The 2015 general election in Nigeria promises to be quite intriguing, as the events that are unfolding within Nigerian political parties have been consistently pointing towards an adjustment in party dynamics. Since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has retained power at the Federal level by constantly winning the presidential elections – albeit in elections that have, for the most part, been plagued by widespread irregularities.

The PDP’s continued primacy at elections and frequent electoral malpractices are seriously undermining the credibility of the Nigerian electoral process. Until recently, the PDP has also held the majority at the National Assembly, while exercising extensive control over most of the states of the Federation. However, this trend seems to be undergoing a transformation due to the high rate of cross-carpeting from the PDP to the All Progressive Congress (APC), the most prominent opposition party formed by the merging of four major opposition parties in early 2013, as a result of internal disagreements.

In light of these general observations, this paper presents a brief sketch of the drama that has been unfolding within the PDP. One of the major elements to be considered is the consequent decamping of some of its members to the APC, following which, the possibility is considered of the PDP retaining its hegemony in the Nigerian political space, especially with respect to the 2015 general election.

An overbearing hegemony

In Omotala’s article Nigerian parties and political ideologies, the author states that politics in Nigeria is devoid of well-defined ideological differentiation for the identification of political parties.⁽²⁾ In fact, since 1923 - when political activities formally started in Nigeria - parties have been operating based more on the pragmatic needs of political elites, conditioned by sectorial considerations. Their positions and strategies at each point in time are primarily dictated by what they perceive to be their personal gain against the backdrop of their ethnic and regional demands.

Prior to Nigeria’s independence and during the First Republic, party activity was oriented towards ethnic and regional promotion, to the detriment of the nationalistic outlook that characterised politics in the 1920s. The 1979 Constitution brought about changes aimed at enabling the formation and the running of parties beyond ethnic and regional cleavages, the lack of which had previously contributed immensely to the failure of the First Republic.

Since then, regional elites have been joining political parties based on the latter’s perceived chances of success. It is general knowledge that politics in Nigeria is considered to be the quickest way to wealth - hence the excessive importance that politicians attach to elective positions, thereby turning politics into a zero sum game. As such, it may be correctly assumed that material considerations, coupled with the obsessive desire to maintain territorial control over their regions, are the primary factors that motivate politicians to join one party or another.

Currently, since the inception of the current Fourth Republic in 1999, the PDP has maintained its hegemony in the Nigerian political space. In the 1999 general elections that ushered in the present civilian regime after more than thirty years of military rule, the PDP had a relatively difficult fight against the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the major opposition parties that existed then.

With the power of incumbency and the tacit consensus among political elites that President Obasanjo should complete a second term, the position of the PDP remained largely unchallenged at the 2003 presidential election. However, the 2007 general elections saw over 25 parties fielding candidates for the presidency. According to the official results released by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) over the National Television Authority (NTA), the PDP supposedly won with a landslide victory of over 24.6 million votes, i.e. about 70% of the total valid votes that were cast.

This very election was nationally and internationally condemned for widespread irregularities. However, due to the nation’s eagerness to avoid any sort of political upheaval that might give the military an excuse to take power, the political class was able to accept the presidency of late President Yar’Adua. At the untimely death of Yar’Adua in 2010, Goodluck Jonathan, the vice-president from a minority ethnic group in the oil-rich Niger-Delta, claimed the presidential seat in accordance with the constitution.

Jonathan completed the tenure of late Yar’Adua and was encouraged to contest the 2011 presidential elections. From an independent perspective, it appears to this author that Jonathan was the favourite of voters, not because of his political party nor for his individual political pedigree, but mainly because of his origin from the core of Niger-Delta, the region that generates Nigeria’s wealth. He had the sympathy of most Nigerians because the Niger-Delta had never produced a president or a military head of state - despite the contribution of the region to the wealth of the nation. Nonetheless, he contested and won under the PDP, thus maintaining the primacy of the party in the presidency.

