• Home
• Columnist
• Videos
• Artist
  • Musicians
  • Actors
  • Comedians
• Notable Nigerians
• Legend Dies
• Articles
  • Nigeria Articles
• Photos
• Submit Article

The People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in Lagos State has always come out of every election since 1999 weaker and more factionalised. What really is wrong with the party?

The recent local government election in Lagos State has proved that the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in the state is yet to recover from the ailment that has always seen it trailing behind the winning party since 1999. In the local government election held on October 22, PDP won only 18 councillor seats without winning any chairmanship position in the 20 local governments and 37 local council development areas, LCDA, in the state. This dismal outing has led to one question: What is really the problem with the Lagos PDP?

 Every attempt by the party to win the governorship election of Lagos State has always been a failure since 1999. Dapo Sarumi, former minister of information, who emerged as the party governorship candidate in Lagos State in 1999 was defeated by Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the then Alliance for Democracy AD, despite the effort of some leaders of the party like Yomi Edu, Olawale Idris among others. PDP members in the state did not see the outcome of the election as a true reflection of the people’s vote. It accused AD of rigging the election to get to power.

 Despite the PDP tsunami that swept the AD administration in the South-West in 2003, the party could not clinch the governorship position in Lagos State. It presented Funsho Williams as its flag bearer in the election.  The assassination of Williams, in 2006 and the emergence of Musliu Obanikoro, as a candidate for 2007 had made the party’s attempt at winning the governorship election more elusive.  Obanikoro’s emergence led to the exit of the late Funsho Williams’s group which believed that the process that led to his emergence was not fair enough. At the end, the group joined forces with the new Action Congress, AC, against the PDP in the election that brought Babatunde Fashola as governor of the state.

While preparing for the 2011 governorship election, the party assured its supporters that it would form the next government in the state. It had hoped the decamping of Omotilewa Aro- Lambo, former secretary to Lagos State government, and    some notable politicians from the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, to the PDP, would enhance its popularity and facilitate its victory but the result of the election was not different from what it has been since 1999.

 When Ade Dosumu, emerged the candidate of the party for the 2011 election, after defeating other contestants like Tokunbo Lawson, Babatunde Gbadamosi, Owolabi Salis, Demola Seriki, Femi Pedro and Qudus Folani without acrimony, the leadership of the party promised that the 2011 elections would mark the beginning of a new era for the PDP because the coast was clear for the party to emerge victorious in the April poll. The party’s leaders in the state blamed its dismal outing in   most of the elections to the massive electoral fraud committed by the ruling ACN, but that thinking is not very popular. Many Lagosians believe that the main cause of the party’s dwindling fortune is that it is still a divided house. Immediately after the April 2011 general elections, Wale Ahmed, former publicity secretary of the party who is at present commissioner for special duties, Lagos State, decamped to the ACN. He did not jump the boat alone, Demola Seriki, former minister of state for defence, who was a 2011 governorship aspirant in Lagos State, also defected to the same party.

 Segun Ogundimu, former commissioner for health in Lagos State, and a member of PDP, attributed the misfortune of the party to internal crisis. Ogundimu expressed disappointment that the party he and others struggled to nurture in the state was being destroyed because of personal interest. He stated that with the structure of the party  there was no way the party could not have won some chairmanship positions in the state, except for the division in the party. “I believe, with what we have on ground in the state across the councils, PDP would have stood a good chance of winning the election but for stubborn polarisation being suffered by the party in the state” he said. He explained that unless the existing factions loyal to Adeseye Ogunlewe, former minister of works, and Bode George, former chairman of Nigeria Port Authority, NPA, shift grounds and allow peace to reign, the party would continue to wallow in defeat.

 Last week, Tejumade Akintoye-Rhodes, a professor, and chairman of Lagos Collectives, a group loyal to George, described Ogunlewe as a traitor who has lost all sense of propriety and decency. Akintoye-Rhodes stated that the former minister of works has never contributed to the growth of the party in Lagos State. “Ogunlewe is a bonafide card carrying member of ACN. Therefore, he and his tattered gangs were publicly expelled from the party by the General Assembly of Lagos State PDP on October 25, 2011.”  Ogunlewe had earlier referred to George as a thief who embezzled the money meant for the candidates of the last local government elections in the state. The new round of verbal war between the two groups started on November 3, when Shuaib Oyedokun, deputy national chairman, PDP, South-West, led other leaders of the party to resolve the crisis rocking the boat of the party in Lagos State. The meeting ended in creating more problems for the party as George claimed at the venue that Ogunlewe was a traitor and had been expelled from the party.

