Until recently, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was the ruling party in Kwara State as it repeated, at the 2011 governorship election, the victory it had recorded since the 2003 election. The party in the 2011 election also won 22 of the 24 seats in the state House of Assembly to put it in firm control of the state government. It did not end at that, the party, also during the election, cleared the seats the state had at the National Assembly, including the three of the Senate and the five the state was allotted at the House of Representatives. Also, the PDP won all the seats contested for in the local government elections conducted late last year in the state. It won all the 16 chairmanship seats and 193 councillorship posts, leaving no seat to be recorded for the opposition.

Turning the table

However, even before another round of elections are conducted, the PDP has lost virtually all these seats to a hitherto opposition party in the state: the All Progressives Congress (APC) which has now emerged the party in power in the state.

This happened because of the defection of the former governor of the state and erstwhile leader of the PDP in the state, Bukola Saraki, from the party to the APC. Saraki is believed to be the one that facilitated the victory of virtually all elected officers in the state and when he decided to leave the PDP for the APC, almost all of his loyalists followed him.

The elected officers that did not follow him to APC are just about three in number, including the Senator representing the Kwara South Senatorial District, Simeon Ajibola, and two members of the state House of Assembly. The entire members of the executive of the PDP and a chunk of the supporters also abandoned the party and followed Saraki to the APC.

As the Saraki group left the PDP other members of the party who remained behind, including Ajibola and the two lawmakers in the state House of Assembly, are now regrouping to form a formidable opposition against the Saraki group. The other people include the founding members of the party who, all along, had not been in the same camp with the Saraki group since the group joined the party in 2002. These founding members include those who retained their membership of the party but were not active and those who had left for another party but later returned to the PDP. The other people are those who had been associates of Saraki before parting ways with him. They include the former Minister of Transport, Isa Bio Ibrahim; Chairman of the Federal Character Commission, Shuaib Oba Abdulraheem; former Chairman of Offa local government council, Segun Olawoyin, and Ben Duntoye who served as a commissioner under Saraki's administration.

These politicians have disclosed their intention to reclaim for the PDP the control of the state government. Besides being optimistic of succeeding on this project, they are also confident that their party would win the presidential election in the state in the 2011 general election. But Saraki saw this threat by the PDP group as not worthy to worry about as he described the group as a minority which has no structure strong enough to earn it electoral victory in the state.

He stated: "Those who are opposed to our system are in the minority. I do not see their capacity to take over. They may have their personal agenda. They may believe that they can go to Abuja and make promises so that they can benefit something; I do not think their actions are in the interests of Kwarans. In the Senate, only one senator is not with us. All the Rep members are with us. In the House, there were 22 members elected under PDP and 2 under the defunct ACN. Out of these 24, only 2 are not with us. The entire LG are controlled by APC. Where will they take off from?"

Fresh PDP gains

While this opposition by this PDP group may not be formidable enough to withstand the strength of the Saraki group as Saraki boasted, unfolding development seems to be showing that the PDP is waxing stronger and becoming more formidable a party in the state.

There was a strong opposition within the APC over the handling of the structure of the party to Saraki. The people behind the opposition, although welcomed Saraki's group's defection to the party, would not want Saraki to take over as the leader of the party since, according to them, that would defeat the ideals which the party stood for in the state.

The people include former governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Dele Belgore, who emerged second in the 2011 governorship election in the state and many other chieftains of the ACN who were also leaders in the APC when the ACN, alongside some other parties, dissolved into APC.

They were saying that the APC is the platform those who are yearning for a change in the governance of the state hoped to use to achieve their aim. They said that the government ran over the years in the state by the Saraki group had allegedly been disappointing on the welfare of the people of the state hence the yearning for a change by the people.

The Belgore group said if the structure of the APC is handed over to Saraki, the people of the state would no longer see the party as the one that they can vote for to achieve the change they had been hoping for. They therefore warned the national leadership of the party not to allow Saraki assume automatic leader of the party in the state without proving his popularity democratically within the party.

It however appeared that the position of the Belgore group was not favoured by the national leadership of the APC as an interim executive committee inaugurated in the state would prove. The key posts of the committee which was said to have been constituted based on an agreed list were occupied by the loyalists of Saraki who occupied the same posts in the PDP before they defected to the APC. The posts occupied by the people include those of the Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Secretary and Women Leader.

The Belgore group which apparently could not cope with this development decided to leave the party for the PDP. Other members of the group who went to the PDP alongside Belgore included Iyiola oyedepo, Bunmi Olusona,  Idris Mahmoud,  Sa'ad Omoiya, A Isa Afon, Agboola Ismail,  Toyin Ayinla,  Funsho Sa'ad,  Atanda Soro,  Khadijat Abdullateef, and Ganiyu Onikere.

Belgore defends decision

Belgore, while addressing supporters of the group on their decision to defect to the PDP, said they took the decision after the APC national leadership failed to heed their warning and handed over the structure of the party to Saraki.

The politician who said that he and others laboured so hard to nurture APC to a party of choice in the state from its ACN days disclosed that the APC national leadership let them down with the decision to allow Saraki the control of the structure of the party in the state.

He stated: "Hope had risen that with the birth of APC, our struggle for socioeconomic development of our dear state which we began in 2010, would be better served under a stronger and broader political platform.? But that hope suddenly evaporated very quickly. An alliance of those who yearn for change and development and those who desire to maintain the status quo of oppression and denial of opportunity was suddenly foisted upon us.?

