The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is comatose on a deathbed; it’s on life support. The doctors (INEC and the judiciary) are colluding to switch off the life-support machine. They believe the party needs euthanasia or assisted suicide. Yet, what’s really needed is to remove the external factors that interacted with PDP’s genetic predisposition to cause its disease.
But virtually all of PDP’s children (governors and legislators), who should fight to save its life, have abandoned it and joined its enemy, All Progressives Congress, APC, which is behind the external factors. However, one reprobate child (Nyesom Wike), a bully, who works for the enemy but “remains” in PDP, wants to “hold it down” for APC’s Bola Tinubu, and use the PDP’s structures to help him win re-election as president next year.
The above extended metaphor is a case study in how a major political party can self-destruct through internal convulsion and vulnerability to external predators. Charles Darwin famously propounded the theory of natural selection, arguing that any organism that can’t adapt will become extinct. In the struggle for existence, it’s survival of the fittest; only the strong will continue to exist, the weak will succumb to extinction. That’s the existential story of PDP!
But PDP’s story is also one of national betrayal, of utter disservice to a nation. Here’s a party that ruled Nigeria for 16 years, during which most of its members lived off the Nigerian state through various political and public offices at federal, state and local levels. But once the party lost power, it became completely disorientated, unable to provide credible opposition, while its members fled in droves to the ruling party as if they can’t survive in politics without being in power. Indeed, in 2023, a PDP leader, Elder Emmanuel Ogidi, said: “PDP doesn’t know how to play opposition”, implying that the party was only good with power. But a party that can’t do opposition is not fit to govern, because it’s how a party performs in opposition that shows whether or not to entrust it with power.
In genuine democracies, political parties lose and gain powers. For instance, in the UK, power oscillates between Conservatives and Labour, each winning and losing elections, and then winning again. Similarly, in the US, power alternates between Republicans and Democrats, each winning and losing elections, and then winning again! Even in nearby Ghana, the New Patriotic Party, NPP, and the National Democratic Congress, NDC, have alternated power since 1992. Neither is cannibalised by the other after a loss. Rather, after losing power, each party picks itself up and fights its way back.
But that only happens where political parties are grounded in ideologies, values and principles. In Nigeria, ideologies, values and principles play absolutely no role in party formation; rather, political parties are mere personality-driven vehicles for capturing power. As a result, once a party loses power its members are like fish out of water; they can’t stand being in opposition. Hence, opposition politicians readily defect to the ruling party at the drop of a hat, turning turncoatism into an art form.
Yet things only got worse under the current so-called Fourth Republic (1999 to present). There were some stickiness of party loyalty and some ideological orientation during the First Republic (1960 to 1966) and the Second Republic (1979 to 1983). However, when Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999, the then ruling party, PDP, an ideology-free party of vested interests, introduced fickleness of party loyalty into Nigerian politics. Truth is, the brokenness of politics in Nigeria today largely has its roots in PDP’s origin and evolution.
History matters. And to understand PDP and its role in Nigerian politics, we must understand the circumstances of its birth. For, given the nature of its birth, PDP is a strange party. The party is called Peoples Democratic Party, but it’s neither people-oriented (it’s long been dominated by selfish politicians) nor democratic (it’s never had internal democracy). Indeed, PDP was formed by former military leaders to achieve their selfish ambitions. The seeds of its demise were thus sown at its birth.
In his book, Vindication of a General, Ishaya Bamaiyi, a former chief of army staff, wrote that, long before the 1999 presidential election, the then military head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, had agreed with Generals Ibrahim Babangida, TY Danjuma and Aliyu Gusau to hand over to General Olusegun Obasanjo. In an interview with Premium Times in 2013, Dr Alex Ekwueme, a former vice-president, more or less corroborated Bamaiyi’s story when he said that the military imposed Obasanjo as PDP’s presidential candidate in 1998. Dr Ekwueme said that although Obasanjo didn’t meet the party’s condition that a presidential aspirant must have won his local government in the earlier local government elections, the military waived the rule to ease his way into the presidency.
In 2017, General Babangida confirmed the military’s role in PDP’s birth. During a visit by some PDP chieftains, Babangida said: “From the foundation stage, I saw PDP as the IRA (the Irish Republican Army). We are the military wing of the PDP.” He added: “When I say ‘we’, I mean my boss TY Danjuma, Obasanjo, General Aliyu Mohammed and others. I term us as IRA – the military wing of PDP.” It’s an oxymoron, an oddity, for a political party to have a military pedigree and a “military wing” in a true democracy. Little wonder Obasanjo ran PDP as if it was his military command; little wonder he wanted to change the Constitution to do a third term as president; and little wonder he autocratically hand-picked and imposed Umaru Yar’Adua as his successor and Goodluck Jonathan as the running mate, facilitating his transition to the presidency after Yar’ Adua’s death.
But PDP did not have democratic epiphany under civilian leadership. Selfishness, disloyalty and hubris defined its civilian leaders from Jonathan to Atiku Abubakar to Wike. Take Jonathan. After succeeding Yar’Adua in a politically-tensed circumstance, he promised to do only one term but reneged. Had he kept the promise, PDP would not have split irredeemably in 2015. What about the G5 governors and other leaders, such as Atiku and Bukola Saraki, who deserted the party ahead of the 2015 presidential election? Tell me, would there have been an APC government without PDP? It’s often said that Tinubu made Muhammadu Buhari president in 2015. Yet Tinubu’s South-West only gave Buhari 2.4mn votes, allowing him to reach 15.4mn and beat Jonathan, who had 12.8mn. Due to defections and internal convulsion, PDP lost eight Northern states it won in 2011. Imagine if it had not lost those eight states, perhaps their votes would have cancelled out the 2.4mn votes Tinubu gave Buhari from the South-West. What about 2023? Would Tinubu have won if PDP had not splintered as it did in 2015, given that he only beat PDP’s Atiku by 1.8mn, despite his Muslim-Muslim ticket.
So, arguably, PDP brought APC to power in 2015 and in 2023. Napoleon famously said: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Well, Tinubu is not only allowing PDP’s genetic disposition to destroy it, but he’s also fuelling the party’s destruction from outside using Wike. According to Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, Wike vowed to “hold PDP down” for Tinubu in 2027. Perversely, INEC and the judiciary are seemingly playing Wike’s script, to keep PDP lifeless.
To mimic Shakespeare, the fault, dear PDP, is not in your enemy, but in yourself: in your members’ political whoredom and, hence, your failure to provide credible and formidable opposition to help strengthen Nigeria’s democracy. It’s a disservice to Nigeria, a national betrayal. But parties have no automatic right to exist, and the vultures are always circling. Truth is, if PDP, a ruling party for 16 years, fields no credible candidate in next year’s presidential election, it will die – deservedly!
*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.