by Godwin Akanfe

The outcome of the recent elections swept away the PDP’s sixteen-year dominance of Nigeria’s political life, and and has remodelled the party as an opposition party, albeit the main opposition to the APC which would take the position of the governing party at the federal level and in majority of the states.

The PDP has found itself in the position of an opposition party that will have to weather the storm and lead a formidable opposition to keep the APC in line and check and also provide support and succour to the Nigerian populace, after all, the beauty of democracy is not in the absence of divergent views, but in the dominance of the view held by the majority.

The PDP would be expected to weather all of the storm the complex Nigerian political stage will throw in its way amidst the many internal battles it will handle in the course of trying to wrest power back from the APC.

The challenge before the PDP and its level of preparedness in tackling the challenge can only be measured by comparing the PDP in its present state with the APC in similar positions as an opposition party.

 

Leadership

It is a known fact that leadership in political circles must always exude the kind of charisma and confidence that would help the party take on any opposition that might present itself. While the APC was in pursuit of power at the federal level, the selection of leaders for the party was always a top burner issue and was treated with the utmost despatch.

The APC top hierarchy ensured that its leaders were men and women of good standing at their level of participation and stuck to its guns even when the decision in some cases pitched it against a section of its members.

Such was the vigour with which the APC pursued its leadership quest but the PDP all through the same period was finding it hard to provide a leadership class that could muster enough strength and clout to reign supreme at their level of leadership. It is worthy of note that the PDP for a greater part of its sixteen years rule has always had rowdy state congresses leaving the party in disarray for most of the time.

The party also boasts an unenviable record of the political party that has set up the most Reconciliatory and Conflict Resolution Committees in the country. If this area of concern is not addressed by the PDP, it remains to be seen how it will put up a good showing against the APC if it will continue to have a disjointed or highly factionalised membership at all levels.

 

Funding

While a few Nigerians might still not want to believe this, political parties still get a great deal of their funds with which they carry out their programmes directly or indirectly from the donations of members and sympathisers, and not from the coffers of government.

Funding remains a critical core of any venture and political parties are not left out of the mix. The political parties depend on the funds provided by its members who are in elective or appointive positions of authority or power and the PDP will hold on to the short end of the stick as they can only hold this positions in states where they are in control.

Going by the results of the last elections, the big states save Rivers, Delta and Akwa-Ibom are in the control of the APC which further puts the PDP at a disadvantage of raising the kind of funds that is usually required to support a huge campaign as might be needed to grab power from the APC.

A clear and vivid explanation of this can be illustrated by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu example, where he used the goodwill of Lagos State Government and influential politicians in Lagos, the single state the Action Congress held on to as an aftermath of the PDP invasion of the South-West in the 2003 elections to win a few more states in the South West and further into Edo State in the South-South Zone subsequently.

The PDP has to put measures in place to address this great challenge if it must come up with a good fight on the battle ground because if the truth must be told, the recent electioneering campaign has cut a great hole in the pocket of the party and its prominent financiers.
Strategy

Strategy is the most important tool that every organisation must possess and if possible have an overflow of.

The APC apart from the leading vision of Bola Tinubu, Ogbonnaya Onu, Olusola Saraki, John Odigie-Oyegun and a host of others, the APC as an opposition party boasted of many personalities and technocrats who excelled in strategic management and the critical decision process of the party. This bulk of persons formed the core of the party’s think-tank that delivered the victory for the APC against the ruling party.

If the same has to repeat itself for the PDP, the party has to secure the loyalty and commitment of a core of person s that would be capable of delivering similar, if not greater amount of critical and decisive strategy that would reposition the party as one that could proffer solutions to the country’s many challenges towards becoming a better and great nation.

Though it remains to be seen how the APC would fare in its new role at the helm of affairs at the federal level, the PDP needs to source these three key ingredients and many other attributes that would help it feast on the political mistakes of the APC in the new dispensation.