Recriminations are flying around among party faithful, as to why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fell from grace during the recent general elections. The party leadership and the governors on the one hand and with President’s close associates on the other are trading blames. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI examines the controversy threatening to tear the party apart.
This is not the best of times for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The party has been hit by fresh crises, following its recent defeat at the polls. There had been signs that all was not well with the party, but party chieftains carried on as usual. After coming face-to-face with the reality of March 28 and April 11, the expectation of all and sundry was that members of the party would close ranks and brace themselves for their new roles as members of the leading opposition party.
But, rather than remain to rebuild the party, a good number of them have jumped boat, by defecting to the incoming ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). This started from the moment they saw the handwriting on the wall prior to the general elections. Others even waited till after the decisive March 28 presidential elections before taking the plunge.
There have been a lot of recriminations in recent weeks about what went wrong. Stakeholders are trading blames and calling for each other’s head. For instance, after a meeting of 19 PDP governors in Abuja recently, the resolution was that the national officers should resign, to pave the way for a new leadership. The governors got together to do a post mortem on the election. The National Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, and some members of the NWC were said to be part of the closed-door meeting. But, Mu’azu and his team were later asked to excuse the governors.
As a way of fighting back, members of the NWC are poised for a show down with the governors as they have vowed not to resign. They are calling for a public hearing into who caused the collapse of PDP between the governors and NWC. The leadership of the party is insisting that at the public hearing, members, stakeholders and leaders of the party would listen to views from everyone to ascertain who created problems that led to the poor performance of the party.
Observers say the PDP has a lot of soul-searching to do. Aside from losing the Presidency, which it has held for 16 years, the party lost its majority in the National Assembly and will be the leading opposition when the eighth National Assembly is inaugurated after the May 29 handover. The PDP won 46 senatorial seats out of 109, while the APC cornered 60. The situation in the House of Representatives does not differ. From a height of 21 state governors, the party has only 13 slots now. It lost in its traditional strongholds of Adamawa, Plateau, Niger, Kaduna, Benue, Bauchi and Jigawa.
Aside from the governors, the President Goodluck Jonathan’s aides and close associates have come up documents suggesting that members of the NWC stole funds belonging to the party’s treasury shortly after President Jonathan lost the presidential election. Two of the associates noted that the President was dismayed by greed of the NWC members, who stole over N250 million from the party’s war chest prior to the April 11 governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.
A Presidency source noted that the conduct of members of the NWC contributed largely to the defeat of President Jonathan. He said they more interested in pursuing their private material interests than the party’s corporate interest. “They were too busy helping themselves to party funds as President Jonathan’s campaign suffered,” he added.
In a fierce rebuttal, several of the NWC members said President Jonathan was the architect of his own failure. “He was the person running the country, not members of the NWC. If Nigerians turned against him, it’s not because of anything the NWC did or didn’t do,” one member said. Another NWC member accused the President and his closest associates of prosecuting the multi-billion dollar campaign using structures outside the party.
Some members of NWC have even accused President Jonathan of planning to hijack the party in order to place his loyalists in place in anticipation of running for office again in 2019. Specifically, they accused Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State of leading the plot to remove the Muazu-led NWC, to position himself for the 2019 election. “We are determined to ensure that nobody can just pocket a party that many eminent Nigerians contributed to establish,” one of them noted.
Nevertheless, a defiant Mu’azu has vowed to stay on till the expiration of his tenure. Far from accepting blame for the party’s defeat, Mu’azu asserted that the governors contributed to the abysmal outing of the party during the last general elections. Recently, the NWC has issued a strong warning to those it described as ambitious aides and associates of the President, “trying to use their closeness to him to cause crisis in the party and pave way for more defection to other parties.” In an unusually strongly-worded statement, the party leadership said it would expose such individuals and make them face the full weight of the party disciplinary measures if they fail to immediately retrace their steps.
The statement signed by National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, said it is “aware of the clandestine activities of such aides and associates of the President, including their unholy alliance with some elements in other parties to undermine and weaken the PDP by attacking its leadership.
“The NWC is aware that these same individuals who mismanaged the presidential campaigns are now desperately seeking to cause crisis in the PDP with a view not only to divert attention from their misdeeds but also to ensure that they remained politically relevant by hijacking the party structure for their selfish purposes.”
Jonathan lost the March 28 presidential election to his main challenger, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress, APC. Despite the President’s concession of defeat, some of his party leaders have for weeks subtly blamed each other for the loss.
Ahead of the elections, Mu’azu faced stringent criticisms for his contribution to the campaign efforts of Mr. President. Many party members accused him of refusing to campaign for the President openly, especially in the northern states.
To douse the call for the resignation of its members, the NWC has constituted a post-election assessment committee to review and evaluate the performance of the PDP in the general elections and make recommendations for the repositioning of the party.
According to the party leadership whose tenure ends next year, the best option is to allow a smooth transition, cautioning the governors that resignation as an option would not work. According to members of the NWC, apart from Delta and Ebonyi states, all the PDP governors got the candidates they wanted as they pushed unpopular candidates.
The party leadership can only be set aside at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting. The leadership, whose tenure is expected to end in March 2016, may not call for an NEC meeting until after the May 29 handover date, when the tenure of many of the governors as members of NEC would expire. The constitution of the PDP saddles the NWC, which is responsible only to the NEC, with the responsibility of running the party. The NWC members are now tactically waiting for May 29 before deciding on when to hold a NEC meeting. It is the belief of the NWC members that the President and the governors who are also members of the NEC could influence the outcome of the meeting. While the President will remain a member of NEC even after the end of his tenure, the governors cease from being members afterwards.
Those spearheading the calls for the resignation of members of the NWC include: Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and a former Deputy National Chairman, Olabode George. Governor Dickson has openly blamed the PDP’s loss at the federal level on what he described as indiscipline and disloyalty of some party members. Speaking recently in Yenagoa at the inauguration of a special committee, Dickson warned that dire consequences await any member of the PDP who engages in anti-party activities.
Observers have however argued that the main reasons why the PDP lost at the federal level on March 28 were as a result of imposition of unpopular candidate on the mass. After the primaries, there were disgruntled PDP members calling on the party managers to refund the monies they spent in buying intent and nominations forms.
Besides, President Jonathan, the observers insist, lost popularity among the masses because he lost focus. Secondly, his overzealous wife, First Lady Dame Patience, did not help matters. She intruded in the running of many state chapters of the party.
A party chieftain Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba appears to have thrown his weight behind members of the NWC. In an interview, the Senate Leader and the Cross River State member of the upper legislative chamber since 2003, explained that the road to the defeat of the PDP in the March 28 and April 11 elections was paved from the December 2014 primaries of the party when the governors deliberately shut out “unwanted candidates” and imposed their own on the party.
He said: “The resultant effect was exodus from the PDP without any corresponding influx.” According to the Senate Leader, “In the case of the PDP recently, politicians left because they felt that they did not fit within the governors’ calculations. In my view, since every politics is local, each case should be treated on its merit. Unbridled defection has the capacity of not only overheating the polity and upsetting the entire political configuration, but destabilizing the polity.”
Ndoma-Egba advised that the best antidote against the PDP defeat in 2019 was to stem further defections by ensuring “internal party democracy” as a party can only give the nation what it has. He added: “A party that does not have internal party democracy can only falsely promise the nation democracy.”
