By Kehinde Yusuf
“Who exactly is the National Secretary of the party?” Olajumoke Olatunji of TVC News asked a senior member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Adetokunbo Pearse, on the interview programme “Politics Tonight” on 15 April, 2025. Dr. Pearse replied: “As we stand now, Udeh-Okoye is the National Secretary of the party. … It is only at the National Convention of the party that you can legally, formally, properly decide on this issue, even though it has been decided in-house indirectly.”
In an 18 April, 2025 interview of former Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose on the Channels Television programme “Politics Today”, Seun Okinbaloye commented: “The PDP and its state of affairs worry a lot of people who watch our democracy and its development in the country. How can a major opposition party be decimated this badly? Bloody nose in … three consecutive elections.”
Moreover, on 21 April, 2025, Daily Trust reported Dr Kabiru Sufi, a political analyst and Senior Lecturer at Skyline University, Kano, to have noted: “Despite its strength and its past chances, the PDP is withering away for now, considering the divisions within. The fault lines are increasing by the day. We used to have maybe two opposing camps – now three, then four, now five.”
The party was in government at the federal level from 1999, when the Fourth Republic started, to 2015, when the vitality of Nigeria’s democratic culture was established with the defeat of the ruling party by the erstwhile new opposition All Progressives Congress (APC). After its 2015 loss, leaders of the PDP appeared to have been so demoralised that the party was left enervated and virtually rudderless.
Then the Governor of Rivers State at the time, Nyesom Wike, stepped in, and provided funding and other forms of support. These halted the party’s slide, but it remained fairly anaemic. And the PDP has been manifesting different forms of that political anaemia ever since.
The condition of the party was aggravated on 28 May, 2022 when, at the party’s special convention and presidential primary, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar won with 371 votes and Wike trailed him with 237. But that election had complicated antecedents and aftermath. Section 7(2)(c) of the PDP constitution states: “In pursuance of the principle of equity, justice and fairness, the party shall adhere to the policy of rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices.”
The interpretation of this constitutional provision by some PDP stakeholders, such as Governor Nyesom Wike (who is at present the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory – FCT) and Chief Bode George, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of the party, was that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar ought not to have contested the primary election. They held this view because the position of National Chairman of the party was already being held by another northerner, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu. In addition, the incumbent President of the country at the time, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was on the verge of completing eight straight years of democratic governance, was also a northerner, even though a member of the APC.
Moreover, the acceptance by the Delta State Governor at the time, Ifeanyi Okowa, to be Atiku Abubakar’s Vice-Presidential candidate touched a raw nerve. On 17 June, 2022, Vanguard reported the issue as follows: “In a statement collectively signed by Chief (Dr.) Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, OFR, CON, Leader SMBLF/PANDEF, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Leader, Afenifere, Pogu Bitrus, President-General, Middle Belt Forum, Ambassador (Prof.) George Obiozor and President-General, Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide, Okowa was … lampooned for accepting the Vice Presidential ticket.”
Part of the statement read: “It bears recalling that the 17 Governors of the Southern States of Nigeria, both of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), under the Chairmanship of the Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, met in Asaba, the capital of Delta State on May 11, 2021, and took far-reaching decisions, including that, based on the principles of fairness, equity and justice, the presidency should rotate to the south, at the end of the statutory eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure. And this very Governor Okowa was the host of that historic meeting.”
According to Vanguard, the statement continued: “The Southern Governors later met again in Lagos, on July 5, where they reaffirmed their decision, and again in Enugu, on September 16, to restate the call that the presidency should rotate to the south in 2023. … It is, therefore, most unfortunate that the Governor of Delta State, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa who should know better, accepted his appointment as running mate to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. We do not have anything personal against Ifeanyi Okowa but his action is treacherous and tantamount to a despicable pawning of the political future of the people of Southern Nigeria.” Many southerners therefore decided not to vote for the Atiku-Okowa PDP presidential ticket.
After the PDP’s 2023 presidential election loss, Ayu was suspended by his ward on 26 March, 2023 for working against the party at different levels; and the next day, an interim court injunction restrained him from parading himself as the National Chairman of the PDP. The 28 March, 2023 issue of Premium Times in a story titled, “UPDATED: PDP replaces Ayu as national chairman,” reported the PDP spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, as declaring: “The National Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party at an emergency meeting today, Tuesday, March 28, acknowledged the Order of the Benue State High Court, dated March 27, 2023 with regards to the chairmanship position of our great party.”
