A professor of Communications at Baze University, Abuja, Abiodun Adeniyi, has said the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is facing a deep internal crisis worsened by the influence of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike.
Adeniyi said that the minister seemed to be having fun at the expense of the party, arguing that the PDP’s internal cohesion has been broken, leaving the party unable to rebuild itself.
According to him, the Wike factor cannot be undermined in the bid for the PDP to make progress.
He warned that if the PDP undermines Wike, they will be undermining the process they want to make.
He stated this on Friday while fielding questions on Arise Television’s Prime Time programme, noting that the party is at an “abysmal low”.
He said: “I think it’s very important for us to underscore the fact that the PDP is at an abysmal low, and that low is coming from the fact that the spirit of the party, the spirit of the need to build a team is already broken, and if you do not mend that spirit, there’s nothing else that you do that will work.
“You know, we’ll have a very powerful minister that seems to be having fun at the expense of the party.
“He has got an interest in an opposition party, and he still has refused to leave, you know, the party that he has ordinarily belonged to many years before.
“Now, his factor cannot be undermined in the bid for PDP to make progress, if they imagine they can undermine him, they will be undermining as well the progress that they want to make.
“Unfortunately, now what I rather think they should do, and of course, if it is not done in immediate circumstance, like Baba Yusuf said, we should be expecting a third party intervention, third party represented in the judiciary.
“And when a third party is coming in, you do not know whether it will go left or right, irrespective of how you think, how correct you think you are.
“So what I think the party should do is not to be tired of conciliation, not to be tired of dialogue and diplomatic moves to assuage whichever group, and in this case, the most potent being the one led by the FCT minister.
“They should, I think, continue to try to mend fences, because if they ignore this part, resulting in extreme words that I see them beginning to use, you know, they begin to see words that are absolute, that can be hurting.
“Then of course, the broken spirits might just continue to degenerate into a low that they ordinarily shouldn’t find themselves.
“Remember also that the PDP is still suffering from the exits of major stakeholders, people who have been the bedrock of the party over the years.
“Some of them are in ADC now, some are in APC, and they’re just catered all over the place. That’s a major concern that they should ordinarily be worried about.
“But beyond that also is an internal disease that they are yet to deal with. That disease, so to say, speaking rhetorically, has to be dealt with. It cannot be ignored.”