Ayu: PDP in dilemma over balancing

FOLLOWING the northern caucus’ adoption of Professor Iyorchia Ayu as its choice for the national chair of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the main opposition party is now faced with the dilemma of how to ensure regional balancing in offices. 

With the emergence of the former Senate President, a section of the party is worried about the implications of having its two most important positions, the National Chairman and the National Secretary, occupied by Christians. 

The National Secretary position has already been zoned to the South East, which is unlikely to field a Muslim for it. Social media users sympathetic to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have since Thursday, when Ayu was announced as the preferred candidate for the PDP chairmanship, been playing up the perception that the opposition party has confirmed its status as a southern Christian political party, despite the former ruling party’s claim to be the only truly national party. 

Party source told Saturday Tribune that this has become a source of concern among some critical stakeholders. 

“The only concern is the image this thing would give, particularly in the North, which is to say, they have the Chairman as a Christian, they also have the National Secretary as a Christian. 

“Because in the estimation and calculation of the APC, they have always wanted to give the impression in the North that the PDP is a southern party,” a member of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) told Saturday Tribune. 

However, it was gathered that the party may be looking towards the adoption of the report of the Governor Bala Mohammed-led 2019 Election Review Committee, which recommended that the presidential ticket of the PDP should be merit-based and thrown open. 

Meanwhile, the ruling APC and opposition PDP are finally fine-tuning their strategies for victory in the 2023 general elections, with the election of new leaders to steer their affairs in the crucial build-up months to the official opening of the race. 

At the heart of their strategies is the twin issue of zoning of the presidency and gladiators scheming to entrench themselves as either kings or kingmakers in their parties and political spaces. 

Only political parties are empowered to nominate candidates for elections in Nigeria, with the refusal of the lawmakers to insert independent candidacy into the rule book and tension is now mounting in the two major parties, considering that those in charge of party structures at state and federal levels would go into the nomination battle with an advantage. 

Apart from internal contests for the soul of each of the parties, both platforms are also into what would amount to a waiting game to see which of them would move first in a certain geopolitical direction regarding zoning of national offices and ultimately the presidency. 

In zoning national offices, the PDP has upped the stake by leaving its presidential field wide open to all the geopolitical zones in the country, including the North Central that produced the consensus national chairman, Professor Iyorchia Ayu, a long-standing ally of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. 

The desire of the Adamawa moneybag to seek the presidency again, after the failure of 2019, is not hidden. 

With Ayu, expected to officially clinch the plum Wadata job on October 30 when the national convention of the opposition party is slated to hold, Atiku is considered closer to the ticket again than most of his Northern brothers like former Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Governors Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State and Mohammed Bala of Bauchi State. It is said that part of the agreement that produced Ayu is being put on quit notice, which would be triggered once a Northerner emerges the party’s presidential standard-bearer. 

While the decision not to preclude the North from seeking Aso Rock again after President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year occupation has reportedly cooled agitation within the PDP, the suspicion that Atiku and his men are working to certain answers is said to be creating an uneasy feeling in the South, particularly the South West. 

The zone, which is the only one out of the six not to have produced the national chairman of the party since 1998, was earlier seen coasting to an easy victory before the table was turned and the seat returned to the North after the expiration of Uche Secondus’s tenure. 

After Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, it is being read that zoning of the presidential ticket for the opposition party would mean returning it to the North, though Atiku was also the beneficiary of the same thinking in 2019. 

The concern among Southern leaders of the PDP, including South East and South South, is said to be the perceived ease the former VP is turning the platform to himself and his group, which may impact how the state chapters would fare going forward. 

Aside from Peter Obi and the sudden interest of the party in re-fielding former President Goodluck Jonathan when APC began to publicly woo him, discomforting silence has greeted what should be the presidential field in the South.

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