Edo: PDP and the challenge of change

By Nasamu Jacobson.

The Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State, once a strong political institution, has in the last seven years suffered a self-induced dwindling of fortunes both in terms of depleting membership and electoral defeats. The July 14, 2012  governorship election defeat  may well signal the ‘’death’’ of the party in Edo State.
It would be helpful for a fuller and better understanding of how and why the party in Edo State came to this sorry state. After the unfortunate and ill-advised annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by late M.K.O. Abiola of the Social Democratic Party an Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan was put in place by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in August 1993. The Interim Government had lasted barely three months when it was overthrown in November of the same year by Gen. Sani Abacha who was then the Chief of Defence Staff.
 Gen. Abacha promptly dissolved all political structures in the country including the two political parties (SDP and NRC), the National Assembly, state assemblies and governments. His attempt at giving the nation a democratic government led to the formation of political parties that later became known as the “five leperous fingers”. The idea to transform self from military head of state to a democratically elected president reared its head at this time.  The subsequent death in 1998 of Gen. Abacha and the ascendancy to leadership by Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar thereafter paved the way for the resumption of full political activities with the announcement of a transition time table programmed to end with presidential elections in 1999. 
It was, therefore, in 1998 that several political players dubbed old and new breed politicians held meetings that culminated in the formation and registration of several political parties prominent amongst which are PDP, ANPP, AD, ACN, APGA and  LP.
In Edo State, prominent political figures teamed up in Edo Solidarity Movement (ESM) to “scout” for a national party which they believed could win election and form the government both at the state and national levels. These figures include Chief Tony Anenih, Dr. Samuel Ogbemudia, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, Chief Tom Ikimi , Chief J.B. Momoh and a host of others. One of such consultative meetings was held at the Saidi Centre in Benin City in August 1998. It was attended by notable political figures from outside the state as Dr. Joseph Wayas, former President of the Senate.
 The alliances formed before and after this consultative meeting led to the three major political gladiators in the state, Chief Anenih, Dr. Ogbemudia and Chief Igbinedion, teaming up in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. This simple fact of these leaders who had previously held sway in different parties joining forces in the same party gave the PDP an edge over other parties in the state. In the 1999 elections the PDP performed so well that it appeared it was the only party that contested elections in the state. It would be safe to say that the PDP stranglehold on the political landscape in Edo State ended with its victory at the 2003 governorship election.
In 2004, in the heat of the diabolical plan of President Olusegun Obasanjo to secure an illegal third tenure, the leadership of the party with active support of then chairman of the Board of Trustees (BOT), Chief Tony Anenih, hatched a membership re-registration scheme designed to deregister all those who were perceived not to support the self perpetuation plan of President Olusegun Obasanjo. More than half of the members of the party were thus shut out, resulting in the depleted membership strength with which the party went into the 2007 gubernatorial poll in Edo State.
 That election, in the main, was not only a battle between PDP and other parties but a battle between the PDP of Chief Obasanjo/Anenih  and the PDP Grace Group comprising all those (Tony Omoaghe, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu & co.)  who were deregistered in the 2004 re-registration exercise. The latter group even though had joined forces with the few Action Congress of Democrats (ACD) and later ACN members in the state, saw their exclusion from the PDP as a punishable act for which electoral defeat was appropriate and fitting remedy. Thus, the parting of ways between the three top leaders of Chief Anenih, Dr. Ogbemudia and Chief Igbinedion had effectively begun. And even though Dr. Ogbemudia is still in the PDP the centre has not been able to hold for him and Chief Anenih. The rest of the story which we can simply dub “the beginning of the end” of PDP in Edo State is well-known in Nigeria.
One other factor which has torn things apart for the PDP in Edo State is the fortuitous emergence of Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole  as governor of the state, having won the gubernatorial election of April 2007 on the platform of ACN, which mandate was hijacked by the PDP but eventually reclaimed in November 2008.  The woes of the PDP have since then multiplied beyond manageable proportions with the Oshiomhole administration’s transparently committed and systematic application of state resources to better the lives of the people of the state. Every where one goes in Edo State today one is confronted with visible signs of transformation that is going on. 
In a short space of three and a half years the Comrade Oshiomhole administration has done what the PDP governments could not do in the almost ten years they were in power in the state. Every aspect of governance has been affected positively. The present administration in Edo State has constructed, reconstructed and rehabilitated more than fifty inter and intra-city roads most of them complete with covered side drains, walkways and street lights; primary and secondary schools have been reconstructed and furnished; primary healthcare centres have been built and renovated and furnished; one hundred new buses have been acquired and running; thousands of youths have been employed; Sam Ogbemudia stadium has been renewed; the Kings Square is wearing a new look and has become a tourist delight; a new central hospital building is being constructed; human capacity capital is receiveing priority attention;  several communities now have portable water; electricity has reached hitherto forgotten communities while erosion control in Benin City is receiving attention.
There is no doubt that the average Edo man and woman has become proud once again that the state is working. This is why thousands of Edo people in other parties have decided to identify with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and the ACN. Since visible signs of progress started to show in 2009 that the state was working again, the ranks of other political parties, particularly the PDP, have continued to dwindle across the state. From Agenebode to Okada, from Ewohimi to Ososo, from Uromi to Ologbo, members of the PDP have dumped the party for the progressive, people-friendly, visionary and development conscious ACN in Edo state. Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and the ACN have shown to the satisfaction of Edo people what governance is all about: planning, mobilising and utilising state resources transparently for the uplift of the living standard of the majority of the people. 
The woeful failure of the PDP at the governorship election last Saturday must be seen as punishment for its misrule of the past. It represents a rejection of dictatorship by one man and god-fatherism.   It is doubtful if the party can pick together all the pieces of its shattered old self again. For the PDP in Edo State it is till the next generation or, as we say it in Bini, airhiavbere.