The leadership crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) appears to be deepening, as cracks in the party threaten to derail the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, slated for next month.
The leadership cracks in the former national ruling party had begun to develop shortly after the 2023 presidential election, when the tendency promoted by former Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, engineered the precipitate removal of its National Chairman, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, through the court.
Ayu, a former Senate President, was accused of manipulating the party’s presidential primary to favour former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar who eventually became the PDP’s flag-bearer in the February 25, 2023 presidential election, to the disadvantage to Wike, who was a front-runner.
Since then, the PDP would appear to have been thrown under the bus as a result of Wike’s grudges over his loss, leading to the former Rivers Governor pulling, thanks to a huge war chest, a lot of compromised leaders and members to what has become Wike’s implacable camp and PDP’s nemesis.
According to a Daily Sun report, although the party leadership had approved the formation of a reconciliation and disciplinary committee, as well as the conduct of Ward and State Congresses at the 98th NEC meeting held on April 18, 2024, that move practically never got off the ground, as it is yet to yield any appreciable dividend: the PDP remains a divided house, made worse by the fact that the North -Central Caucus of the party, tasked to consult on the issue of replacing the acting national chairman with a permanent one, appears too weak and uncommitted to walk its talk.
To make matters worse, the 99th NEC meeting scheduled for August 15 last year, where some of the issues were expected to be resolved, was suddenly postponed to October 24, 2024, then rescheduled for November 28, 2024 and later postponed indefinitely.
The PDP Governors are now proposing that the meeting take place next month.
Even then, there are indications that proposed February meeting is already threatened as the running hostility between the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed who is also the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, is still tearing the PDP down.
Over the past weeks, both men have resumed their supremacy battle, fought almost always in the realm of hot words and denigration of each other.
The latest battle was started by Mohammed who described Wike as a liability to the party while Wike responded by telling him to stop making excuses for not having the capacity “to provide leadership as chairman of the party’s Governors’ Forum”.
The closeness between the FCT minister and some PDP Governors is a major factor threatening the proposed NEC meeting. For instance, the North Central, from where a replacement for Ayu is expected to come from, has not been able to meet to take a decision on whom to nominate.
Party sources accuse Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, of complacency, even of cimplicity, alleging that despite the fact he is supposed to provide leadership to enable the zone’s stakeholders to pick a replacement for NEC’s ratification, he has not been forth-coming.
And there is the former Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, an ally of Wike, who has been nominated as a Board of Trustee (BoT) member from the North Central, thereby strengthening Wike’s hold on the party.
Historically, no national chairman of the PDP ever served out his four-year tenure. The only two that came close to concluding their tenures were Dr. Ahmadu Ali and Uche Secondus.
Dr. Ali came in 2005, first in an acting capacity to replace Audu Ogbeh, in January 2005 and by March of the same year, he was elected substantive chairman. He left office in 2008, whereas his tenure ought to have lasted till 2009. Ironically too, no chairman has ever challenged the party’s authority to remove him, the way Senator Ali Modu Sheriff did, until the Supreme Court sacked him.
In the 26 years existence of the party, it has produced about 18 chairmen, both acting and substantive ones.
