How the PDP gave APC a taste of their own medicine

APC Leaders

The 8th National Assembly has kicked off on a strong note and new leaders have emerged for the Senate and the House of Representatives. It’s has really been an interesting week in Abuja.

For some weeks now, there has been a lot of controversy with the All Progressives Party (APC) about who’ll be the next Speaker and the next Senate president.

The trouble continued to the last minute because the party leaders couldn’t resolve the disagreement and it eventually divided the party. It gave thePeoples Democratic Party (PDP) the chance to come in through the backdoor to snatch a fair share of the power sharing deal and squeeze in their own man.

Eventually, the PDP got the Deputy SenatePpresident position and the APC definitely made the Senate President, the House of Reps Speaker and the Deputy Speaker. But the candidates the party leaders rooted for didn’t win. So it was sort of a pyrrhic victory for the party. They had a clear chance to lead the Senate and House of Reps exclusively, but they bungled the opportunity through bad leadership and awful crisis management.

APC has rejected the outcome of those elections and tried to knock the process apparently because things didn’t pan out as they wanted. They’ve knocked their senators who have duly become the new leaders in the parliament and they’ve called them ‘treacherous’ and ‘disloyal’.

Clearly the PDP has given the APC a taste of their own medicine. It’s obvious they are frustrated. This was their exact strategy when the PDP was ruling and APC was opposition. But now things have changed and the PDP is hitting back.

Disowning your own men and calling them ‘treacherous’ is a sign that there’s frustration in the party. The party is in a panic mode. For the first time in a long time, the party leadership has tasted ‘defeat’ and they’re clearly rattled. They obviously didn’t see it coming.

Five influential governors and other politicians defected from the PDP to join the APC before the election campaign began, and it did two things. On one hand it strengthened the APC very much and widened their influence around the country. On the other hand it weakened the PDP and narrowed their influence. Of course more people jumped from PDP to APC along the line and the PDP began to wobble. It’s no surprise they did pretty badly in the general elections.

When those politicians left the PDP for APC that time, the APC praised them for their ‘patriotism’. But now that some of these politicians are making choices that the party disapproves, the party’s condemning them for entering into ‘an unholy alliance with the very same people whom the party and indeed the entire country worked hard to replace and sell out the hard won victory of the party’.

Now the party realizes they’re ‘treacherous‘ and ‘disloyal’ people who want to subject the party to ridicule and create obstacles for the new administration. Of course they were ‘treacherous’ and ‘disloyal’ to leave the PDP. So why is the APC just ranting that things aren’t moving well?

Good thing the PDP fired at them in a statement. They advised APC to “stop whining and accept the will of the people, respect the independence of the legislature because it was not responsible for their (APC leaders) naivety and crass inexperience.”

That’s the sort of statement the APC used to make when the PDP was in power. It’s the sort of statement they made whenever they scored a political point and beat the PDP in some way. They would taunt the PDP and tell them to stop whining. They would make a big stink of it in the media and give the ruling party some real stick.

Interestingly, it’s the PDP doing the taunting now. Now they’re the ones giving the APC some real stick. This could just be the beginning for the APC.

Now they have to defend and try to take back momentum from the PDP. This incident has demonstrated their weakness and it’s probably going to give the PDP some room to regroup effectively and mount a solid opposition in the coming months.

The APC has been having a run for some time now and they’ve been pounding the PDP. Now they’re getting to bite some dust and taste their own medicine. This is getting interesting.