The Peoples Democratic Party is battling with post-election defeat trauma and the National Working Committee members are seriously feeling the heat of overwhelming call on them to resign, writes FISAYO FALODI
The Peoples Democratic Party has yet to recover from the shock it suffered in the just concluded general elections. The PDP never dreamt of losing the March 28 presidential election to the opposition All Progressives Congress, which some of its supporters had earlier described as a smoke screen and conglomeration of strange bed fellows. But the announcement of the APC candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), as the winner of the poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission hit the PDP to the marrow.
Despite its articulated campaigns to get voters’ support, the PDP was believed to have approached the elections with a divided house. Some of its state chapters were already in crisis before the elections thus leading to the defection of numerous party chieftains and supporters to the APC, the All Progressive Grand Alliance and the Labour Party. The PDP’s failure to put its house in order and the defection of its supporters to other parties cost the party its much coveted dream – to rule Nigeria for 60 years.
Though the PDP has set up a committee headed by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, to probe the party’s poor outing in the elections, some PDP chieftains have blamed the abysmal performance on various factors. They ignored the advice by the Senate President, Senator David Mark, who urged them to stop bickering over the party’s failure in the last elections and prepare to build a strong and united party to play the role of a credible and formidable opposition in the next political dispensation.
Mark had said, “There is no need weeping over lost opportunities or mistakes of yesterday. The failure of yesterday should be our lesson for a better today and a triumphant future.
“We must accept the ups and downs as an opposition party, that is what the PDP is now; we must remain a united family and face the reality.
“The role of opposition is strange to us, but it is not a death sentence. We should be ready for the challenges. We are prepared to play a credible opposition. I believe the nation and indeed, Nigerians will be the best for it.”
Bayelsa State Governor, Mr. Seriake Dickson, blamed the party’s poor performance in the March 28 election on indiscipline and disloyalty among members.
While stressing the need for discipline and loyalty to achieve success in any contest, Dickson had said in Yenagoa at the inauguration of a special committee to examine the conduct of the PDP leaders during the elections that dire consequences await any member found to be engaging in anti-party activities.
The Senate Majority Leader, Senator Ndoma-Egba, also laid the blame at the door step of the PDP governors. According to Ndoma-Egba, the road to the poor performance of the party started from the December 2014 primaries during which the governors deliberately imposed their candidates on the party.
The consequence of the governors’ action, the Senate Majority leader said, was the exodus from the PDP without any corresponding influx from other parties.
“Unbridled defection has the capacity of not only overheating the polity and upsetting the entire political configuration, but destabilising the polity,” Ndoma-Egba had said.
The PDP governors exonerated themselves of all the allegation and accused the party’s National Working Committee led by the PDP Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, of causing the party’s poor performance in the polls and consequently asked the NWC members to resign.
According to the governors, Mu’azu and other members of the NWC worked against the party’s interest during the general elections.
But Mu’azu’s Chief Press Secretary, Tony Amadi, and the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, dismissed the allegation, adding that it was wrong for any governor to blame the party’s poor performance on the NWC members.
Amadi had said everyone would have to share from the blame because not all the governors were able to deliver their states during the elections.
He said, “Did all the governors deliver their states during the elections? Did Mu’azu come to their states and make them to lose the elections? Everybody has his own share of the blame, including the President.
“The party lost an election and everybody is looking for a way to avoid blame.”
Also, Metuh said the governors’ action contributed largely to the party’s poor performance.
He said, “We were not the ones who handled the campaigns and we were not part of the elections. Did the NWC members stand for any election?
“The governors are the ones who are running the party in their states as the party is just a department of the government.”
Metuh alleged that every effort made to inculcate discipline in many of the party members failed because of the actions of some of the governors.
The South-West PDP leaders added their voice to the call on Mu’azu and other members of the committee to vacate office. Critics, including a former Senior Special Adviser to the President on Political Affairs, Mr. Ahmed Gulak, reinforced the belief that the PDP national chairman’s anti-party activities caused a major setback for the party.
