Can APC defeat PDP?

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has christened itself the largest party in Africa and, in a recent declaration, its National Chairman, Bamangar Tukur said the party was the “Lionel Messi” of Nigerian politics. Can the party sustain the boastful declarations ahead of 2015? Taiwo Adisa examines the trends.
THE plan to merge opposition parties in the land to face the all-conquering Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been in the pipelines for long. Ahead of the 2007 general election, some political leaders under the banner of ‘progressives’ had floated the idea. Leaders of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) then realised the need to expand the coast and ensure a merger with parties across the geographical divide. Thus, in 2005, a political contact committee was put in place under the leadership of the party’s presidential candidate in the 1999 election, Chief Olu Falae. That committee went round seeking alliances with “like-minded progressive political parties” in its bid to form the “mega party.”

Incidentally, the effort did not go far, as misgivings crept into the leadership of the AD. Some leaders of the party believed that Falae was deviating from the original objective and that he was aiming at forming his own party. With such misgivings, it was not surprising that the mega party arrangement could not fly. The party ended up as the Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPA), a variant of the AD, which further weakened the impact of the pioneer progressive party of the Fourth Republic in its South-West area of dominance in the 2007 election.


With the defeat handed the other contending parties by the PDP in the 2007 election, issues of merger and alliances came up after the election. The emergence of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) from the Action Congress (AC), which pulled out of the AD, reinforced the need for merger ahead of the 2011 election.

Leaders of the two parties met many times in their bid to foist a merger of the ACN, led by Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the CPC, led by a former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari. But close to the election, the two parties announced a breakdown of the process, meaning that the parties had to face the giant PDP without a united front. The result was that the PDP won the election, maintaining a close second best and securing the constitutionally required number of votes in most of the states regarded as strongholds of the opposition.

The result of that election gave the opposition the belief that they could muster further influence if they indeed came together. They therefore started the renewed merger talks almost immediately after the election. What the leaders knew they had to work at included the profile of two principal actors in their fold: Buhari and Tinubu.  They knew that if the two could work for the collective purpose, a merger was possible.

Though Nigerians were aware that the parties, including the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), have entered into merger talks, not a few were still taken aback when a former Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Tom Ikimi, announced the merger in Abuja last week. Ikimi, at a press briefing, said that the parties, including the ACN, ANPP, APGA and CPC, had agreed to form a united front against the PDP.

Ikimi had stated:  “We resolved to form a political party committed to the principles of internal democracy, focused on serious issues of concern to our people, determined to bring corruption and insecurity to an end, determined to grow our economy and create jobs in their millions through education, housing, agriculture, industrial growth etc, and stop the increasing mood of despair and hopelessness among our people.”
He further stated that the decision by the parties would help to restore the country’s dignity and position of pre-eminence in the comity of nations. Apart from Ikimi who represented ACN, other parties were represented by the likes of Senator Annie Okonkwo (APGA),Alhaji  Garba Sadi (CPC)  and Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau (ANPP).

The PDP, however, immediately derided the opposition, saying that the party remained the Lionel Messi of Nigerian politics. Tukur said that the gathering of opposition parties would not bother the PDP, adding that they lacked the strength to dislodge the PDP.

He said: “It does not mean that we want to be a party without opposition. In fact, opposition is a charge to action. People tend to believe that when they see people coming together they will do well. If they have the strength, why do they come together?

“If you go for a contest you have the striker, you know Lionel Messi? PDP is Messi in that contest. They (opposition) are not a threat at all; it is better, it will inspire the PDP to action. In that contest (merger), tell them chairman said PDP is the (Lionel) Messi.”

His voice was echoed by the PDP leadership across the country. Lagos State chairman of the party, Captain Tunji Shele, said that the PDP was not scared of any party. According to him, the merger was more of a gang-up which, he said, would fizzle out before 2015. He said that the choice of a presidential standard-bearer for the 2015 election would divide the party, thus making the stakeholders to abandon the merger. He said: “The merger is welcome, if the purpose is to develop Nigeria. But if the purpose is to hijack power, it will fail. Nigeria is a big country. It is not when a party wins election that will make Nigeria great.

“ACN, CPC, ANPP, and APGA are out for mischief. PDP is a strong party that cannot be dislodged It is a national party with grass-roots appeal. These are regional parties coming together. It is a gang-up that will collapse. It will be very tough for them. They cannot defeat PDP. We are not afraid of the merger.”
Also, the Sokoto State Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Aminu Bello, insisted that the APC would not pose serious threats to the PDP, adding that the merger was a welcome development.

According to him, the emergence of the new party would ginger the PDP to strive harder in meeting the aspiration of Nigerians, while also strengthening the democratic space.

“We are not scared of the merger of opposition parties. I think it will only spur the PDP to redouble efforts in meeting the yearnings and aspirations of the people. I believe that by God’s grace, PDP will emerge victorious in 2015 in Sokoto State and Nigeria,” the chairman said.

