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By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Thursday, the 15th of May 2025 is People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) date with history.That day, the party will hold its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting which had suffered several postponements.
Observers say the NEC meeting will either make or break the main opposition party.
The PDP NEC meeting is expected to address thorny issues in the party, resolve the crisis in the party, including the controversy over national chairmanship and national secretaryship positions, achieve cohesion that has eluded it since the end of the 2023 general election, restore peace and stability in the party and rescue it from the downward descent into disintegration as exemplified by the spate of defections that is currently hitting it.
Once a behemoth, the PDP is now more of a collection of different feuding political blocs than a serious opposition political party that wants to reclaim power, and should the May 15th NEC meeting fail to bring the feuding factions and blocs together, the final eclipse of the former ruling party may be inevitable, analysts say.
There are however, indications that gladiators in the party’s crisis are entrenched in their positions and are not willing to shift ground. For example, party sources told Daily Sun that proponents of the continued stay in office of the PDP acting National Chairman, Ambassador Umar Damagum, are prepared to pull the strings, including cash inducements, to ensure he is not booted out by the NEC meeting to pave the way for a replacement from North-Central where the national championship position was originally zoned to.
The pro-Damagum faction is reportedly in alliance with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC ) , with a template to be working on the theory that perpetuating the embattled acting National Chairman in office beyond 2025 will keep aglow, the embers of disunity and factionalisation in the party, and in turn weaken it in a way that it may not be able to field a candidate in 2027 to challenge President Bola Tinubu.
Kola Olagbodiyan, former National Publicity Secretary of the PDP aptly captures the bleak future that awaits the party if Damagum continues to sit tight: “In as much as Damagum remains acting National Chairman, the party will go no where”, Olagbodiyan said while featuring on a national television recently.
Daily Sun recalls that Damagum, originally Deputy National Chairman(North), became acting National Chairman a few months to the 2023 general election following a High court order restraining Benue’s Professor Iyorchia Ayu from parading himself as the party’s national chairman.
Damagum’s appointment was supposed to be a stop- gap arrangement to enable North Central come up with Professor Ayu’s replacement but two years on, apparently egged on by external forces with vested interest who are bent on bringing the PDP to its knees, Damagum is evidently not in a hurry to vacate the position, sources say.
Past failed attempts to convene the party’s NEC meeting is believed to be linked to the Damagum debacle.
For example, during the 98th NEC meeting on April 18, 2024, leaders of the party were unable to resolve several critical issues, including Ayu’s replacement with a candidate from North-Central to end Damagum’s temporary reign.
August 15, 2024 was scheduled for the 99th NEC meeting to tackle the unresolved matters. However, the meeting did not hold and was first postponed to October 24, 2024, then rescheduled for November 28, 2024, before it was finally indefinitely suspended.
Apparently disillusioned by the turn of event, the PDP Governors’ Forum, led by Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, in December 2024 directed the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) to ensure the NEC meeting was held, latest,by February this year.
But the PDP Governors’ Forum, during their meeting in Asaba, Delta State, on January 31, shifted the NEC meeting to March 13.
Shortly after, the PDP national leadership yet announced the shifting of the NEC meeting to May 15, 2025, making it the fifth time the meeting was postponed.
Political analysts argue that the May 15th NEC meeting would no doubt give the embattled party the much needed lifeline and another chance at life if it could resolve three contentious issues: The Damagum debacle, the dispute between Senator Sam Anyanwu and Sunday Udeh-Okoye over who the authentic National Secretary of the party is, and lastly, zoning of the 2027 PDP presidential ticket.
As for the 2027 presidential ticket, findings show that a faction of the party populated mainly by chieftains from the South and led by a former PDP South-South Governor who played a pivotal role in the victory of President Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election and who is also now playing a leading role in the administration is insisting it is the South’s turn to produce the president as exemplified by President Tinubu and that like his predecessor, Buhari, he must complete two terms.
Daily Sun further learnt that the faction is working to achieve either of these two aims in favour of Tinubu’s second term: Prevent the emergence a PDP presidential candidate of Northern extraction, particularly former President Atiku Abubakar or severely factionalise the party through multiple legal suits a few months to 2027 general elections, thus forcing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare it ( PDP) as not having a valid presidential candidate.
