Trying Time For PDP

Some leaders of the former ruling party are not oblivious of the distress and danger of fighting from the trenches.

Anyone in doubt of how the vicissitudes of life have hit the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP should have seen the arrangements for the one day retreat of the party’s elected members into the forthcoming National Assembly.

The retreat in Port-Harcourt involving senators-elect and members-elect into the 8th National Assembly was held in Port-Harcourt on Monday, June 1, 2015 and was remarkably the first official outing for the new governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike and the handful of the PDP governors inaugurated the previous Friday.

The occasion would have been the first outing for former President Goodluck Jonathan since his retreat from Abuja last Friday, but the former president did not turn up.

Among the governors who came besides the host governor, Wike, were Governors Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe, Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom, Ifanyi Ugwuanyi, Enugu, while Chief Dave Umahi of Ebonyi represented by his deputy.

For Governor Dankwambo, he has become like a rare or endangered item, being the only PDP governor serving a second term.

However, everything about the retreat, from the timing, venue, packaging, duration, theme and the attendance reflected the hard times that have hit the political party that once boasted that it would dominate the Nigerian polity for an unbroken 60 years in the first instance.

In respect of timing, the retreat was like an afterthought after the exciting but controversial two-day retreat organised by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC for its senators-elect and members-elect in Abuja. The two day retreat held for each of the two set of legislators by the APC in Abuja in the opinion of some observers may have ended in an anti-climax given the fact that the understated reason of getting a consensus on the new leadership for each of the two chambers was not realised. However, that did not take away the fact that the two day retreat for each set of legislators by the APC had its glitz, grandeur and gambles.

However, the event by the PDP was seemingly an afterthought reportedly spearheaded by one of the outgoing principal officers on the platform of the party in one of the chambers of the National Assembly.

Though the acting national chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus was present for the one day event, there was every indication that the party officers were there merely as officials more than the organisers that they should have been.

The venue of the meeting also showed how far the PDP that once boasted of being the second unifying factor in Nigeria after the security services has been seemingly reduced to a sectional enclave strong only in the South-South and Southeast regions of the country.