APC vs PDP: Have Bayelsa, Kogi polls’ outcomes decided 2023?

For political gladiators, permutations on how to win the 2023 elections have started. The race, according to what played out in the 2019 elections, is for now, zeroed on the two major political parties in the country, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Have the outcomes of the Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections shown how the battle would be fought and who would win the 2023 elections? This is despite the internal wrangling in the both parties. TOPE SUNDAY and ABDULRAHMAN ZAKARIYAU seek to know in this report.

Barely nine months after the 2019 general elections were lost and won, the journey for the 2023 elections seems to have begun with the recent outcomes of the governorship polls in Kogi and Bayelsa states where the country’s governing party, All Progressives Congress (APC), won the two states. According to pundits, a number of reasons were responsible for the two results, which ranged from internal wrangling to lack of party discipline. 

The 2019 polls

Though the 2019 general elections have come and gone, the events that preceded it were tensed and people had thought that it would go the ethnic way. True to their prediction, the presidential election was decided by the northerners and southerners according to the manner they voted for the candidates of their choice.

The election was contested by 73 candidates, but candidates of both APC and PDP, President Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, were hugely popular because of their personalities.   

President Buhari won 15,191,847 of the total votes cast, while his closest opponent, Atiku, gained 11,262,978 votes.

President Buhari also won his re-election bid as he polled 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP in the presidential poll conducted on February 23. Atiku polled 11,262,978 to lose the election with a margin of 3,928,869 votes.

A breakdown of the results shows that President Buhari won in 19 states. The states are Bauchi, Borno, Ekiti, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.

And Atiku won in 17 states and the FCT. The states are Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, Imo, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba and the FCT.

Beyond Kogi, Bayelsa gov elections

Before the Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections, APC was in control of 19 states, PDP had 16, while the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) had one. But now, with the outcome of the recent elections in the two states, APC will not be in control of Bayelsa state and still retains Kogi state. However, some pundits are of the opinion that the outcomes 2023 elections should not be predicted based on the results of the two states. They are of the views that the two main political parties may not find it easy if the internal rancour within their folds is not settled or addressed.

According to the political analysts, PDP lost in Bayelsa state to APC majorly because of the crisis that emanated from the choice of its governorship candidate, Senator Douye Diri.     

In the wake of the governorship primaries of the PDP in the state, the party was torn apart in violent agitation amidst endless feuds among aggrieved stakeholders. While some party loyalists supported the candidature of Timi Alaibe, a known figure in the state’s politics, others were in support of Mr. Dickson’s choice, Diri.

The development caused disaffection among party members, leading to a gale of defections and resignations even in Dickson’s own government.

In October, about a month to the election, some aides of the governor tendered their resignation letters in protest against the governor’s choice of governorship candidate.

Also, outside of the governance front, all was not well within the party. Despite the efforts by the former Senate President, Bukola Saraki-led five-man national reconciliation committee inaugurated by the leadership of the party to reconcile aggrieved governorship aspirants, Alaibe still dragged the party to the court.

Pundits said all of this caused demoralisation among party members and created apprehension even on the eve of the election, thus contributing to the fall of the party, its candidate and the governor.

Also, while APC went into election in Kogi as a united family, PDP contested the poll as more or less a divided house because the aggrieved members of the party who contested the ticket with its governorship candidate, Engr. Musa Wada, were not appeased. This development, according to the pundits, later became the party’s albatross. 

APC, PDP rough roads to 2023

At the moment, things seem to be working for the APC now on the surface, but it is engulfed in what, if not properly handled, may lead to crisis that could destabilise it ahead of the 2023 elections.  The APC national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, is currently swimming in troubled waters over what some leaders of the party described as “his overbearing nature” in the running of the party affairs.

Before now, the quest for his removal was muted by some aggrieved members who were embittered by his alleged roles in many altercations within the party. 

It has, however, come to a point that those who want him removed no longer hide their faces.

One of the earlier callers for Oshiomhole’s removal was the deputy national chairman (North) of the party, Lawal Shuaibu. In a letter to the chairman, dated May 27, 2019, Shuaibu, a former senator from Zamfara state insisted that the party chairman was squarely responsible for the party’s loss in his home state.

The outspoken party leader, in a five-page open letter, said  the chairman had caused the party to lose the seats while also listing other dwindling fortunes of the party, which he said “is on the path of extinction,” to buttress his claims.

APC progressives’’ concerns

Also, in August 2019, the director-general of the Progressive Governors Forum, Salihu Lukman, again blamed the party’s national chairman for the diminishing fortunes of the party.

In a four-page letter to Oshiomhole entitled “APC: Appeal for Reconciliation,” Lukman said as a loyal party member, he had difficulty “reconciling the absence of meetings of superior organs given all the challenges the party is going through, warranting the suspension of three serving governors (two of them now senators) and two members of NWC.”

He lamented APC’s loss of Zamfara, Bauchi and some states in the 2019 polls and expressed fears that the trend could recur in the forthcoming Kogi and Bayelsa governorship polls.

Before Oshiomhole called for the recent NEC meeting, there was another pressure from the APC governors’ secretariat. The director-general of the secretariat made public a statement giving Oshiomhole option of convening a NEC meeting or resign his position. The call came on the heels of the multiple internal crises rocking the party in the states, the most current of which is the depressing power tussle between Oshiomhole and his successor as governor of Edo state, Governor Godwin Obaseki, which Lukman described as “embarrassing” to the ruling party.

Lukman, in a statement he personally authored, titled “APC and our Inconceivable Organisational Challenges: Urgent Call to our Leaders” and made available to journalists in Abuja, said the National Working Committee (NWC), an administrative organ of the party, including only select members of the NEC and is tasked with the responsibility of executing decisions of the NEC, had hijacked the responsibilities of the apex decision-making organ of the party, the NEC, which he said seemed to have been suspended.

