The Peoples Democratic Party was once a political behemoth that prided itself on being “Africa’s largest party.” It had structure, history, and a kind of quiet arrogance born of its long years in power.
But today, that party stands fractured today and its voice hoarse from shouting at itself, its leaders trapped in a maze of power tussles and legal knots. What the PDP faces now is not just a leadership crisis; it’s an identity crisis. The opposition is no longer opposing the government. It is opposing itself.
To understand how the PDP arrived here, you have to look back at what has unfolded in just the past few days, a blur of statements, suspensions, counter-suspensions, and court orders that have left Nigerians wondering who, if anyone, is in charge.
On October 31, 2025, a Federal High Court in Abuja issued an injunction stopping the party from holding its much-anticipated national convention scheduled for mid-November in Ibadan.
The ruling, delivered by Justice James Omotosho, pointed to procedural irregularities: notices not properly signed by the National Secretary, state congresses not conducted in line with the PDP Constitution, and unresolved internal disputes that could render any convention outcome null and void.
Within hours, the party’s spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, dismissed the ruling as an “assault on internal democracy” and vowed that the PDP would appeal. But the judgment had already opened the floodgates.
By the next morning, November 1, the National Working Committee (NWC) led by acting National Chairman Amb. Umar Damagum announced the suspension of key national officers, accusing them of anti-party activities and misconduct.
Barely had that news circulated when a rival faction, aligned with Senator Samuel Anyanwu, a former National Secretary and all loyalists of the Minister of FCT, Barrister Nyesom Wike, countered with its own suspensions, this time targeting Damagum himself and other NWC members.
The group immediately announced Alhaji Mohammed Abdulrahman as the new acting National Chairman.
At the heart of this whole crisis isn’t ideology. The PDP isn’t fighting over whether to lean left or right, progressive or conservative. It’s fighting over control—control of the convention, the party’s purse, and the power to determine who gets what when 2027 comes around.
A Nigerian proverb states: “because of the hatred of a cockroach for mosquitoes, it voted for the insecticide but when insecticide came, it killed both the cockroach and the mosquitoes including the fly that never voted,” this is the current consequence and dilemma of allowing selfish ambition to override collective interest.
The rift in the party has been building quietly since the 2023 general elections. After its defeat, the PDP never truly reconciled its internal wounds. The G-5 governors led by Nyesom Wike tore a visible hole through the party’s structure. Alliances shifted. Old loyalties dissolved. By 2024, the party’s top hierarchy had split between those who wanted Damagum to continue as acting chairman and those insisting on a southern replacement.
So this latest round of suspensions is not an isolated event, it’s the climax of two years of simmering resentment, legal intrigue, and factional paranoia. The court ruling simply gave each side the excuse to go for the jugular.
What makes the PDP’s turmoil so tragic is its timing. Nigeria’s political space has never been hungrier for a coherent opposition. The economy is faltering, inflation is high, and governance fatigue is setting in. Citizens should be hearing strong, credible voices from the PDP outlining alternatives. Instead, they are watching those voices drown each other out.
As the Editor’s Diary clearly observed and likes to put it this week, “The PDP has become an opposition party against itself. It doesn’t even need the APC to weaken it.”
Every press release is a counterattack. Every disciplinary measure triggers retaliation. There’s no unified strategy, only overlapping egos and splintered ambitions masqueraded as fighting for justice within the party.
Even within the states, the chaos is trickling down. In Oyo, Rivers, Delta, Imo and Edo, local chapters are already aligning with one faction or another. State congresses are frozen. Internal elections have turned into proxy wars for national figures.
The PDP’s great irony today is that it has all the ingredients of a governing party—structure, talent, grassroots base but lacks the one thing that binds political institutions together: trust.
When the main opposition party becomes unstable, democracy loses its balance. A strong ruling party without an equally strong opposition breeds complacency and impunity. The PDP’s implosion, therefore, is not just its own tragedy, it’s the country misfortune.
In a healthy democracy, opposition is not about anger; it’s about accountability. It’s about being ready to govern if power changes hands. But how can a party that cannot even govern itself convince Nigerians it can govern the country?
The PDP’s crisis also reveals something deeper about Nigeria’s political culture: the absence of institutional discipline. Parties here are often built around personalities, not ideology. When those personalities clash, the structure collapses.
There’s a poetic sadness in watching a party once described as the “umbrella for all” now struggling to shelter itself from the storm. The fight now is not just for leadership, it’s for legitimacy, for the right to define what the PDP is and what it stands for.
Some elders within the party, including former governors and members of the Board of Trustees, are quietly moving to mediate. Ayodele Fayose, for instance, congratulated the newly announced acting chairman, Mohammed Abdulrahman, and called for reconciliation, saying, “There is no better time to bring peace and unity to the PDP than now.” But even that appeal was interpreted differently by both sides, one as endorsement, the other as betrayal.
To survive, the PDP will have to do something it hasn’t done in a long time: look inward honestly. It must decide whether it still wants to be a political institution or just a coalition of interests waiting for the next election cycle to fight over crumbs.
Redemption, if it comes, will not come through court judgments or press conferences. It will require what the PDP has loscrumbs; trust and humility.
The party needs to go back to the basics: rebuild state structures, restore inclusivity, credibility in its internal elections, and create a unified voice that can challenge the government on policy, not just personalities. It must also invest in a new generation of leaders unburdened by the factional loyalties of the past decade.
Until then, every headline about “suspension” and “counter-suspension” will serve as a painful reminder that the PDP is still at war with itself; a party once known for power, now defined by paralysis.
If politics mirrors life, then the PDP’s story is a lesson in what happens when pride replaces purpose. Once, it ruled Nigeria for sixteen unbroken years. Now, it can’t go sixteen days without internal chaos.
The party is lost, yes. But perhaps not beyond recovery. Every movement, every institution that once had real roots, eventually faces a reckoning. For the PDP, this might just be that moment, the crossroads between reform and ruin.
Whether it finds its soul again or continues to tear itself apart will depend not on court rulings or conventions, but on whether its leaders remember why they came together in the first place.
Because a house divided against itself doesn’t just fall, it forgets what it was built for.
Also, PDP must be reminded that regardless of its sheer display of egotistic tendencies amid an unbothered ruling party, it stands absolutely no chance of reclaiming power if it approaches 2027 with this trend.
It must be genuinely sober and seek true restitution and reconciliation within its ranks including being opened to honestly work collaboratively with other opposition parties in a coalition arrangements that may be similar to the 2014 political amalgamation that birthed the APC.