By UnderTow
Almost casually, former Senate Leader (7th Senate), Victor Ndoma-Egba, suggested in a recent interview with Sunday Sun that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was fatigued and burning out. The senator, who is also the immediate past chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), made this statement when he was asked about the electoral upset the All Progressives Congress (APC) pulled in the November 16, 2019 Bayelsa State governorship election. Assessing the march of the APC in the Niger Delta, he concluded that the APC had become a credible and viable alternative in the region. It is hard to fault him. Not only is the APC now a viable alternative, if the PDP’s decline should continue along its present trajectory, the APC will either become the only choice or reduce the PDP to nothing more than a viable alternative.
Such prospects are galling to the PDP. Having dominated the Niger Delta so implacably for years, and having in addition mastered Nigeria for about 16 years, even managing to mould Nigeria in its image, culture and language, it must be humiliating that it lost the 2015 elections so severely, and seems too traumatised to plot its way out of the hellhole it has found itself after many years of hubris. Senator Ndoma-Egba, a senior advocate of Nigeria, does not offer suggestions on what the PDP might do to claw its way out of oblivion, considering that the focus of his interview with the Sunday Sun was something totally different. But it is doubtful whether he can even offer viable suggestions to an opposition party that has proved spectacularly incapable of both self-scrutiny and self-admonition.
All over the country, and going by its performance in recent elections, the APC is fairly confident that it can keep replicating the electoral triumphs it has inspired in the past months, especially following its massive but controversial general election win early this year. The Ondo and Edo polls are many months away; but the APC has dogmatically asserted its fairy-tale electoral story and composed dithyrambs about its invincibility. The PDP could have done better in both the Kogi and Bayelsa polls, but it took an eerily long time to get its act together and to attempt uniting the many combatants that dissipated the party’s strength and goodwill. In the face of bitter and sometimes unconscionably violent enemies, any whiff of disunity was bound to spell death knell for the party’s chances, especially because its chief opponent frequently pays scant attention to electoral ethics.
Defeated in both the Bayelsa and Kogi elections, and demoralised by the manner of its loss that involved unscrupulous deployment of security agencies, the PDP has fretted and sighed uncontrollably, unsure what else to do and where to go for succour and inspiration. Is this the fatigue Sen Ndoma-Egba talked about, or is it plain, spaced-out ennui? Whatever is afflicting the PDP, it is undoubtedly fatigued. But burnt out? That is still debatable. Its enemies know it is fatigued, and probably wished the party was also burnt out. The question is what does the PDP think of itself, and does it have any will left to fight its way out of the cul-de-sac it has foolishly sauntered into? Indeed, is any fight still left in the former behemoth, a party that once reigned supreme for 16 years but had feet of clay?
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When APC, the PDP’s chief nemesis, was formed, the fledgling party hoped hubris and incompetence would weaken the old behemoth from within, while carefully delivered blows to the then ruling party’s solar plexus would overthrow the heedless giant. The PDP, loquacious and indiscriminate as ever, exposed its soft underbelly and helped the then upstart APC to aim its poisoned darts. Familiar with that battle tactics, and unable to inspire itself, let alone reform its decadent ways and structures, the PDP has been left clutching at straws, hoping that the APC, in less than eight years, would by a combination of hubris and incompetence expose its soft underbelly for the fatigued and dying behemoth to aim its last-ditch arrows. Whether lightning will strike twice in the same place remains to be seen.
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