Few weeks to the last local government election in Lagos State, the gulf in the party was widened by the protest of some members over the nomination of Roli George, Bode’s George’s wife, as a board member in one of the federal government parastatals. The nomination of George which some party executives   considered as a way of compensating him for his contribution to the party, did not go down well with Ogunlewe, leader of one of the factions of the party in the state. Ogunlewe faulted the nomination of George as the choice of the party for the position from the state. At last, the party set up a committee to investigate the action of such protest by some members. 

Setonji Koshoedo, Lagos chairman of the party, described the action of some members as malicious and anti-party.  “We indeed have no doubt that this malicious protest is not aimed at the nominee, but a transfer of malice borne out of personal vendetta against another leader that is most committed and has remained a threat to these half-cast members,” he said.

Abiodun Folamin, chairman of the Lagos State vanguard committee, is unhappy about the party’s weak disposition. “In recent times, the PDP, in Lagos State, has suffered numerous electoral misfortunes to the advantage of ACN. This momentum of unexpected showings has to stop,” he said. According to him, in 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 gubernatorial elections, the party scored 100,000, 700,000, 500,000 and 300,000 votes respectively, the trend he described as discouraging which the new vanguard must work to stop. He stated that the vanguard would as a matter of priority examine thoroughly the position of the party in the state and proffer a way forward for the party.

It was not the first time the party elders and leaders would come together with the aim of resolving the crisis. In 2010, the followers of George, former vice-chairman, PDP South-West,  Ogunlewe  and Musliu Obanikoro, governorship candidate of the party in 2007 general elections agreed to sheathe their swords and allow peace to reign in the party.  But midway into the meeting to reconcile all factions, some armed thugs invaded the venue and attempted to attack Obanikoro for daring to challenge George in some of the decisions of the party. Obanikoro narrowly escaped being lynched. Shortly after the aborted parley, Tunji Shelle, Lagos State secretary of the party, told Newswatch that those that invaded the venue of the party were Obanikoro boys who were protesting his inability to settle them financially after they worked for him during the election.

 He said the   matter had been sorted out by the party elders and all bickering among members have been settled. Vincent Ogbulafor, former national chairman of PDP, had promised to resolve the crisis in Lagos PDP just as he did in Kano and went further to constitute a committee to resolve the problem. But the committee could not bring peace to the party. Series of reconciliatory meetings were held in Ota, home of former president Olusegun Obasanjo, and chairman of BOT of PDP, but all could not resolve the lingering problems.  

Before the 2011 general elections, Obanikoro, who believes that the party in the state, was comatose, suggested several ways that could take it out of the woods. According to Obanikoro, the party can only bounce back to   electoral fortune if those who control various groups could control their ego and carry other people along in the administration of the party. Obanikoro, a former senator, said unless the party mended its fences as soon as possible, the desire to clinch power from ACN controlled government in the state would continue to be a tall dream. “If we continue like this, we are going nowhere because the party is dead,” he said.  He explained that the party would not make any progress until those who are marginalised in the party are accorded their rightful place.

The Obanikoro group has been agitating for the dissolution of the state executive council whose members are mainly loyal to George, who insisted that the constituted state executive of the party cannot be dissolved, urging those nurturing the ambition of contesting any elective position in the state party executive to wait until 2011 when the tenure of the already constituted executive would expire. Now that all efforts at reconciling the aggrieved members of the party have failed, it appears the party is at cross roads in Lagos State.

Recently, former president Olusegun Obasanjo indicated his preparedness to support any genuine effort at moving the party forward in Lagos and other parts of South-West. He predicted that the PDP which could not perform well in the last general elections in the South-West zone would bounce back in 2015.  Obasanjo’s view was also supported by Koshoedo who is also optimistic that the problem of the party would not last forever. He promised that the party would continue to dialogue with other aggrieved members until peace is finally achieved.