One of its former national chairmen, Vincent Ogbulafor, once famously predicted that PDP would rule Nigeria for 60 unbroken years. Beyond reacting with consternation to that comment the opposition were in no shape to mount any credible bid for power, and such was the ruling party’s dominance of the political space it was hard to fault him.
A mere two weeks to voting day Jonathan was still bravely declaring that his party was too large to lose. After last weekend’s drubbing it is now clear that size couldn’t keep ‘Africa’s biggest party’ in power. Even worse, its huge proportions may just be its undoing out of office.
One of the things that kept the PDP growing over the years was access to federal patronage. It was what president’s used to keep rebellious party men in line and what they used to seduce the desperate from opposition ranks.
In Nigeria government remains the biggest business – especially for the political class. For them being cut off from the central administration in Abuja is like an organism being separated from its life source. It is that mindset that produces statements like ‘our people have never belonged to the opposition’ as though being out of government was a leprous affliction.
It doesn’t require clairvoyance therefore to predict that in the North where the Buhari-APC Tsunami has swept away a slew of PDP office holders we would witness massive defections to the new party in power in coming months. The same thing is bound to happen in the South-East and South-South.
The president-elect in one of his earlier speeches after his election triumph declared that the one-party state was dead. I disagree. In another couple of months the APC might become the dominant party as the hungry flood its ranks in search of patronage.
I predict that the PDP will shrink dramatically unless it can throw up strong-willed leaders in the years ahead who are prepared to makes the sacrifices necessary to rebuild the party.
A sharp decline of the Nigeria’s once dominant political force would be a disaster. As the birth of the APC has shown, this country desperately needs a credible alternative at all times to keep whoever runs Abuja on their toes.
NATION
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