when I predicted the demise of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), if it went ahead to field a northern presidential candidate in the 2023 election, little did I realise how the top cats of the former ruling party in Nigeria would prove the potency of my crystal ball. Ordinarily, when such a prediction is made, it is intended to alert the people concerned to avert doomsday by ‘’taking a left turn’’ to get to the right direction. In this case, it was for the PDP to resist the temptation to field a northerner as an opportunistic political calculation to leverage on the massive votes of the North, when it became certain the rival APC was headed South for its presidential candidate, and rightly so. After eight years of the northern presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, it was only logical, fair, just, reasonable and honourable that the next President of Nigeria should emerge from the southern part of the country.
But the PDP had a different agenda entirely. They were going to prioritize “winnability” over the “fairness and equity” that comes with the age-long zoning arrangement that has oscillated presidential power between the North and South since the advent of the fourth democratic republic in 1999. In warning against this crass opportunism that proved politically fatal, I wrote: “that the PDP may not sail against the strong wind of presidency that is blowing South will be for the party to field a southern candidate as its presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election.
For the PDP, the 2023 presidential election is not just about ‘winnability’ but actual survival. While the APC is dominant in the North and the PDP’s strongest support base is in the South, the move by the APC to field a southern candidate in the 2023 presidential election will torpedo the PDP from the region, if the party fields a northern candidate. And if the PDP goes ahead to sail against the wind in 2023 by fielding a northern candidate, the ship of the party will capsize, sink into oblivion, as the party will lose in the North and in the South to the APC and go into extinction in post-Buhari Nigeria.”
And by the end of polling on election day, the PDP and its northern presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, lost in the North and in the South, with the former “largest party in Africa” fast sinking into oblivion in post-Buhari Nigeria. Atiku was defeated in the North by Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the APC, while he was routed in the South by Peter Obi of the Labour Party. While the opportunistic ambition of one man (Atiku) effectively killed the PDP, the fury of another man has set in motion the final rites of passage for the former ruling party. And that man is Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, the former governor of Rivers State and current minister of the FCT. The recent crisis in the party is only a means to a predictable end for the former ruling party.
Infuriated by what he considered the betrayal of the southern wing of the PDP by the northern wing, led by Atiku, and a personal betrayal by Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, his ally-turned-rival, Wike revolted against the PDP in the 2023 presidential election and worked hard for its defeat. And justifiably so, as Wike had been a major supporter and financier of both the PDP and Atiku since 2015 when the party lost power at the centre.
Wike, fiercely loyal friend and acerbic foe, being a committed party man, had sustained the party in opposition by providing the much needed financial lifeline for an establishment party without ideology in opposition, which kept PDP afloat.
By 2019, Wike, along with other leaders of the party, resolved that the presidential candidacy of the party be retained in the North and he threw his weight behind his bosom friend Tambuwal to emerge as the PDP flag-bearer. But when Atiku emerged in his stead, Wike threw his all into the 2019 presidential election to support him against President Muhammadu Buhari. Therefore, one could understand the shock that Wike must have felt when two friends and allies [Atiku and Tambuwal] both from the North, teamed up to deny him from the South the presidential ticket of the PDP four years later in 2023.
As a woman scorned hath no fury like a betrayed Wike, the former governor deployed resources at his disposal to activate his network of political networth across the country to work against the PDP and Atiku, its presidential flag-bearer, while throwing his support behind the APC and Tinubu, its candidate. As a reward for his ‘anti-Atiku’ activities during the 2023 presidential election, Wike was handed the powerful cabinet position of minister of the Federal Capital Territory. The loss of the PDP in its most loyal support base of South-East, South-South and the Middle Belt region of northern Nigeria has taken the soul out of the body of the party. And Tinubu’s charm offensive against the elite of southern Nigeria has seen a shift in support for him by the political class of a region that was thoroughly betrayed by the PDP when it failed to avail its presidential candidacy to a section of Nigeria that has been its bastion of support since 1999.
Interestingly, Wike remains a member of the PDP and its major financier with a grip over the top leadership of the party in Wadata House. And, with his firm commitment to Tinubu’s re-election bid in 2027, it appears Wike is determined as a matter of political survival to ensure that the dead PDP is not revived but given an undignified burial in the evil forest as a final place where it will remain restless in pieces as deserving for a disloyal, unfaithful and ungrateful political party that willingly committed political suicide in the 2023 presidential election when it betrayed its most loyal support base and one of its most committed financial members. As an establishment political party that cannot do without politics of money, the wages of the sin of betraying Wike seems to be death for the People’s Democratic Party.