PDP: The free fall of once Africa’s largest political party

By Wale Sadeeq, NAN

Once upon a time, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), one of the political parties that heralded the return to democracy in Nigeria in 1999, held sway as a political party of choice.

PDP, at the zenith of its popularity and relevance, prided itself as the largest political party on the African continent. And indeed it was!

The political party produced Presidents and Commanders-in-Chief, Governors, Senate Presidents, Speakers of the House of Representatives and other major political office holders across the country.

It also controlled no fewer than 24 states between 1999 and 2003, with the then All Peoples Party (APP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD) having seven and five respectively.

PDP’s fortune later received a major boost to the extent that as of 2007, it had a total of 30 states in its kitty as well as the highest number of National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly members.

So powerful was the party in the country’s political landscape that its then National Chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, boasted that PDP would rule Nigeria for 60 years.

“Some time ago, I used to read in the newspapers that the umbrella of the PDP is torn.

“Each time I read that, I would laugh and then say to myself that the umbrella is still strong and very intact, and ready to accommodate more people.

“The PDP is a party for all and it is set to rule Nigeria for the next 60 years.

“I don’t care if Nigeria becomes a one-party state. We can do it and the PDP can contain all,” an excited Ogbulafor had said.

And in fact, with the party in firm control of the presidency, the National Assembly and other sub-national political structures, it was the toast of every politician, with majority of them struggling to be on board.

The political party also boasted of some political bigwigs, thus boosting its confidence of being at the country’s political centre-stage for a very long time.

With political heavyweights like the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Bamanga Tukur, Alex Ekwueme, Solomon Lar, Barnabas Gemade, Vincent Ogbulafor, Audu Ogbeh and others, the party saw itself as firmly rooted in Nigeria’s politics and governance.

Today however, the story has changed, as PDP, which ruled Nigeria for consecutive 12 years, is now a complete shadow of its former self.

The party, whose fortune started nose-diving with the coming into the country’s political scene of All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, is now fast heading into extinction.

So serious is its free fall that today, PDP, which could still manage to control 10 states as at the conclusion of the 2023 general elections, now has only two states – Oyo and Bauchi – under its control.

Between 2025 and now, a total of six PDP governors – Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta), Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom), Peter Mbah (Enugu), Duoye Diri (Bayelsa) and Siminalayi Fubara (Rivers) – have dumped the party and defected to the ruling APC.

The latest in the series of defections from the once ruling party was that of Gov. Dauda Lawal of Zamfara, who cited the deepening internal crisis within PDP and the need to build stronger unity to address Zamfara’s security and development challenges as reasons for his action.

Political analysts have traced the party’s misfortune to lack of internal cohesion, its inability to manage the country’s political intricacies and mis-governance.

For Laolu Afolabi, a political analyst, PDP was plagued by weak discipline, thin ideology and power struggles managed largely by elite consensus rather than internal democracy.

The analysts traced the party’s implosion to the build-up to the 2023 general elections when the idea of zoning the presidential ticket to the Southern part of the country was came into fore.

However, the party hierarchy was forced to jettison the idea when some political heavyweights like Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki and others with presidential ambition insisted that the presidential ticket should be thrown open.

Meanwhile, the development was with a caveat, that should a Northern presidential candidate emerge, the then PDP National Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, would have to step down for a Southerner to take over the party’s leadership.

However, the reported refusal of Ayu to step down after the emergence of former Atiku Abubakar as the presidential candidate sank the party further into crisis.

Nyesom Wike, the then governor of Rivers and other aggrieved members also argued that both the presidential candidate and national chairman cannot come from the same zone.

This, political watchers believe, marked the beginning of the crises that eventually consumed the party, as Wike, Governors Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia) and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) withdrew their support for Atiku.

The G5 governors, under the aegis of Integrity Group, believed that the presidency ought to rotate from the north to the south, maintaining the Abubakar becoming after eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari would amount to two consecutive presidents from the north.

To them, this was a negation of the principles of inclusivity and rotational presidency.

It is also on record the committee constituted by the party to shop for a vice-presidential candidate for Atiku Abubakar recommended Wike who contested the presidential ticket with him.

But, rather than picking Wike, as recommended by the committee, Abubakar, in his own wisdom, went ahead to pick the then Governor of Delta, Patrick Okowa, a situation that further compounded PDP’s woes ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Pronto, Wike and other G5 governors openly declared their support for the then APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, even as they still maintained their membership of PDP.

Tinubu’s victory resulted in Wike’s appointment as FCT Minister while his G5 ally, Seyi Makinde has since fallen out with Tinubu, with both Wike and Makinde now the arrowheads of the two warring factions of the PDP.

The intractable crises have also seen many prominent politicians like Atiku Abubakar, David Mark, Sule Lamido, Emeka Ihedioha, Dele Momodu, Bolaji Abdullahi and others, quitting the party and teaming up with other aggrieved APC members to form a coalition, using the ADC platform.

The struggle for the soul of the party by the two factions has equally put PDP in a legal entanglement.

This arose from the conduct of a national convention held in Ibadan from Nov. 15 to Nov. 16, 2025 which produced the Tanimu Turaki-led leadership from the faction loyal to Gov. Makinde and his Bauchi counterpart, Bala Mohammed.

Political analysts are of the opinion that the recent Court of Appeal judgment affirming the nullification of the Ibadan convention by a Federal High Court might be the final nail on PDP’s coffin.

And if the reported romance of Makinde and Mohammed with ADC is eventually true, things might have finally fallen apart for the hitherto major player in the country’s political landscape and it will only take miracles for it to bounce back into reckoning.

This, the analysts say, should be a wake-up call to the ruling APC, which is the major beneficiary of PDP’s travails, to learn from the party’s pitfalls and ensure cohesion and internal democracy to avoid PDP’s bitter experience.

(NANFeatures)