2023 elections aftermath: PDP faces survival threat

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, once acclaimed largest political party in Africa, remains disunited months after the recently concluded general elections.

Prior to the 2023 polls, the party was already standing on a shaky note, and losing the presidential election appears to have put the final nail in the coffin.

At the return of democracy in 1999, the PDP not only controlled the nation’s presidential seat, but dominated in both chambers of the National Assembly. This was the scenario until 2015 when the All Progressives Congress, APC, staged an upset following a merger of different parties.

This is aside from the fact that more than two-third of the States in the federation were under its rule. Some party members had even boasted the party would preside over government affairs in the country for several decades. But that never came to fruition.

Some politicians, mainly from the northern extraction, opposed Jonathan’s second-term presidency on the premise that power ought to return to the region following the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who died only two years into his presidency.

Jonathan, the then Vice President, completed Yar’Adua’s four years term and won another four years in 2011, thanks to the massive goodwill he enjoyed from the greater number of Nigerians. He was also said to have promised earlier to run for only one term, but reneged.

In 2015, Jonathan, who ran under the platform of the PDP, lost to Muhammadu Buhari of the then newly formed APC.

The PDP made another attempt in 2019 through Alhaji Atiku Abubakar but it was still APC that won the polls.

However, with 2023 in sight, expectations were high that the PDP would make a comeback, even more as many Nigerians felt Buhari, who emerged as President in 2015 and in 2019 amidst heightened hope as a messianic figure, did not perform well.

The rest is now history as the party came second, with Bola Ahmed Tinubu winning the presidential election. His victory is now a subject of litigation before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.