Lack Of Cooperation, Convergence And Synergy Amongst The Party’s Major Components Killing The PDP

By Fabiyi Oladimeji

Being a member and staff of the Peoples Democratic Party Headquarters between 1999 and 2007, afforded me the ample oppprtunity to understand the workings and programme of a political party at both the upper and lower levels. During the period, the party was not only strong but also virile and purposeful in all sense and direction.

Leading the Government of the  PDP were two giants who undoubtedly were visionary with a clear cut definition of their mission and destination, comittment to the rule of law and democracy.

The first was a retired military officer with  requisite experience, strength, vigor and charisma, the second was a dynamic retired civil servant, with adequate capacity, accomplished business man, an astute politician, a complete democrat and master strategist when it comes to game of politics.

At the party front, were men and women of strong characters , who shared and believed in the vision of the PDP founding fathers, which led to the party governing our  Nation for 16 years with verifiable legacies. The question then is where did we go wrong?

Like every human being or a society, experiencing recession or low moments is not an aberration, but what seems an aberration is the inability to rise above the low moment. There is no doubt, our party is going through this low moment. What then behoves on the leaders and members alike is to fashion out genuine ways to come out of it.

The PDP emergency NEC meeting held on Friday the 17th January 2020, calls for serious soul searching and deeper reflection. The party just lost Imo state through the court, after it had lost the Presidential petition through same court in an undignified manner, the party’s many loses aftermath 2019 elections is a reflection or testimony to the facts that something is fundamentally wrong with the party, who knows what may be coming next for the remaining court cases to be decided by the same compromised Supreme Court, a seemingly, appendage of the ruling APC.

Credible intelligence has revealed the plans of the Buhari’s government to reduce the PDP states to Six (6) at all cost . We therefore , as a party can not  afford to take this for granted.

At the Emergency NEC meeting, the Leader of our party and Former Vice President of NIgeria, His Excellency Atiku Abubakar GCON made a strong proposition to the NEC on the urgent need to set up a committee that will review the activities of the party and come up with recommendations that will lead to reforms in order to reposition the party for Nigeria.

The Former Vice President also extolled the vision and virtues of the founding fathers of the party that anchored their mission on the rule of law and true democracy, but unfortunately all these foundation laid by these founding fathers for a better Nigeria are being eroded by the Buhari/APC led government.

 It is indeed very worrisome that, at the NEC meeting only 3 PDP Governors were in attendance, Governors from the South East and South South were conspicuously absent, the reason being the short notice of the meeting.

Be that as it may, even as we had almost all the members  of the NWC in attendance, There were few members of the National Assembly present, and no single caucus or principal officers of the party in the NASS was present.

These are indication that the National Working Committee needs to do more to ensuring that all the  major components of the party are carried along. The NWC is commended for holding the emergence NEC meeting as a good starting point at this moment.

But truth must be said, the synergy is missing, the cooperation is lacking, the spirit is dying and the vigor is vanishing per nano seconds.

I wish to  urge the leadership of the party as a matter of urgency to put its acts together, we still have five more cases in the Supreme Court, in as much as we have to be careful, we must not lose any of them.

The proposition by the Leader of our party, the Former Vice President is the take off point, and the much needed junction for turn around. It  must be given the attention and pursued with all seriousness it deserves.

I rest my case.


Fabiyi Oladimeji
Former Deputy Director. Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation & Convener, PDP Reforms Frontiers