committees considered to be juicy and strategic at the Senate and in the House, respectively.
While shopping for its presidential candidate from the North, the party might have settled for Ekweremadu as it’s vice presidential candidate, SUNDAY PUNCH gathered.
Ekweremadu is the party’s highest ranking political office holder ditto for the South-East where the geopolitical zone has been alleging marginalisation in the governance of the country. The South-East, where Ekweremadu comes from, and the South-South are now the major base of the PDP in the country.
Speaking to SUNDAY PUNCH on the developments in the PDP, a member of the party’s Board of Trustees, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, denied the claim that leaders of the party have engaged themselves in a blame game. He said the party will survive its defeat and would soon become a formidable opposition.
While stating that the PDP did not err by fielding Jonathan as its candidate as it is normal for any party to adopt the incumbent rather than picking an ordinary aspirant, the former Minister of Transport insisted that Dokpesi should not have blamed the party’s defeat on Jonathan’s candidacy.
He said, “It is wrong to say PDP leaders have engaged themselves in a blame game; we have been meeting regularly on how to make the party bigger and better. Even in Osun State where I come from, we have been meeting regularly.”
A foundation member of the PDP and former Political Adviser to the ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor ABC Nwosu, said what was happening in the PDP was not abnormal. According to him, the party is going through the problems of not being in government and being the opposition.
He said, “What we are seeing are reactions to the situation. That is why I have not been criticising the APC-led government because I know that they are just moving in from opposition to government. They are having the same problem – the problem of forming government; we are having the problem of being the opposition. But things will settle.
Nwosu, who is a former Commissioner of Health in Anambra State and ex-Minister of Health in Obasanjo’s cabinet, stated that the most important thing was for Nigeria to have two strong parties of equivalent strength. He said everybody must make sacrifices to give the country stability.
“It is not in the interest of the PDP for the APC to crash. It is also not in the interest of the APC for the PDP to crash. Whoever is designing a programme for either not to become an alternative to Nigerians is not a lover of the people,” he stated.
He said Nigerians were fed up with the PDP and voted for the APC in the 2015 elections. He added that if the people become fed up with the APC, they should be ready to return to the PDP. He noted that it is when there is an alternative in form of opposition that there will be checks on any government.
Nwosu said, “What happened in the last election was people power. APC doesn’t have more structures on the ground than the PDP but Nigerians who are more in population than any party can muster have the freedom to choose where they want to go. We are not dead in the PDP; we are not dying and we are not ready to die.”
The member of Ime-obi, the inner caucus of the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, stated that the opposition would be constructive in its criticisms. He said the key thing was for the party to see the ‘change’ agenda of the APC in terms of what the party wants to deliver to Nigerians within the time frame.
For the PDP, he said the party had a long scorecard, which included telecommunication. “Before we came, oil was $16 per barrel and we didn’t abuse or pursue the Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s military regime. When people criticise us, let them know where we are coming from,” he added.
Nwosu recalled that when oil price increased, the PDP-led government paid off the country’s external debts and got debt reliefs of about $18bn. “That is a major achievement,” he stated.
He said, “The judge was Nigerians. Were they happy with us? If they were happy with us, they would have voted for us. They didn’t vote for us but it doesn’t mean that we are all criminals and bad.
“The prevailing attitude in the PDP to corruption is that whatever crime anybody commits, let him answer the charges. Nobody is opposed to it. The only thing we are opposed to is that if I was a governor in the PDP for eight years and I’m still in the party and my colleague was governor in the PDP for eight years and he has now run to the APC and you have left him to go away with it (his crime). There are several governors now sitting in the Senate with glaring cases; the governorship candidates in Kogi and Bayelsa states have corruption cases.
“Don’t keep saying the PDP is a corrupt party; APC is the same. There are messes all over the place and if you’re cleaning the mess, clean it all over. There are those who served Nigeria under the PDP and they are clean and there are people who served the country under the APC and they are as dirty as anything.”
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