Presidency 2023: Alarm bells ring as DPP replays the old future

— How Wike's levity on Atiku shakes up the party

There are many sides to the big question, which underscores the intractable squabbles within the main opposition party, the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP). Why was the presidential ticket open? It is this lack of fidelity to principles and this ambivalence that has put the party in a bind.

Therefore, the current realities of the main opposition party show that it is just repeating its past mistakes just seven months before a new general election. Recall that the PDP lost the 2015 poll to the amalgamation of former fringe political parties called the All Progressives Congress (APC) due to internal disputes over whether or not former President Goodluck Jonathan wanted to run for a second term. Notable party leaders felt the former president should not have sought another full four-year term given the circumstances of his ascension, which they said tipped the power rotation/zoning pattern of the left. The feuds caused a major downfall leading to the surprising loss of the party after 16 years in the saddle. Then, in 2019, with every indicator pointing to a possible rebound, the party missed it again, losing to President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC through former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, its doorstep. -presidential flag. Atiku's defection from the PDP and his candidacy in the last general election is touted as part of ongoing recriminations within the opposition party, even as Rivers State Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike accuses the candidate presidential party to receive the support of some powerful personalities of the presidency led by the APC to destabilize the PDP. Could it be that elements within APC who are uncomfortable with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the party's presidential candidate are plotting a similar mutiny organized by Atiku and five governors to defeat APC and win the presidential laurel for the PDP? This point was raised in Wike's allegation, deepening the fault lines within the main opposition party between the northern and southern blocs. The call for national chairman Dr Iyorchia Ayu to step down from his position to balance the levers of power within the party has raised concerns that the PDP is repeating the same mistakes that brought it down from the top of political power in 2015. For example, the party's National Working Committee (NWC) meeting on Wednesday, September 7, 2022, had all the elements of a similar meeting in January 2013. The only variation was that unlike 2013 when the Although former President Goodluck Jonathan was in the saddle as party leader, the 2022 PDP has no definite leader. Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, the national chairman of the party, who was at the center of the unrest within the main opposition party, experienced the same heat that was brought to Alhaji Bamangar Tukur. While in the case of Bamanga, 10 of the 14 NWC members turned their backs on the national president, Ayu had the privilege of the North/South split, which caused the southern members of the caucus to storm out of the meeting. . If the main opposition party undertook a serious autopsy after losing the 2015 presidential election alongside its commander-in-chief, Jonathan, it could have recognized how the events that led to Bamanga Tukur's ouster prepared for the eventual electoral catastrophe. Perhaps with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar walking a tightrope to ensure that he, alongside the party, does not experience another downfall, the lifeline given to Ayu by the National Executive Committee (NEC) party could amount to a simple postponement of the bad day. The Governor of Rivers State and Southern stakeholders loyal to him had made Ayu's resignation, in line with the National President's pledge, their uncompromising minimum demand for the return of peace to the party. But, in what was seen as cosmetic political trickery, the Chairman of the PDP Board of Directors (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin, and the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, resigned from their positions. Despite the similarities and dissimilarities between the situations of Ayu and Tukur, the repetition of history points to another possible loss of the PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, unless a benevolent electoral accident occurs. produce. The charges against Ayu are threefold: First, the national president is recorded as having confessed to stepping down from office in case a presidential aspirant from the North runs as a candidate. Second, the National President reportedly commended and commended Governor Tambuwal for stepping down and urged his supporting delegates to vote for Atiku. Then, as the bickering over his reluctance to honor his gentleman's agreement raged, Ayu berated Governor W...