The spokesperson declared further: “After a careful consideration of the Court Order and in line with Section 45 (2) of the Constitution of the PDP (as amended in 2017), the NWC resolved that the Deputy National Chairman (North) His Excellency, Amb. Umar Iliya Damagum assume the National Chairmanship of our great Party in acting capacity with effect from today, Tuesday, March 28, 2023.” But after a while, Damagum himself began to face his own problems with some sections of the PDP, and he was purported to have been suspended from the position of Acting National Chairman.
This led to litigation, and Channels Television reported as follows about the 11 October, 2024 judgement: “The Federal High Court in Abuja has restrained the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Board of Trustees (BoT) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from removing Umar Damagum as the Acting National Chairman of the party. Justice Peter Lifu ordered that no person other than Damagum should be recognised as PDP national chairman until the party’s national convention scheduled for December 2025.” Channels Television further reported: “The judge held that in line with articles 42, 47, and 67 of PDP, it is only at the national convention of the party that national officers can be elected.”
Regarding the controversy on who the real National Secretary of the party should be, on 21 March, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the issue was an internal affair of the PDP, and that the courts had no jurisdiction over it. So, Senator Samuel Anyanwu maintains that having not resigned from his position, and having not listed the position of governorship candidate, by the PDP constitution, as a position which can qualify a person to have automatically resigned from a party office they were previously holding, he remains the National Secretary of the party until the National Convention holds.
PDP Chieftain, Daboikiabo Warmate, who like FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, supports Anyanwu’s position, defended the arguments spiritedly in a 17 April, 2025 interview with Arise News. Warmate also argued that the PDP Governors Forum is not recognised by the PDP constitution as an organ of the party, and that the governors overreached themselves at their 14 April, 2025 Ibadan meeting, by purportedly appointing an Acting National Secretary, where a vacancy did not exist.
Barrister Nyesom Wike has consistently stated that he would support President Tinubu’s second term election, and so has PDP’s Akwa Ibom State Governor Eno Umo. More concretely, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori announced his defection to APC, along with the total structure of the PDP in the state, on 23 April, 2025. Moreover, according to the Daily Trust of 21 April, 2025, there has been “a new campaign billboard in Iwo Local Government Area of Osun State featuring both Tinubu and Adeleke. … The APC in Osun accused the PDP of attempting to ride on Tinubu’s popularity to boost Adeleke’s profile.”
In addition, PDP’s former Governor Fayose has explicitly declared that he would work for APC’s Ekiti State Governor Abiodun Oyebanji’s second term election success. Furthermore, the Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Christopher Zakka Maikalangu, all the councillors in the council and over 20,000 supporters were reported to have defected to the APC on 17 April, 2025, to avoid an uncertain political future due to the seemingly intractable crises in the PDP.
According to PDP’s former Benue State Governor Gabriel Suswan in a 15 April, 2025 Arise News interview, “There are very fundamental problems in PDP. Those problems have not been sorted out, and so a lot of people, in their minds, are no longer in PDP. … And that is why, because of the failure of leadership in PDP, a lot of people feel that they are politicians and so they should begin to engage other stakeholders across other parties.”
Like former Governor Suswan who said, “People have lost confidence completely in PDP,” party elder Chief Bode George in a 14 April, 2025 interview with Seun Okinbaloye on Channels Television remarked: “My party is in total confusion now.”
Similarly, in a 29 January, 2025 Channels Television report of a National Secretaryship reconciliation meeting convened by Ambassador Damagum, the PDP’s Acting National Chairman noted: “Most of this crisis that you see today within the NWC is propelled by our leaders that are supposed to unite us. Some of us are also complicit. And I want to use this opportunity to caution us, caution our leaders. You may have ambition, but you don’t ride on a dead horse to reach your destination.”
The foregoing notwithstanding, Segun Sowunmi, who has been interested in becoming the National Chairman of PDP, appealed in a 20 April, 2025 Arise News interview: “Please, anybody who’s giving up on PDP now, I’ll just say to you wait until we count the votes [in 2027] and let’s see who’s going to win. But I can guarantee you the PDP will put in a good heart. We’ll put in a best fight. We’ll try to bring the best candidate.”
Meanwhile, the complex web of acrimony between different tendencies within the PDP is mutually discomfiting. It is like the case of the fowl and the clothes line. When a fowl perches on a clothes line, neither the line nor the fowl is at ease.
*Prof Kehinde Yusuf wrote from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.