According to him, many of the crises facing the party in the state, and which had cost the party some states hitherto considered as its stronghold states, are those that the NEC or national caucus meeting of the party were designed to sort out.

NEC meeting

The penultimate Friday’s NEC meeting of the party attended by President Muhammadu Buhari and the governors were said to have ended abruptly. Our correspondent observed that the meeting did not last an hour after he made his opening remarks.

It was gathered that some NEC members who wanted Oshiomhole replaced were not given opportunity to speak which made them to shout down the national chairman whenever he rose to speak as the president officer at the meeting. NEC members, but confirmed that situation forced Oshiomhole to end the meeting abruptly and the president left the venue.

There was another drama shortly after the meeting where some aggrieved members of the National Executive Council (NEC) gathered at a press conference to demand immediate resignation of their national chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole.

The group accused Oshiomhole of disregard for the president at the NEC meeting, adding that the meeting ended abruptly. The aggrieved group included majorly state chairmen of the party.

The Zamfara state chairman, who is also the spokesman for the APC state chairmen forum, Lawal M. Liman, said under the current national chairman of the party, most of goodwill acquired by the party has been eroded.

“Arising from the foregoing and having regards to the huge responsibilities bestowed on us as officers of the party and in the overriding interest of our members, we are left with no option but to demand that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole resigns his position as the national chairman, in order to stem the slide and provide an enabling environment for genuine healing, reconciliation and the practice of true democracy, within the party across the country.”

Most of the state chairmen in attendance included:  Arc Bala Kangiwa, Kebbi, Habibi Sara, Jigawa, Ade Adetimeli, Ondo, Abdullahi Abbas, Kano, Abba Yaro, Benue, Omotosin Paul, Ekiti, Engr Mohammed Jibril Iman, Niger, Anslem Ojezua, Edo, Philips Shekwo Nasarawa, Rtd Air Com Ikeda, Kaduna, Lakep Dabah, Plateau, Shitu Shitu, Katsina,Isah Sadiq Acida of Sokoto.

Investigations by Blueprint Weekend revealed that both those who are calling for Oshiomhole’s removal and those supporting him openly were allegedly serving some selfish interest as the race for who picks the party’s presidential ticket begins.

PDP’s Secondus’ many trubles

Like his APC’s counterpart, the PDP national chairman, Prince Secondus, is also battling credibility question. When he was elected at the party’s elective congress in December 2017, the party was in control of 11 states. Those states were Gombe, Taraba, Ekiti, Enugu, Ebonyi, Cross River, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Anambra . However, with the defections of some governors and followed by the outcomes of the 2019 elections, the party lost Ekiti, Bayelsa, and Gombe, but won Oyo, Bauchi, Adamawa, Sokoto, Zamfara, Benue and Imo states. Therefore, the PDP is in control of 16 states out of the 36 states. 

Despite this, Blueprint Weekend investigation revealed that many bigwigs in the party are not happy with the way the national chairman has been running the affairs of the party in the last 24 months.

However, some members of the party whose Secondus’ style of leadership has so far favoured have continued to support him.

This medium gathered that aside from the fight for the control of the party’s structure for the 2023 elections, some party members are of the view that the PDP national chairman, has failed to run the party well. This according to them led to the poor outing of the party in 2019 and the spillover was what made the party to lose Bayelsa in the November 16 governorship election. Consequently, this has re-echoed the call for Secondus’ resignation.

BoT member speaks

In an effort to find out Secondus’ “major crime,” a reliable source who is also a member of the party Board of Trustees (BoT), told Blueprint Weekend that the chairman narrowly escaped a vote of no confidence earlier planned for him by aggrieved members of the BOT at a meeting last week in Abuja, but that plan is still on to remove the “total chair” as is fondly called by his party admirers.

He said, “All his not well with the PDP, some people are plotting for the removal of the national chairman for what they described as underperformance, mismanagement of the party’s resources and one-sided leadership. In our last meeting, the BoT chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin, systematically helped the chairman to escape a vote of no confidence.

“The aggrieved members of the party cut across all organs of the party, state governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives, members of the BoT and even members of the NWC of the party are part of the plot to remove the national chairman.”

When asked what Secondus crime was, the source said: “The NWC which he leads is at loggerheads with the BoT, his inability to reconcile some aggrieved party members, his inability to sanction some members for anti-party activities, and the continued suspension of some members in the House of Representatives.

“Also, his loyalty to some people instead of the party and also the mismanagement of billions of naira realised by the party during the 2019 presidential election, are parts of his many sins.”

Continuing, he said: “Most of these people will do everything possible to remove the chairman. Because they are of the view that the first thing to do in order to reposition the party for the 2023 presidential election was to replace Secondus with a committed party member, who will do the bidding of the party members and not the biding of a few. They fear that with Secondus still in charge, the party may not make meaningful inroads in the 2023 general election.”

Our correspondent also gathered that aside from all these, the major crime of Secondus is that he is not loyal to some top echelons of the party who are nurturing the ambition for 2023 presidential election and they are inducing others to achieve their aim.

Ologbondiyan’s remarks

When contacted, the PDP national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, debunked the news making round about the pressure on Prince Uche Secondus to resign. 

According to Ologbondiyan, “we have said it many times that there is no pressure from anywhere.”

 For now, those who want Oshiomhole and Secondus removed have not backed down as the duo continue to lobby to retain their offices, but the question on the lips of event watchers is whether  or they will weather the storm, and be in a proper frame of minds to lead their parties to victory in 2023?

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