Analyst Baba Yusuf has accused Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike of creating crises in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Yusuf claimed this was done to prevent Goodluck Jonathan or Peter Obi from emerging as strong presidential candidates from the PDP.
On Arise Television’s Prime Time, Yusuf called Wike’s methods a “spoiler game.” He called them strategic, and that his aim is to destabilize the party enough to stop it from being able to present either Jonathan or Obi as the PDP presidential flag bearer in 2027. Yusuf said if he is successful, Wike would render the PDP unusable for presenting a strong candidate, which would be a win for the APC.
Yusuf went on to criticize the leadership of the PDP for allowing Wike to get to this point of control. He said the PDP has “slept on their hands, and let the cob become a lion” and that it had been a failure of oversight of a party at “critical” moments. He warned that too much power is dangerous: letting one person control funding and the structure of a party is undemocratic.
Similarly, Professor Abiodun Adeniyi of Baze University claimed that the PDP is at an “abysmal low,” referring to crippling divisions created by Wike from his “go-along-to-get-along” approach and said with the state of division, it was hard to repair the cracks in unity. He was adamant that they must restart dialogue internally and reconciliation, with the hope that things could get better. If they don’t, he remarked, the PDP could face a collision course with collapse.
These comments highlight concerns of whether the PDP can coalesce behind a candidate to take on the APC at the 2027 elections in a meaningful way. Analysts have said, if the party fails to mend the cracks that exist, and restore some sort of institutional equilibrium, the odds of it repeating an ineffective election run is high.
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