Prior to the end of 2013, the hegemony of the PDP could also be observed in the number of states that had a PDP governor. Apart from a few states that were under four major opposition parties after the 2011 general elections, the rest were under the control of the PDP. Likewise, in the National Assembly, the legislators elected on the platform of the PDP were in the majority. As such, the PDP had a preponderant influence on legislative outcomes at the national level.

The opposition’s weak-points

With this sort of heavy representation at the Governors’ forum, the National Assembly and the prolonged occupation of the presidency by the PDP, the question may be raised as to whether the concept of transition in its narrowest sense (the opposition taking over power in a democratic regime through free and fair elections) has its place in Nigerian politics.

As it were, during the 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections, the possibility of the opposition taking over power from the PDP was quite slim. Firstly, with the proliferation of political parties it was quite difficult for the opposition parties to pull their support base together for a meaningful political outing against the PDP at most elections. Secondly, the three major opposition parties had regional outlooks in their operations. They managed to fulfil the constitutional requirement of having a fair regional and ethnic representation in their executive committees and having a secretariat in each state of the federation in accordance with the Federal Character principles.

Be that as it may, the states under the control of these major opposition parties each demonstrated themselves to be regional strongholds. Unfortunately, this factor turned out to be a major hindrance to the opposition as it made it quite difficult for them to garner the federating capacity to reach out for other regions and compete with the PDP on favourable grounds.

These two factors contributed in no small measure to the PDP maintaining the leading position from 1999 to 2013. But now, the opposition seems to be growing in strength. Two reasons may be given to explain the gradual turn of events. One is the restructuring of opposition parties. The other is the internal crisis within the PDP that has led to the defection of many of its members to the APC, thus weakening its privileged position in Nigeria’s political space.

The opposition’s re-alignment

Firstly, after making several unsuccessful attempts at merging, four opposition parties came together in February 2013 to form the All Progressive Congress (APC). Three prominent parties in the merger were: the ACN, which had hitherto controlled some states in the South-west; the CPC and ANPP, both having control of some states in the northern region. A faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), which is quite active in the South-east and could be considered a pro-Igbo party, also joined in the merger.

Since the formation of the APC, many politicians have joined them, including some who were elected on the platform of the PDP. Presently, the APC controls 16 states out of the 36 states of the Federation, 172 out of 360 seats in the lower chamber and 56 out of 109 in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.⁽³⁾

The PDP’s internal crisis: Throwing stones in glass houses

Besides the merger which has strengthened the APC, its growth could also be attributed to the recent misfortune of the PDP, which arose from the latter’s internal crisis. The internal crisis rocking the PDP blew out of proportion in 2013 with the breaking away of a faction that was referred to as the ‘New PDP’ (nPDP), under the leadership of Abubarkar Baraje. Several reasons led to the split. The immediate cause was the perceived persecution of one Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, allegedly by the president of the federation and his supporters within the state. This ‘political witch-hunting’ led to the suspension of Amaechi from the PDP.

The climax within Rivers was reached when a fracas broke out at the Rivers State House of Assembly between pro-Amaechi legislators and pro-presidency legislators. Besides the case of Rivers, there were also accusations of interference by some key national party officials in the activities of the PDP in Adamawa State. At the national level, things took a dramatic turn when Atiku Abubakar, the former vice-president under Obasanjo, and six PDP governors in support of Amaechi walked out of a PDP special national convention in September 2013.⁽⁴⁾ That same day, they announced the formation of the nPDP and nominated their officials.

A major contributing factor to the internal friction could be traced to the purported unwillingness of Jonathan to respect the rotational presidency and zoning policy of the PDP. Though not constitutionally recognised, these extra-constitutional frameworks have continued to shape Nigeria’s politics since the beginning of the Fourth Republic.⁽⁵⁾

It was alleged that Jonathan had agreed to relinquish power to the north after serving a single term. This is because, under the rotational presidency and zoning arrangement, late President Yar’Adua was supposed to serve for two terms. But his death halfway into his first tenure prematurely brought power back to the South by default when Jonathan became the president in May 2010. As such, any attempt by Jonathan to stay in power after his first elected tenure is considered by northern politicians as a violation of zoning and rotational presidency.