"By that alliance, the politics of patronage, of denial of merit-based opportunity, of running the state like personal assets, of deploying public wealth for the benefit of a select few, of selling the state assets to shadowy private concerns, was given a new life.?

"But it is not just about pitching of the voices for change against the forces of retrogression. It was also about the manner in which it was done.? We said yes, anyone could be admitted to the party, but we insisted that it would be undemocratic, inequitable and even contrary to the very idea of change that APC claims it stands for, to automatically hand over the party structures to new entrants, especially when those entrants are at the commanding height of the oppression and arrested development of Kwara and its people. Not only does this arrangement confer the party structure on these new entrants, it is pre-determined to ensure that they continue, no matter the pretence of internal election, to control it.

"Thus by this ultimately self-defeating arrangement, APC had determined the scores of the game even before kickoff. The same ugly trend occurred in Kano, Sokoto and some other States.? APC's leadership had, in seeking to satisfy a few, alienated the rank and file, and to many, the soul of the party.? The owner of a home need not be displaced to give any false sense of friendship to a stranger.?

"Our people do not believe that people are made for a platform. Rather they believe that platforms are made for the people. No positive change is possible where we are to coexist with the same elements that the people of Kwara want to dislodge.? To our supporters and political independents, APC has let us down. We have therefore decided not to be part of an arrangement that put us in the same ship driven by the oppressors.?

"We are therefore joining the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which – as fate now has it – has shed the very core of the liabilities that made our people run away from it.? We are joining hands with other like minds in the PDP who were unjustly shut out because of their progressive bent to endear the party to the people of Kwara State.? Together we will work to advocate and bring about economic liberation, equal opportunity for all and positive development to our dear state and its people.? We join forces to break the shackles of oppression and restore our state back to its former glory.?

"It is never easy to leave a party that one has nurtured to such an enviable position, but the reality is that APC, by its undemocratic stance and scant regard for the yearnings of o people and supporters, has strayed from the path of progress and development – that is the core of our political existence in Kwara. We remain true to this cause and its sanctity limits our affiliations.?

"My supporters and I therefore call on all those who wish Kwara State well, both within and beyond Kwara, indigenes and non-indigenes, to support us in the PDP to fight this just and noble cause so as to bring a brighter day to the lives of our people and to renew their positive aspirations.?"

Also, Saraki's younger sister, Gbemisola Saraki, has pitched tent with the PDP. She had been a member of the party before she left it in 2011 to contest for the governorship seat of the state on the platform of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) after opposition to her ambition by her brother made it difficult for her to secure the platform of the PDP for pursuing the ambition.

ACPN returns home

After the 2011 governorship election where Gbemisola came third, her father, Olusola Saraki, the political kingmaker of the state, who had given her backing in the ACPN directed that members of the party most of whom had gone to the party from the PDP should return to the PDP. The directive was as a result of the reconciliation the PDP made with the political kingmaker who is the leader of the party before leading Gbemisola and others to the ACPN.

Some of those who returned to the PDP were in accordance with the terms of the reconciliation offered appointments. However, not all the members returned. Many of them stayed behind as Gbemisola did not return.

The female politician who has been a 2-term member of the Senate, representing Kwara Central Senatorial District before contesting the governorship election, appeared to have been overtly less active in the politics of the state since she refused to return to the PDP before she recently publicly declared her return to the party and wooed support for the party when her brother left for the APC.

The former governorship candidate who spoke at a rally attended by her associates and supporters in ACPN and those who had gone to the PDP but did not follow Bukola to APC, some members of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change who chose to join PDP instead of APC and some of the existing members of the PDP, said that she decided to, all this while, "siddon look" after her brother's group marginalised her own group who returned to the PDP in accordance with the directive of their father.

She said that with the unity of the PDP in the state promoted above the personal ambition of the members, the party would in 2015 regain its status as the party in power in the state. She stated that the defection of her brother and his group to the APC affords those of them, the present members of PDP, the opportunity to restructure the party and rescue the state from bad governance.

Gbemisola said that her brother and his group who left the PDP did so for personal reason and not in the interest of the state while canvassing  support of the people for President Goodluck Jonathan saying the state would fare better when it goes along with the central government.

The now party-in-power APC however saw the criticism against it as baseless and insisted that the opposition could not stand its way in the next election. The party, in a statement, issued by its Director of Publicity, Sulaiman Buhari, castigated Belgore for insinuating that the APC lacks internal democracy.

The APC said: "Mr. Belgore cannot claim to know the PDP more than the founding fathers that have since abandoned the party for its undemocratic practices and mismanagement of the country, to our party mainly to salvage Nigeria. Nigerians need to know that Mr. Belgore is not a member of PDP today due to assumed undemocratic tendencies in APC but for the resolve of our party to disengage all selfish interests, including his. The question arises: Is he the only leader of the legacy parties? Why is he alone on the allegation of undemocratic tendencies in Kwara APC? He failed to see patriotic needs to relinquish personal interests and join other Nigerians to collectively salvage Nigeria from the PDP, having destroyed and divided the country across different ethnic and religious folds.

Observers are of the opinion that as the PDP seems to be attracting bigwigs to its fold, if the party did not undo itself with internal crisis over leadership related matters, it may prove invincible for the APC at the poll in the state.