The PDP South-West leaders therefore asked the Mu’azu-led NWC to resign honourably from office. They also hinged their call on the abysmal performance of the party in the last elections.
In a communiqué read after their recent meeting in Ado-Ekiti, the PDP chieftains, led by Chief Bode George, said the NWC members should resign and return home to work for the party.
The PDP National Secretary, Adewale Oladipo, flayed the call by the South-West leaders of the party on the NWC to resign. He said it was unfortunate that George, who failed to deliver his ward during the presidential election, could be calling for the resignation of the NWC members.
Oladipo said since members of the NWC were elected, they would remain in office until March 2016.
He said, “While some of those asking us to resign performed very poorly even in their polling units, it is on record that the national auditor and my humble self performed creditably and delivered our areas in the general elections.
“It is, therefore, disheartening that rather than joining other well-meaning members of our great party in supporting the NWC in the ongoing re-engineering process to rebuild the PDP, some elders from our zone, particularly, a former Deputy National Chairman, Chief Olabode George, who should know better, have instead resorted to divisive politics by attempting to instigate our members against one another.
“What our party needs now in the South-West and indeed across the country is for all hands to be on the deck as we work harmoniously in our determination to reposition the PDP to regain power in 2019.”
While the call for its resignation was persisting, the embattled NWC canvassed various reasons why it felt Jonathan failed in the poll. First, the NWC shifted the blame on the President’s campaign team for instituting hate campaign against Buhari.
Metuh, a member of the NWC, said that the belief by the Jonathan campaign team that it could denigrate a respected statesman like Buhari in the North, instead of dwelling on issues, cost the party a lot of votes in the region.
He said, “We were not involved in the campaigns and our advice was ignored. If we had handled the campaign, the President would have won the election. We cannot be held responsible when our advice was ignored.”
The First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan; Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose and a former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, were believed to have instituted ferocious and hate campaigns against the President-elect.
The PDP National Chairman backed his defence with claim that sycophants misled Jonathan during the electioneering period. While insisting that he would not vacate office, he said the sycophants were responsible for the party’s defeat in the March 28 election.
But his defence did not go down well with Fayose, who expressed surprise on how the party could have lost in Bauchi State where Mu’azu, Governor Isa Yuguda and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Bala Mohammed, hail from.
The Ekiti State governor even threatened to expose what he described as Mu’azu’s unholy alliance with the opposition.
“I am even more particular about the national chairman because he sold the party to the opposition. I have cogent evidence of his unholy alliance with the opposition before the elections and if they go any further, I will expose all his underhand deals,” Fayose said.
Meanwhile, Mu’azu’s fate seems to lie in the hands of the PDP elders. The elders, who expressed concern over the mudslinging that has been trailing the party’s defeat in the general elections, said all the PDP’s organs would soon meet over the crisis. They therefore called on every warring group to give peace a chance to enable the party to remain united.
A former Minister of Transport and PDP Board of Trustee member, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, aligned with the Senate President’s advice that the party should discard any activity that could derail it.
Babatope asked Mu’azu and those calling for his resignation to allow all the organs of the party, including the National Executive Council, the National Caucus and the BoT to meet to resolve the issue.
“Those who are fighting on the pages of newspapers should allow all the organs of the party to meet; PDP cannot run its affairs on the pages of newspapers,” he said.
Like Babatope, the PDP Chairman in Lagos State, Capt Tunji Shelle (retd), called on the party supporters to stop crying over spilled milk, but to form a credible platform to put APC on its toes.
He said though those who betrayed PDP should bow out “honourably”, he asked committed members not to relent in their efforts to keep the party united.
“This is not the time to apportion blame. But it is advisable for those who betrayed the party to bow out in honour,” Shelle said.
He, however, asked the party supporters to channel their energy to effort aimed at seeking justice at the tribunal in areas where the party’s mandate was stolen.
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