It is generally believed that northern governors were to present one of their own as a consensus candidate, while a governor from the South was going to serve as his running mate. It was further believed that Amaechi, being a governor from the South-south, had agreed to be the running mate for the northern governor that would have been chosen. Amaechi’s supporters also alleged that Jonathan and his loyalists considered this as a betrayal by Amaechi, thus setting most of the state machineries in motion against the latter, especially the police in Rivers State.

It is also interesting to note that with the exception of Amaechi, all the other governors that participated in the formation of nPDP were from the north. This composition seems to lend credence to the speculation that the PDP crisis is as a result of a power tussle for the forthcoming 2015 presidential elections.

The crisis took a dramatic turn when, in November 2013, five out of the seven ‘rebel’ PDP governors, under the umbrella of the nPDP decided to join the APC.⁽⁶⁾ It should also be noted that there is often a very close relationship between serving governors and serving National Assembly legislators from the same states. From the moment those five governors decamped, speculation ran high that the majority of the National Assembly legislators from their states would follow suit. The formal merging of the nPDP with the APC automatically put a hole in the balloon of the PDP at the National Assembly.⁽⁷⁾ These decampees have vowed not to return to the PDP.⁽⁸⁾

In addition to the mass defection to the APC, many PDP members were still not happy with the national administration of the PDP, especially the then national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. There was an increased call for him to step down because many believed that he contributed greatly (by way of his authoritarian and undiplomatic methods) to the state in which the PDP found itself. The crisis was so deeply rooted that the National Working Committee meeting could not be held for several weeks until after the resignation of Tukur in January 2014 and the election of a new national PDP chairman on 20 January 2014.

Concluding remarks

Though the storm seems to have subsided over the PDP, what is left of its umbrella (figuratively referring to its logo) is that of a badly torn shelter that is yet to be mended. The new national chairman is making frantic efforts to reconcile all the parties and also reach out to those that have cross-carpeted to the APC. However, it is not yet clear to what extent the PDP can go in reorganising itself and strategising in view of the 2015 general elections. Only time will tell.

Despite all these events that seem to point towards a more balanced competition between two major political parties, they still do not explain whether politicians are joining the opposition for the sake of making dividends of democracy readily available to the masses. If the previous cross-carpetings are anything to go by, the recent moves from the PDP to the APC may be yet another strategy for politicians to have better access to elective positions - noted earlier as being the quickest way to get rich in Nigeria.

Written by Ndubueze O. Nkume-Okorie ⁽¹⁾

NOTES:

(1) Dr. Ndubueze O. Nkume-Okorie is Research Associate with CAI an Associate Researcher at Science Po Bordeaux, France, and a lawyer in Nigeria. Contact Ndubueze through Consultancy Africa Intelligence's Elections& Democracy unit ( elections.democracy@consultancyafrica.com). Edited by Liezl Stretton.
(2) Omotola J.S., 2009. Nigerian parties and political ideologies. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 1(3), pp. 612-634.
(3) All Progressive Congress website, http://www.apc.com.ng.
(4) Omory, H. and Olarinoy, G., ‘Police shuts ‘new PDP’ office, deploys armoured personnel carrier’, Vanguard, 8 September 2013, http://www.vanguardngr.com.
(5) Nkume-Okorie, N., ‘Rotation and zoning: Extra-constitutional frameworks for Nigeria’s stability’, Consultancy Africa Intelligence (CAI), 6 February 2014, www.consultancyafrica.com.
(6) Daniel, S., ‘Amaechi, 4 other PDP govs, nPDP join APC’, Vanguard, 27 November 2013, http://www.vanguardngr.com.
(7) ‘Merger throws PDP into minority at the National Assembly’, Leadership, 27 November 2013, http://leadership.ng.
(8) Nwaorgu, F., ‘PDP a sinking ship, Adame Muazu the ‘Undertaker’ – Ex-nPDP rules out G5 Governors’ return’, African Spotlight, 22 January 2014, http://www.africanspotlight.com.