The All Progressives' Congress (APC) is now Nigeria's official
'ruling', sorry 'governing' party; recall, Buhari said they were going
to govern not rule. Despite now being the party in power at the centre
and in control of a little less than two-third of the states of the
federation, APC is arguably still not the dominant party in the
country, especially when we compare its current status with what PDP
was in 2003 and 2007.
Some of the reasons why APC may not be considered as dominant as PDP
was include; it is not in absolute control of the National Assembly
where it slightly lacks the two-third majority in the House of
Representatives and only has a slim majority in the Senate. APC will
be facing the PDP as the most potentially strong and richest
opposition party in Nigeria's history. The party had ruled for 16
years and it will take a reasonably long time before its material
wealth (something that is indispensable in Nigerian politics) and
long-term influence gained in power to completely wither away. The PDP
is also controlling some of the richest and most important states in
Nigeria with Kano and Lagos being the most significant exception,
apart from having some of Nigeria's most valuable political maestros
within its fold. Furthermore, PDP's strong ward to national political
structure across the country built over the years with power, wealth
and patronage cannot be easily dismantled.
However, the question is whether the PDP can use all these potentials
to constitute a formidable opposition to the governing APC, checkmate
it, give it a good fight and possibly reposition strongly to stand a
chance of taking over power from it in 2019? Since it is too early to
understand and predict the new political direction in the country,
answers to these questions can only be hypothetical.
As noted earlier, APC has no so much significant dominance over the
PDP, but sooner or later it will get that dominance. The APC will get
its dominance from future PDP's misdoings and other events that will
arise; PDP's post-election crises is probably a sign of things to
come. First of all, even in defeat, PDP seems unprepared to jettison
its use and dump attitude complemented by brutal godfatherism, thereby
creating more and more enemies for itself who continue operating and
sabotaging it from within. It is expected that now without state
power, this culture in PDP is likely to slow down and eventually stop,
but the amount of damage it will do to the party before it stops may
prove costly. The PDP subconsciously engineered its poor showing in
the North and South-West thereby almost relegating itself to a
regional party. It is very much unlikely that PDP can redeem its poor
northern image in good time enough to checkmate APC's forthcoming
dominance. In the South-South and South-East where the PDP had a
massive national following, it refused to allow the people to freely
and fairly vote for their choices in local elections and the people
are likely to punish it in potential bye-elections and in
gubernatorial elections of Bayelsa, Edo and Anambra that will take
place before 2019. One major setback for PDP is that the party is
widely expected to lose big at all levels in the election tribunals.
Before 2015, PDP had two strong annexed parties in APGA and Labour
Party which have played very significant roles in PDP's 'winning' of
presidential elections. In what looked like suicidal, the PDP decided
to kill and swallow the LP and has badly wounded the APGA and
therefore now left with no other allies outside the main party. With
its expected continuous decline, PDP will have it very difficult to
win the gubernatorial elections in Ondo, Kogi and even Ekiti states.
All these are factors that will weaken the PDP and strengthen the APC.
The PDP throughout its sixteen years had built itself around money,
power and influence and 16 years is not 16 weeks. It will be very
difficult if not almost impossible for the party to survive without
these things unless they adjust extraordinarily. One to two years from
now, the PDP will look more and more dilapidated, disorganized and
most likely get disintegrated. This would be a very bad development
for Nigerian politics. For many Nigerians who would like PDP to
regroup and keep APC on its toes, they are more than likely to be
disappointed. With a possible occurrence of this scenario, who then
will checkmate APC?
Read more at NewsRescue:
http://newsrescue.com/who-will-checkmate-apc-by-amir-abdulazeez/
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