Considering the rate at which members of the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) are defecting to the All Progressives Congress ( APC), it is easy to lose count of how many have jumped ship ahead of the change at the federal level.
Perhaps the best way to know the true situation concerning the present membership of the PDP – which has being in power since 1999, is to ask who is left in the party?
For those who have not defected, it seems like a matter of time before they eventually join their colleagues who cannot wait till May 29 for power to change hands at the centre.
With the victory of the APC in both the presidential and National Assembly elections on March 28 and the projected win of its candidates in majority of the governorship and state assembly contests last Saturday, many PDP members across the country have since chosen to pitch their tent with the former opposition camp.
While many of the decampees have given various reasons for their decision, what is apparent is that for reasons one can easily guess, they prefer to join the winning side instead of remain to salvage whatever is left of the PDP.
The mass defection that has followed the outcome of the election is a confirmation of the well known fact that membership of parties in the country is not based on any ideology.
From all indications, most politicians in the country decide on which party to belong to depending on what political gains they can make at every point in time.
Even before the recent gale of defections, there have been cases of aspirants who defected from the parties they belonged to when they lost nominations for positions they were interested in.
Though this is the first time a ruling party will lose election at the federal level in the country, it is not unusual in some other countries, even in Africa. What usually happens is that while the victorious party takes over, the defeated party regroups and becomes a formidable opposition in the hope that it will regain power in future.
But for the resilience of the leaders of the APC in the last 16 years, the defeat of the PDP in the presidential poll would not have been possible. If they had adopted the principle: f you can’t beat them, join them, Nigerians would have continued to be at the mercy of PDP’s transformation agenda that has not significantly accomplished much.
Democracy thrives when there is a viable opposition to keep the ruling party in check. What the PDP needs to do is not to continue to mourn its loss, but to reinvent itself. It must realise its mistakes and make amends.
While the APC should rejoice about its new fortune, it will soon have to come to terms with the challenge of harbouring all kinds of characters flocking to its fold.
Since the Constitution guarantees citizen’s freedom to join any party of choice, APC cannot reject anyone who wants to join its group.
However what is required to avoid an implosion is not to give the decampees undue advantage over its loyal members who have made enormous sacrifice to accomplish the recent feat.
If the decampees waited to join APC until after the party’s victory, their main reason for decamping is to reap where they did not sow. They are opportunists who cannot be trusted to be loyal if in future the APC loses control at the centre.