Away from the boastful posture, can the PDP really tame the emerging APC? How will the emergence of the APC shape the political landscape? In the past years, many political observers of the Nigerian situation would come to terms with the fact that the PDP has been an enemy of itself, in that most of the candidates who had contested elections starting from the 2007 elections on the platform of other parties have had one thing or the other to do with the PDP. Following the battle for the soul of the PDP by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar between 2005 and 2007, the party engaged a lot of tricks to streamline its membership and contain internal opposition. One of such steps was the decision to deregister some members, including some of its founding members. Many of its former members who were driven out had grouped to provide opposition against the party.

As current statistics show, the PDP is in commanding control of the political space. The party is in control of 23 states, while also controlling a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives. But it has never lacked internal disharmony. From  2001-2002, the PDP has been contending internal friction, which on most occasions threatened to pull it apart.

Somehow, the PDP has however been surviving one election after the other. At a stage, it controlled 28 of the 36 states in the land.

Right now, the PDP is faced with a life-threatening internal squabble, which is one of the issues giving the opposition some hope.  Seventeen of the party’s 23 governors are due to complete their second term in 2015 and many of them have started making future calculations. While some plan to retire into the Senate, others are planning to try their hands on the Presidency. But with incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan showing a likely interest in contesting a second term ticket, the ambitions of such governors appeared to have been aborted before pregnancy.

Thus, the internal feud had to be ignited. The governors, on one hand, are attempting to hijack the leadership of the party so as to guarantee one of them the presidential ticket or, at best, use it to negotiate acceptable exit points for themselves in 2015. They have however met an obstacle in President Jonathan’s candidate for the National Chairman seat, Alhaji Bamangar Tukur.  The chairman has also enjoyed the backing of the president, who has retained firm control of the party. The battle has already claimed the National Secretary of the Party, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who was shoved aside through a court ruling. The caucus of state chairmen of the party is also siding with the governors in the battle for the control of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).

In the South-West, the PDP appeared the most factionalised. Only Osun State chapter of the party is free of open division, as party chieftains continued the unbridled quest for control ahead of  the 2015 battle. The party is contending with factions in Ogun, Ekiti, Oyo, Lagos and Ondo. Without a united front in those states, the PDP could just be opening its fronts to the opposition APC.

In the South-East, the PDP appeared to have done a bit better than it did in 2007 when it lost two straight states to the Progressives Peoples Party (PPA). Though the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is still in control of two states in the region, the fact remains that PDP leaders are coming with some form of unity in the zone. Though APGA controls Anambra, the PDP has been winning the National Assembly elections in the state. It was also said that the state has perpetually put local government elections off because of the fear that the PDP could clear the results. In Abia, the PDP has also been speaking with one voice and so far, Governor Theodore Orji, who joined the PDP from APGA after leaving the PPA has not shown overt ambition to subvert the leadership structure of the party. If the party can maintain the relative peace and pick the right candidates for future elections, it would possibly remain the leading contender in the zone.

The PDP has fared quite better in the northern zones as far as fictionalisation is concerned. The North Central is largely united, while there are only pockets of disaffection within the party’s fold in the North-East. The home state of the National Chairman, Adamawa, is currently the centre of discontent with the battle raging between the camps of Governor Murtala Nyako and Tukur. Indeed, the rise of the PDP governors against Tukur was as a result of the fear that Tukur was planning to reduce them to nothing by testing waters in Adamawa. The PDP national chairman had dissolved the state executive of the Adamawa chapter of the party and imposed a caretaker committee. The governors sensed that the dissolution of Adamawa executive could be a test case and that Tukur could use the same template to dissolve state executive  committees  where the governor is perceived to be opposed to the party structure. They feared that such a development could reduce  their influence within the party structure, thus the battle to oust the national chairman.

As it has been said, the major problem with the PDP is its penchant for the unorthodox. Most of the time, internal democracy is allowed to suffer and rather than opt for the most popular candidates who could easily win elections, the leaders tend to foist candidates and believe the name of the party would win it elections. With such attitude, the leaders tend to resort to untoward behaviours in a bid to win at all cost.

In practical terms, how much impact can the APC make? So far, there is nothing that clearly differentiates the PDP from the APC. The party has been launched solely with an eye on capturing power. Without a clear ideological distinction separating the two parties, Nigerians could only do some comparison through the performance of the serving governors.  The question Nigerians would then ask is how much of difference have the governors of the merging APC made in the states they currently govern which could be a yardstick to determine the impact the new party could make if given power at the centre?

Can the PDP tame the rampaging opposition in 2015? Like they say, the party’s fate will be in its hands. The manner in which its candidates emerge would go a long way in influencing the electorate.