Ironically, some prominent chieftains of the party who are in the camp of the aforementioned ex -South- South governor are already openly flying the kite of the possibility of PDP not fielding a candidate in 2027. One of them is George Turner, Zonal Secretary of the Dan Orbih-led South- South Working Committee of the party.
According to him, “political parties must not field candidates in every election for the fun of fielding candidates. We win election to provide alternative to the people. At all times, what matters is the interest of the people. So, I am now saying let us not make the mistake of 2019. President Tinubu is occupying the presidency on behalf of Southern Nigeria, devoid of party affiliation. Allow him to complete the eight-year term of the South.
“Let our party put ourselves together now, look into the North and prepare a presidential candidate that will be sellable and that can provide alternative and that can implement our manifesto and deliver to Nigerians in 2031.
“We have a Southern presidency as at today. This Southern presidency is expected to last for eight years of two terms. President Tinubu of the APC, sadly so for my party, is the president from the South.
“If we bring any other president from the South, the person would want to seek second term. That will truncate this understanding of North-South dichotomy in terms of sharing of presidential power – eight years here, eight years there. Live and let’s live.
“PDP as opposition needs to put itself together. Let’s have a break. Let’s give ourselves some space to say look, we take this period to reorganise ourselves so that we don’t rush into another cycle of elections that will be disastrous,” Turner added.
Meanwhile, a PDP elder and former Deputy National Chairman of the party ( South), Chief Olabode George has warned that the PDP will die naturally if it fields Atiku or any other Northerner as presidential candidate in 2027.
“He (Atiku)cannot be. This is what I am saying. They have spent eight years in the North. It should be the turn of a southern candidate. That is the doctrine of the founding fathers of the PDP.
“I am not saying he can’t contest. He can go to any party and pick a ticket. If he becomes the PDP candidate again in 2027, that will be the end of this party,” Chief George added.
PDP chieftains like Chief George who appear not to support a second term for Tinubu but at the same time do not want power to return to the North, and want the party to field a Southern presidential candidate in 2027, Daily Sun learnt, are in a fix as to how to convince such a potential southern candidate to do one term and leave the stage for a Northerner in 2031 in the spirit of the North- South rotation.
Hon. Felix Amadiegwu, a PDP stalwart, said “It is a thorny issue, very sensitive one. There is no rotation in the constitution of Nigeria and no President is bound to respect what does not exist in the constitution, so, assuming our party eventually fields a Southern candidate and he goes ahead to win, how would you compel him, a sitting President, not to seek a constitutionally guaranteed second term? This is where pro- Tinubu faction in our party has a strong case.” Realising this, some PDP leaders, mostly from the North, are mulling the idea of drafting former president Goodluck Jonathan into the 2027 presidential race as he is constitutionally barred from seeking another term if elected, having previously served a term.
Daily Sun cannot confirm if Jonathan will fall for the gambit but an associate of the former President and PDP chieftain from Balyesa who craved anonymity maintained that “he (Jonathan) is not desperate to return to office and will therefore, resist attempts by politcal jobbers to set him up for another presidential defeat.
“The people who said he was a bad President, insulted him, worked openly against him leading to his exit from office are the same people who are now dissipating energy trying to convince him to join the 2027 fray, what has changed?, he queried.
But Hon. Amadiegwu said Damagum’s continued stay in office has done incalculable damage to the party and any one taking over from him will be inheriting a badly dislocated party. “A new chairman will be inheriting a party that has eviscerated, bleached of members and cohesion. Since the end of the 2023 elections, the PDP has steadily hemorrhaged, losing its elected and former elected officials to the APC. The situation has been made worse by Damagum’s intransigent. It is as if he is deliberately supervising the demise of the party, he is acting like an undertaker. Under him the party has lost a governor-Governor Sherrif Oborevwori of Delta State who recently led his immediate past predecessor and PDP vice presidential candidate in the last election, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, all members of the State House of Assembly and State Working Committee of the PDP to defect to the APC. And just last week, our party also lost all three Kebbi senators to the APC. It’s scandalous, it is painful, it is sad,” Hon. Amadiegwu added.
