PDP as incorrigible as ever

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is still breathing fire over its intention to retake the presidency in 2019. To this end, it has, according to some reports, zoned key leadership offices to the country’s geopolitical zones. The North, the report says, without disclosing which of that region’s three geopolitical zones it refers to, will present the presidential candidate. The Southeast is expected to have the vice president, and the North and the South-South will have the Senate president and Speaker respectively. The Southwest is a mere cipher in the arrangement.

It is clear where the PDP is headed. For 2019, it hopes to fashion a winning alliance between the North and Southeast/South-South, as the First, Second and Third Republics illustrated. The party makes no pretence about which side its bread is buttered. In any case, given the political map on the ground, the party’s new zoning arrangement makes a lot of sense. Whether it will succeed is a different matter altogether. But the probability of success is at least visible, plausible and even threatening.

What is disturbing, however, is that the party appears only interested in the mechanics of winning the presidency, not in the dynamics of internal reforms and spiritual regeneration, nor in offering the country a fundamentally different political paradigm. In addition, 2016 is still way too early in the day to hope that all would be well with the PDP’s plans. Many intervening variables could still influence the calculation and tear the PDP’s choices in pieces. But so too is the All Progressives Congress (APC) in danger of being torn asunder both by the choices it makes and those that it spurns.

By reposing so much confidence in zoning and other mechanical contraption to win office, the PDP has appeared to learn no lesson from its chequered electoral past. It remains as incorrigible as ever. Next year, or perhaps the year after, will show whether the opposition party’s optimism is not totally misplaced, and whether its current machinations stand any chance of putting the nose of the distressed and apparently unimaginative APC out of joint.

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