As the year 2025 gradually winds down, KUNLE ODEREMI reports that the leading political parties are left in the throes of challenges, with varying degree of impact on their structures at the dawn of New Year.
In the outgoing year, 2024, none of the main political parties, including the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is free from palpable tension and disquiet. But the degree of those disputes and their negative impact also vary.
APC
Unlike the volatility that characterises the internal contradiction in the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the combustion in the ruling APC is being discussed in hushed tones within the ranks of its top shots and other party faithful due to fear of a likely backlash from the authorities. Major organs could not hold regular meetings and the expectation for party patronage after working assiduously for APC to win at the poll has hamstrung many party members from challenging the status quo. The hide and seek and subdued anger necessitated certain steps embarked on by some APC top notch aimed at soothing frayed nerves. One of the key interventions was the convening of the South-West Stakeholders’ Assembly in Lagos, where the leaders urged the party members to remain calm and patient due to the lack of patronage after working for the overall success of the APC. The leaders promised to take their grievances to the authorities, but also indicted the national leadership of shirking in their responsibilities, as well as accused the zonal structure of failing to galvanise the party faithful across the board. Some APC stewards had warned that the uneasy calm within the rank and file of the party posed a major threat to the then governorship election in Ondo State if the party failed to tackle the schism in the APC.
Besides, the national secretariat is under pressure from different caucuses due to lack of fund. One of the chieftains said to a major financier of the party, was said to have soft-pedaled due to the lack of recognition and support from other elected party members holding public offices. According to some stakeholders, APC major organs, including the National Executive Committee (NEC), National Working Committee (NWC), Board of Trustees (BoT), Zonal Working committee and zonal exco remain largely passive and inactive, such that uncertainty still surrounds the date for APC’s NEC meeting proposed for January 2025.
LP
The season of the long knife also subsists in the Labour Party (LP), where the party is split into three discernible tendencies. The tendency sympathetic to the presidential candidate of the party in the party in the last election, Mr Peter Obi is oscillating, as it sometimes assumes neutrality in the imbroglio ravaging the LP. The pro-Obi Caucus hides under the shadow of the Obidient Movement, a subgroup comprising his professed core sympathisers. The group assumed the position of an arbiter at the height of the altercations between the camp of the party leadership loyal to the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) national chairman, Comrade Joe Ajero and the LP leadership under Barrister Julius Abure.
The ambivalence of the Obi camp, coupled with the dogfight between the NLC and the LP leaderships weakened the structures of the party, diminished its presence and influence at the governorship elections held in Edo and Ondo states on September 21 and November 16, respectively.
Another source of yawning gap in the party in 2024 is the seething anger between the Abure-led leadership and the only governor, elected on LP ticket, Dr Alex Otti, of Abia State.
The governor and his associates, as well as supporters created a parallel leadership structure at the national level. The faction instituted a parallel national executive committee with Senator Hassan as the interim chairman. The governor also made sure that his surrogates used the platform of the Zenith Party to torpedo the LP structures at the local government areas. He delivered the entire LG chairmen to his loyalists in the local government election held in Abia.
The huge cost of the unbridled power struggle and uncanny rivalry among the LP power centres in the outgoing year is equally evident in the wave of defection of high-profile and politically exposed politicians from the Labour Party. It is further underlined by the suspension of certain members from the NEC of the party. The widening cracks in the LP flung its flanks open to poaching from the leading parties, thus, it lost a number of senators and members of the House of Representatives to the APC through defections. Speculations are rife that a sizeable number of others are only waiting in the wings to ditch the party.
NNPP
The centre has refused to hold the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in 2024. The legal jigsaw over NNPP national leadership persists, following the insistence of Dr Bonaface Aniegbulam who founded the party in 2002 and his loyalists to deny Senator Musa Kwankwaso as the authentic leader of the opposition party. Whereas the latter, in collaboration with his loyalists, has altered the NNPP emblem-like logo, the fight over the structures of the party between the two claimants to the leadership rages.
The crisis has percolated to some state chapters like the ones in Ogun, Kano, and Nasarawa, particularly in the latter, where two members of the state House of Assembly elected on NNPP platform have defected to the APC, lifting the membership configuration in the Assembly in favour of the ruling party. One of the defectors, Honourable Mohammed Garba Isimbabi, premised his action on the infighting in the party. “The division within my party at the national level and the numerous pending court cases left me no option but to leave NNPP for the APC,” Isimbabi said. He represents Toto/Gadabuke state constituency.
SDP
The structures of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) appear comatose, following the fallouts of the 2023 elections. A maze of litigation has not resolved the battle for the heart of the party. The SDP still smarts from issues thrown up before and after the general election. The fate of many of its members hangs in the balance of whether to jump ship or remain afloat and onboard what they called a seemingly rudderless ship.
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